60 cycle hum

[indieo]

Does anyone know any methods or tricks on how to eliminate 60 cycle hum through a home studio?? It feels almost impossible....
please help!!

thanks

[coaster]

i do not have a 60 cycle hum in my studio, so it must be possible. i would suggest finding the cause by unplugging everything one at a time. i DO get the occasional hum, but can quickly track it down with this method.
last time it was a wall wart. i changed outlets and it went away.

the most serious hum i ever had was when my am3 card and mackie were connected via unbalanced cable. HUMMMMMMMMMM
bought a peavey 10/4 balancing amplifier and VIOLA- no hum.

there is some talk about running your comp from a different source than your audio. while this may be true, i run mine from the same side of the house with no problem.

my newest hum problem is:

couple weeks ago i discovered a loud HUM. tracing it, nothing unplugged would affect the hum. even the AMP. turns out the hum is not coming from my speakers, but my POWER CONDITIONER. it hums pretty loud now, and just started. don't know why. the hum is NOT getting into any audio, mixer, or pro tools. just the machine humming. annoying as hell.

good luck, it can be done.

[chicagobob]

coaster: sounds like the internal transformer has found somethig to vibrate against or is starting to shake loose. if you should find yourself so moved to try to dampen it, make sure you don't use a material that is affected by heat(aka flammable or melt-able)
also don't compromise its internal ventilation.
its not a bad idea (important) to have it un-plugged from the power source until its in a controlled (safe) situation to look at its innards. if you choose to power it up with the cover off, needless to say, don't have your person in a place where you can get zapped.

[Gary Stadler]

60 cycle hum is usually caused (in a home studio) by the ground loops created when you plug two or more audio devices that have a ground pin on their power plug- into a plug strip. All of the ground pins are thus connected together, and since all of the audio grounds of those units are also connected together, it creates a gigantic mess of ground loops that are sometimes impossible to eliminate.

Often people cut the ground pins of their power cords off...sometimes it works but it's more than likely to make things worse and unsafe. There are usually little capacitors inside a typical unit's internal line filter hooking power line to chassis...when you lift a ground pin these can -and do- cause shock hazards, and a different kind of hum that is often worse than the origional!

I'm the right guy for the solution...but at the wrong time....I used to make a thing called "Humbuster" that was essentially a 2U rack box with 10 power isolation transformers inside, each of 10 110vac plugs on the rear had no electrical connection of any kind, including ground, to any other plug on the rear...it was so simple- just plug your gear in to the box and ground loops instantly and safely gone! But the world evidently had a hard time spending $500 bucks on magic that instantly cleaned up studio hum when the same $500 bucks could buy a new synth module or plugin, so we eventually quit making them- it was too much of a fight to make even a small profit....the 200 or so customers we did have were totally amazed at how simple it was and how well it worked...
Balanced power from Equitech is a different solution that works pretty well, but it raises a LOT of safety issues, and it's a hassle to install correctly.

Email me privately... [email protected] if you can't get your hum fixed...perhaps I can make one last humbuster for you if you're interested...