Dust on or inside Mixing Board ... affecting sound quality?

C

cre8ivemindz

New member
I am very new to sound equipment and eager to learn! Perhaps this is a dumb question ... but I couldn't find much info on the web about it.

I recently bought an 18 channel Allen & Heath USB mixer about 9-10 months ago. I realized recently that it has collected dust over time and it just dawned on me that I should probably be keeping it covered when I am not using it. So I bought a cover for it and I want to take the best care of it possible.

However... I was hoping to get some info on care and cleaning for my mixer board. I have heard that dust can affect the faders but I dont think that is a problem on this board because the slots on the faders are well sealed with rubber and it looks like dust would have a hard time getting in there.

I guess my main question is ... can dust affect the 1/4" mono, xlr & rca connections? can it affect sound quality on these connections? if so? what is the best way to get dust out of these ports? i have used a shop vac so far ... should I be spraying compressed air on or into my mixer?

I am having some feedback fuzzy interference on some of my connections and wondering if dust could be an issue from not keeping it covered. I am also changing all my cables to shielded and hoping that helps with this fuzz sound.

hope i dont sound like an idiot asking these questions. haha. any help is greatly appreciated. thank you so much!
 
Dust will not do anything to the connections. When you plug something in, the dust will be pushed aside. Dust will eventually get into the faders, but if you keep it covered, it will be a long time before it becomes a problem.

Feedback and interference are completely different things. Feedback is a squealing sound when an output finds it's way back to an input and it creates a loop.

Buzzing might be a ground loop.

What kind of cables do you have that aren't shielded? Only speaker cables wouldn't be shielded. I have never seen non shielded xlr.
 
If you get dust in your pots and sliders, you'll start to get crackling sounds when you move them.
Not from dust per-se, but your jacks may start to corrode (usually it's more due to exposure to moisture), which results in bad connections. I usually use contact cleaner to address that.
 
AFAICT that mixer is of the "basic generic USB" type. This means that you need to set levels for USB signal "interchange" in the W7 sound menu, generally you will need to pull levels down from 100% to 5% or less. Otherwise you get a higher than normal noise level.

N very B. This is NOT a fault of A&H but of the daft way generic USB audio is handled in W7.
I have a ZED 10 but run the outputs into a 2496 PCI card and get the benefits of 24 bit operation.

Dave.
 
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