local radio station installed new antenna, now i receive them on my monitors

[earworm]

damn,
our local radio station bought a new antenna,
a huge thing of maybe 10 or 15 meters high,
it stands about 200 or 400 meters away from my house,

and now i notice that i'm receiving their broadcasts
trough the TWEETERS of my active event TR8 monitors...

instead of suing that radio station (my brother helped painting that antenna !!!) i'd like to get rid of this "noize" (since its house music)

its not loud at all, but i notice it and hate it,

i'm asshamed to say, i don't have a ground or earth in my power supply here...SORRY, but gonna move in two years...so can't change that now..

whats your suggestion to get rid of this unwanted noise,
maybe i got too many cables touching eachother, so they all
work as an antenna...ehm...
i'm not good in electronics...

 

[ssscientist]

i'm asshamed to say, i don't have a ground or earth in my power supply here...SORRY, but gonna move in two years...so can't change that now..

So you're going to spend the next two years putting up with house music picked up thru your monitors when you know a possible solution?

In the immortal words of SpongeBobSquarePants, 'Good luck with that'!

 

[LRosario]

Yeah, unless you can come up with a way of shielding that room and wiring there's not a whole other lot that you can do.

 

[Blue Bear Sound]

Grounding... you need it. In the next two years, if a short occurs or something goes wrong, without the ground YOU'LL be electricity's next choice....

I'm not sure I would wait......

In any case, it's also the only solution to your noise problem, so now you have two very good reasons to upgrade the electrical system.

 

[boomtap]

Maybe a tornado will blow the tower down. Or something bad will happen to it while you are sleeping?...

 

[boingoman]

Some relatively inexpensive rack-mounted power conditioners offer at least a little RF protection. That may help some. Maybe you can borrow one to see if it helps. Though you are pretty damn close.

Make sure everything is using balanced cables that can use them.

Then it's time for a Faraday cage.

 

[mshilarious]

Then it's time for a Faraday cage.

If it's just the monitors, maybe you could build the cage inside the monitors. That might be a pain though, and you'd need a way to ground it.

 

[FALKEN]

have you tried grounding your 3 to 2-pin connector to the outlet pin? I *think* thats what the little metal tab is for.

 

[Atterion]

have you tried grounding your 3 to 2-pin connector to the outlet pin? I *think* thats what the little metal tab is for.

Not always I've done wiring in alot of old farm homes in New England that were only 2 wire systems, with no ground

Seriously consider at least having an electrician upgrading at least the branch that your studio is on. You can test whether or not there is a ground via the faceplate nut with a multi-meter (connect negative probe to ground screw, and positive probe to hot-wire (Black one)). If there is no current, but there are 3 wires on the back of the outlet, follow the lines out of your "Mains" box, and find where the "Ground Rod" was placed, it possible that its cable rotted off (Very common on older homes, and a ground rod is cheap to replace). If you pull the face plate remember to "Kill" power first, or get a pro.

One lightning strike, with no ground, and everything plugged in your studio will become a smoking pile of rubble, and hope you're not plugged into a guitar singing into a mic.

 

[dgatwood]

damn,
our local radio station bought a new antenna,
a huge thing of maybe 10 or 15 meters high,
it stands about 200 or 400 meters away from my house,

and now i notice that i'm receiving their broadcasts
trough the TWEETERS of my active event TR8 monitors...

Thought about dynamite?

Kidding. Seriously, yeah, grounding. I've seen a lot of induction in coils (particularly line matching transformers) when in close proximity to a radio station's transmission facilities. Been there, grounded that.

What is odd, IMHO, is that you're only hearing it in the tweeters. If it were only in the woofers, I'd say it was being picked up in the choke that filters the highs out (though that, too, would be odd, since it's probably on the wrong side of the power amp). But to only hear it in the tweeters....

Have you tried snapping a ferrite choke on the power cord? If you live on the same circuit, I could see this beeing an issue (even if you had a proper ground), since the woofer amp's power supply would have a hefty filter cap to cut out 60 Hz hum, but the tweeter amp's power supply... might not, at least to the same degree, relying instead on the inline filter cap to filter out low frequency signals before they reach the speaker. Just a wild thought....

Other thoughts... long leads on the tweeter's amp board... a cheap VHF/Cable amplifier hooked up to your TV, with the VCR's audio outputs hooked up to your mixer....

 

[dgatwood]

If it's just the monitors, maybe you could build the cage inside the monitors. That might be a pain though, and you'd need a way to ground it.

Technically, a Faraday cage doesn't have to be grounded. That said, as soon as you have holes in that cage... it certainly helps.

 

[notbradsohner]

you could cover your entire house with an rf shielding canvas or something.....................or ground the studio

 

[boomtap]

There is a studio I know that is right next to a major FM station. They ran a ground down to the well water and that took care of it.

 

[producerkid]

There is a studio I know that is right next to a major FM station. They ran a ground down to the well water and that took care of it.

I was just about to mention do it yourself grounding. Really all grounding is (and someone higher up on the knowledge chain please correct me if i'm wrong), is putting a metal rod (or metal piping would work as well) in the ground a few feet and running a moderately thick guage wire off of it into the house and equipment.

You could get some 1/2" metal piping about 8 feet long, put it in the ground about 6 feet, put a metal pipe clamp towards the top of the pipe, and use the screw on it to tighten the wire down. Then you just get some single conductor wire (about 16 to 18 guage should do the trick), run it inside your studio (through the window, through the floor, however), and run it to the ground conductor on your power conditioner, power strip, or other device(s).

Get grounded, and that should help if not solve the problem. Hope this helps.

the kid

 

[boingoman]

I was just about to mention do it yourself grounding. Really all grounding is (and someone higher up on the knowledge chain please correct me if i'm wrong), is putting a metal rod (or metal piping would work as well) in the ground a few feet and running a moderately thick guage wire off of it into the house and equipment.

You could get some 1/2" metal piping about 8 feet long, put it in the ground about 6 feet, put a metal pipe clamp towards the top of the pipe, and use the screw on it to tighten the wire down. Then you just get some single conductor wire (about 16 to 18 guage should do the trick), run it inside your studio (through the window, through the floor, however), and run it to the ground conductor on your power conditioner, power strip, or other device(s).

Get grounded, and that should help if not solve the problem. Hope this helps.

the kid

This is something that should only be done by a professional, or at least with professional advice. Driving a grounding rod into sand, for instance, won't do shit, basically. And driving it through a gas line, water line, or your electrical service would basically defeat the whole purpose. I don't know if they have Digsafe in Belgium.

Besides, a lot of times in Europe the service ground is tied to neutral at the box, or is run through metal conduit the house lines are in, even if the outlets aren't grounded. Putting in another ground could cause horrible ground loops, I would imagine. I don't know for sure, though.

 

[Tim Brown]

I was just about to mention do it yourself grounding. Really all grounding is (and someone higher up on the knowledge chain please correct me if i'm wrong), is putting a metal rod (or metal piping would work as well) in the ground a few feet and running a moderately thick guage wire off of it into the house and equipment.

You could get some 1/2" metal piping about 8 feet long, put it in the ground about 6 feet, put a metal pipe clamp towards the top of the pipe, and use the screw on it to tighten the wire down. Then you just get some single conductor wire (about 16 to 18 guage should do the trick), run it inside your studio (through the window, through the floor, however), and run it to the ground conductor on your power conditioner, power strip, or other device(s).

Get grounded, and that should help if not solve the problem. Hope this helps.

the kid

YOu can buy a Copper Grounding Rod at Radio Shack. It's a Copper Rod about 8 feet long that is sharpened on one end and looks like a spear.

 

[Mo-Kay]

Being that close to any signal-sending-antenna, I'd get the whole neighbourhood together and sue that thing outta the neighbourhood!

Health issues

 

[mshilarious]

Being that close to any signal-sending-antenna, I'd get the whole neighbourhood together and sue that thing outta the neighbourhood!

Health issues

http://www.bccdc.org/content.php?item=171

You'll get far more radiation from a cell phone against your ear.

 

[Atterion]

Besides, a lot of times in Europe the service ground is tied to neutral at the box, or is run through metal conduit the house lines are in, even if the outlets aren't grounded.

Correct, essentially electricity, runs in from hot and out through neutral (which is actually hot for the next utility (outlet, light, etc.). Ground is tied to the neutral circuit (And thus normally is electrically equvailent to neutral, but is tied of seperately so it does not feed any utulities, just ties them together and returns them to the ground bus), so that if there is an overload or short, the excess energy is diverted immediately to earth via the ground circuit, and allowing the breakers time to react accordingly, hopefully preventing damage to equipment or human fatality. So basically ground is just a giant overflow for electricity, without it excess electricity can only either exit through the outlets, and anything connected to them, or through the Main box (Frying all it's breakers/fuses, and anything in any outlet on it's path back to the box). And we won't even discuss the extreme heat that such an event causes, and the risk that old wires have of spontaneously combusting as such an event occurs.

Earworm, get the hell out of there, as soon as possible.

 

[apl]

YOu can buy a Copper Grounding Rod at Radio Shack. It's a Copper Rod about 8 feet long that is sharpened on one end and looks like a spear.

That is not for electrical power systems. It's for grounding a radio antenna.