PICKING UP RADIO FREQUENCIES, WHYYYYYY?!!!!!!!

  • Thread starter Thread starter swindle
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swindle

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So here it goes,...
I have an SM-58 mic with a semi-professional XLR cable hooked up to a Korg D-16 Digital 16 track recorder. The problem is this,...I am picking up radio frequencies on the XLR cable and they are completely interfering with my vocal recording. I detached the mic so it was just an XLR cable plugged into the 16-track and the radio signals remained so I know it's not a problem with the mic. HELP!
P.s. There will be a tremendous amount of GOOD KARMA in it for ya if you can help me solve this problem.
Thanks a lot.
 
Try another cable, maybe one of the wires is broken at the solder points or another place.
 
My Wah pedal has been known on the odd occasion to pick up a local radio station!!!
 
check and make sure that none of your audio cables are crossing any 9v wall wart cables, at 90 degrees especially.

i found this to be the source of one problem i experienced.

here's a freaky thing that happened when we we rehearsing in an old warehouse downtown.
to make a long story short, some guy was bugged at a local politician that owned a bar with live music..this guy was riding around with a jacked up cb transmitter in his
beat up toyota.
his goal was to have his signal get picked up in the politician's bar next to the warehouse we were rehearsing in..he was screaming hotdog! hotdog! i need a hotdog...cuz the polititian banned street vendors that week..
it hit all of our solid state gear, but not the tube amps, and the feedback nearly brought me to my knees..

moral of the story i guess is..
try running your mic through a tube preamp if all else fails..

deel
------
"but then again i could be wrong"
:)
 
Swindle and Karma........hhmmmm


Anyway what you have I think is RFI.
Comes with crappy unshielded cables. Aree you near any fluorescent lights. Unless they have RFI supression on the ballasts they can send radio signals and your cheap cable can become an antenna.
 
Hey Cooperman! Is it a country station?

My wah only picks up country stations (probably because I hate country music with a passion... :D)

Ed
 
Hey, thanks to everyone for the help. The strange thing about this is that the XLR is a high quality monster cable. I have picked up radio interference (CB bursts) on my speakers before as well. I guess Brooklyn's air must be littered with radio waves. The question now is....since the radio waves are not going anywhere what are some tricks to effectively 'shielding' the equipment/ apartment. (Cheaply).?
 
The cable would have been my first guess, but other than that:

Are you plugging the cable directly into the the XLR input? Have you tried plugging the D-16 into a different outlet?
 
Get a snap-on ferrite choke from Radio Snack, should be about $2 max, and put it on the cable where it goes into the amp. For maximum effect, loop it through at least once.
 
I have tinfoil on every wall in my house...it keeps out RF and Martian waves.

If I could only conceal my tinfoil hat when I go outside...
 
I have the same problems with all my tube amps and thru my mixer amps. I pick up a lot of truckers on CB's. I finally solved the problem with Ebtech HumEliminators. They are two channel XLR or 1/4" phone or you can get a
rack of eight.
 
I am still not sure what this ebtech hum- eliminator is. Is it a type of cable? I will go try that "Snap-on Ferrite choke" mainly because I want to be able to walk into a Radio shack and ask for something that starts with the term "SNAP-ON and ends with "choke".
I have been experimenting with whatever you all have told me and whetever else I can think of and all I've basically come away with is that the higher the gain, the worse the interference. If I can get a strong signal without turning the trims up too much, if at all, I can get a pretty clean recording. (That is usually the case with the keyboards. The Mic is still consistantly picking up radio signals). In response to an earlier post, yes the XLR is plugged directly into the XLR in of the Korg D-16 digital 16 track recorder.
 
Sorry, I don't know how this thing works. Next post.

[This message has been edited by Treeline (edited 05-28-2000).]
 
Have you done a continuity test on each conductor of the cable?

Or you could move to Arkansas... :D
 
All it is, is a test to determine if the circuit is open or closed. You can do it with a mulitmeter, or a flashlight bulb and duct tape. There's no technology involved.

Put a charge into a pin or socket at one end of the XLR cable and complete the circuit at the other end; you should still have a charge. If something is broken, you get nothing. Try it with each of the three pins. If one of the hot pins is dead, you will not be carrying a balanced signal on the cable. The unbalanced signal will pick up noise. If the ground is dead, the cable will be noisy because of that as well.
 
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