Noise and hum can be issues whenever you have multiple
pieces of gear and cables connecting them across rooms. There are many products to help reduce this
and a lot of advice on how to connect things to avoid these types of
problems. I recently was discussing this
with a friend, Brian Stoller, and he had a solution that I tried and it worked
with minimal time and cost!!!
In the new space, I had wired up everything and found that
there was a loud, noticeable hum on the speakers when I turned everything
on. The 60 Hz hum is caused by “ground
loops” where there are different grounds coming together through a cable from
one piece of equipment to another. In my
case, it was the ground from the mixing console to the power amp. If I unplugged the outputs on the mixer, my
hum went away.
For large areas that cover multiple rooms, there are many write-ups on star-point grounding. These methods can also be applied to multiple cabinets and equipment within a room.
For large areas that cover multiple rooms, there are many write-ups on star-point grounding. These methods can also be applied to multiple cabinets and equipment within a room.
I remembered from a recent email chain from my friend Brian
where he had mentioned that in his multi-cabinet modular setup, he actually
measured voltage differences between the chassis/case/rails of his different
cabinets, sometimes upwards of a few volts!!!
He ran some copper wire between the different cases and his power issues
were solved.
I ended up putting a wire in between the
screw and equipment on each and every rack rail and connecting/chaining these
together so all the rails of my various rack mounts were at the same
potential/voltage. This made all the
chassis grounds in all of my rack mount equipment (including the power supply
to my mixing console) tie together. I have
never heard my studio sound this quiet!
This approach solved many of my noise issues that I had ignored and
lived with and only cost a spool of wire.
I used stranded, tinned, 14 gauge copper wire.
