Will close together wires/cables interfere with sound?

W

Wine

New member
My question:
How do my instrument cables, 9V power supply cables, and various others (speaker wire/turntable amplifier etc. etc.)
interfere,interact, and disrupt the sound coming out of my amplifier. Other than my microphone picking up the audible feedback,
Will this mess of wires/cables affect the magnetic field around my mixer/audio interface like how my amplifier does (creating feedback?)

I hope this makes sense. I hope you can answer my question as practical as possible.
Specifically I am having trouble with feedback/noise in the background of recording guitar. The quiet parts aren't so quiet.
I would appreciate it if somebody could direct me someplace to where this topic is most relatable.

My equipment(if this helps):
Fender Bassman 'Silverface' 50W
Powersupply MXR Isobrick + quality pedals/quality cables (i do not own a noise suppressor pedal)
Microphone=>Phonic MM1202a=auxout> Focusrite Scarlett 2i2
 
In short they don’t in practice when everything is done properly. There is scope for problems but it’s down to physics. We’d need to hear the problem really. When you say feedback do you mean you play a note and it gets louder and louder until it wildly oscillates like a mic and loudspeaker or are you hearing a delayed and quieter version in the background? Interference can be picked up by badly screened cables. Nasty noises from cheap power supplies can get radiated by the power cable and then leak in by poor cables in rare circumstances but cables in general work or they don’t! Don’t forget that we’re assuming you mean a guitar amp, and to get the popular distortion sounds means the gain applied is huge so any tiny noise gets amplified too. My jazz bass was terrible. No pedals or other processing just one cable to the amp. It collected buzzes hums sometimes even radio! If this had been a 6 string on a distortion program it would have been unusable. Cured with new pickups, cavity screening and care! Czz as n we hear a sound plant clip or something?
 
Mains cables and ESPECIALLY those from wall rat/line lump power supplies should always be kept well away from any signal wires. The PSUs themselves are notorious for putting out a high hum/hash field*. 300mm a foot in Old Money should be fine.

A signal wire is unlikely to interact with another signal wire unless the level is very high, well above the +4dBu standard OP level and I mean power amp cables here. Of course, balanced sources and sinks and the appropriate cables reduce crosstalk massively but modern kit generally has a very low, 100 Ohms, output resistance and so even unbalanced lines rarely give trouble in a home situation.

A good plan, once a month or so, is to make a 'silent' recording of the setup with gains at normal settings but no inputs. Take the resulting .wav (20 secs is plenty) and stuff it into a Real Time Analyser such as the free RightMark and look for hum peaks and SMPSU hash spikes. These things creep up on one and are not noticed sometimes until a valuable take is buggered a bit.

*Many a time a rack system has been lovingly rigged with a couple of PSUs gaffered neatly round the back, Then, cans are donned and Hmmmmmmm!

Dave.
 
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