488 MKII, Popping Noise in Mic Source Recordings

[hellflower]

Perhaps it's just a symptom of aging, but our ~3 year old 488 is adding a popping noise to mic input recordings. This is most evident on vocals. The keyboard synth instrument, fed in at line levels on mix 5, records just fine. I tried different mics (a powered condenser & passive dynamic) and different mic cables (gold and nickle plated phone plugs). I eliminated the two track, DAT, effects and compressors as sources or factors. I verified that there are no accidental feedback loops setup on the console. I am convinced that the noise source IS within the 488. It has been present for some time but is now getting too noticable to ignore. Has someone else experienced (and hopefully fixed) this problem? (IMO, considering it's age, the likelyhood that the mechanicals are near wear-out, a three-figure Tascam repair is probably a waste of money.)

 

[The Green Hornet]

Yo Flowers in Hell?

For sure man, don't repair your 488 -- get something newer -- digital technology is what to investigate.

I've had two 488's and both machines were noisy boxes; but, a POP from the mic? Could be a bad mic cable; try shaking the cable with the system On? Could be the DBX noise reduction has become a noise source? Well, whatever, it would be wasting your money to do any repairs on an old box.

I am now using the Yamaha MD-8; once I plugged it in, I unplugged my 488 and boxed it. It is so fast when you do a track to get back to "go." Just hit a button, zippo, back to go and ready to do another track. There are better boxes out there by Roland plus a plethora of digital boxes via the computor. I got the MD-8 because I didn't want another 5 year learning curve. [the manual for the MD-8 gets you started fine but the rest of the manual is a vacuum.]

So my advice would be to go to new stuff. What kind? Up to you and your budget and your knowledge. Look around and listen and sample.

Green Hornet

 

[hellflower]

Yes - I told the wife that the 488 isn't worth fixing for $??? dollars if the same dollars get you into a direct digital recording system. That'd save us an extra step of converting from analog to digital to eventually get the tracks onto our CDR/RW.

This posting was a shot in the dark for the offhand chance that someone had dealt with the same problem and found an easy fix. Otherwise the 488 is going into storage.

We're shopping online now for a 4 track digital solution. Maybe something with enough on-card processing power so we can drop it into the wife's old Acer P100 computer to get started. We took your advice tonight and looked over the MD8 at the Yamaha web site. It looks to be a perfect replacement for a 488, if you like digital but still want an analog output. On the plus side we could learn to run it quickly - probably hook it into all the other studio gear in a couple minutes. But we also were interested in the Yamaha DS2416 card, as well as the many others we've seen so far on the web. There seems to have been a recent flood of nifty new DSP audio cards for PCI systems released during 1999; makes it a little harder to choose the right one, though

Bytheway, thanks for the tip on the MD8, GH.