Mbox2 Digital Whine FIX!

[Jeff Laurence]

I found this while looking for a solution to the annoying "digital whine" we hear so often on the outputs of the Mbox2. It seems to be a USB cable picking up th noise from the CPU. I was able to decrease the noise somewhat by shortening, and tightly wrapping the supplied USB cable around itself and making sure the Mbox2 itself was not directly on top of the tower (in my case a G4 1.25 dual proc MMD)

I bought a rather expensive USB cable known as the "Monster Ultimate Performance USB cable" 7 foot version. It arrived, and the noise is G-O-N-E.

Just to make sure I tried three other USB cables and the whining returned every time..I left off tonight leaving the studio with a "whine free" output!

It's not cheap, but i found a few on e-bay for under 15 bucks!

[royallion]

Oh I HOPE this is the same issue!

On both my systems, the whine commences as soon as the DAE loads. Is that what was fixed by the Monster Ultimate Performance USB cable?

[Jeff Laurence]

Yes..BUT you need the ULTIMATE PERFORMANCE branded. Monster makes a high performance etc It needs to say "ULTIMATE PERFORMANCE"..I ended up with an MONSTER ULTIMATE PERFORMANCE USB 2.0 CABLE..that has LED indicators on the connectors..This cable has a beefy braided shield jacket and is almost 1/5in thick..It rejects all of the noise, and I get a clean output from the monitor jacks. The whine is outta here! It's out of stock at a lot of places..SameDayMusic.com had them.. I got three of them..I use them now on all of my systems with excellent results..Not cheap, but well worth it.

[royallion]

I got my Ultimate Performance USB cable yesterday and it WORKED!!! The whine is GONE!

Thanks for posting. That noise was getting extremely frustrating. Digi should upgrade the stock USB cable for all thier mbox2 customers.

[Jeff Laurence]

It really does the trick..however on the plus side the "whine" so many of the Mbox2 users are hearing does not record to the tracks. If you bounce to disk and made a CD to listen to in a regular CD player..there is no whine. BUT you're right it is really annoying and it's a solid fix. Kudos to Monster Cable for making a good product!