Mbox 2 - High pitched tone in bkgrd

[jeff markham]

just to be clear, that little nub on the supplied Mbox cable is
a filter to reduce harmonics of the CPU clock which may be present.
not any USB cable will do. using a USB cable (particularly a long run
cable) will most likely cause problems.

jeff

[Ross H]

I have the 002R and have been present in many discussions regarding this. I'm PC based and NOTHING I have done has corrected this other than switching my mackie Big Knob to -10db rather than +4db. Still there, just not as emphasized.

For me I beleive it to be hard drive related. I never had the problem until I built a new machine. When the hard drives are being hit...the noise is there. I guess it could in some way be a Digi issue, but I think it is more related to componant choices in the PC??? Somehow the whine of the HD bleeds into the firewire (digi approved card).

RH

[Chuck1073]

I just installed the Monster cable USB cable. Although the noise is not gone, it's the best result I've been able to acheive so far. This incluses using the Digi-provided cable, and relocating the breakout box to the machine room where the tower lives and running audio line from the control room to the PC (that's what I was doing before with the AM-III anyway).

Anymore ideas Digi?

The fact that the "whine" gets printed to every recording I do is going to get noticed by my voice-over clients. Hate to think that the investment I made to "upgrade" was a big step backward in quality. The AM-III's performance never failed me....unfortunately though...Digi no longer supports the card. Good thing I kept it. I may have to go back.

[krichards]

Having the same problem here. Is there any type of plugin or EQ'ing trick that you can use to get rid of this noise? I agree with you Chuck. This purchase was supposed to make my music better but it doesn't seem that way so far.

[Ross H]

Depending on the instrument, you can use a LOW pass/Hi Pass EQ. I chop off any freq. not being used and it will help eliminate some of it, but when it comes to Vox, etc. there isn't much to be done. I haven't bit the bullet and bought new drives but if that doesn't solve it I will blow my brains out. Makes the Vintechs, Avalons, Apogee I bought pretty much worthless with all the noise on the tracks.

Ross

[Chuck1073]

I've been working around this quite a bit and I believe, at least in my case, the issue is cross talk from the USB to the audio lines both inside and outside of the PC.

Latest tweaks: I moved the Mbox2 back to the studio from the machine room. Using a Monster cable USB. Keeping as much distance as possible between the USB cable and any audio. Gain structure is very important to keep the signal to noise ratio high enough to push the "whine" further into the background. I've also turned off the USB2.0 in the PC bios. The whine now from the Mbox it'self is extremely low. Acceptable for my apps. Where I do here the noise most is from the integrated sound card on my mobo...this happens whether the output of the sound card is potted up on the mixer or not. The only way to get rid of it is to physically unplug the soundcard outputs from the mixer.

Bottom line....making progress.

[krichards]

thanks for the info. I am going to try moving things around and using a longer USB as suggested earlier, and see if that helps.

[Glatt79]

I have the same noise and whenever I bounce to disk , this noise shows up in my recordings. Tried moving the mbox2 away from my recording setup but this noise still persists. We need an actual solution. Im running out of time with this , think I might just switch over to a m-audio device and pro tools m powered. I better be able to return this thing.

[astern]

Hello,

I too was having the high-pitched whine - only out of my monitors, not the headphone output on the mbox 2. after reading through this thread I decided to pick up a pair of TRS-XLR cables for my monitors, even though the guys at the music store said this would have no effect as the mbox didn't have balanced outputs.

This totally FIXED the problem. Completely. No more whine. If anyone experiencing this hasn't picked up a pair of balanced cables it's completely worth it.

Hope this helps,

Adam

[spkguitar]

the guys at the music store said this would have no effect as the mbox didn't have balanced outputs.

I would stop going to that music store; they don't know what they're talking about.