Firewire cable length

[Legion6789]

I'm getting a lot of noise through my monitors from my computer. I'm thinking of moving my box to the other side of the room, about 10 feet away. If I run a 12 foot firewire cable to my ProFire 610 will that cause any kind of problems? I know Pro Tools is real time software, wondering if the cable will cause some kind of latency issue. The max stated length for Firewire cables is supposed to be 4.5 meters or about 14.7 feet. Not sure if Pro Tools is more susceptible to cable length issues though.

[Emcha_audio]

14.8 feet is the limit to a firewire cable, make sure you have a high quality shielded one. I'm thinking that someone where, in yoru chain one of the shield is damaged which may be your problem. So even moving it (computer) away wont solve your issues.

[radkins]

Originally Posted by Legion6789

I'm getting a lot of noise through my monitors from my computer. I'm thinking of moving my box to the other side of the room, about 10 feet away. If I run a 12 foot firewire cable to my ProFire 610 will that cause any kind of problems? I know Pro Tools is real time software, wondering if the cable will cause some kind of latency issue. The max stated length for Firewire cables is supposed to be 4.5 meters or about 14.7 feet. Not sure if Pro Tools is more susceptible to Audio Engineering School length issues though.

I doubt your problem is the computers proximity. What kind of tower is it?

[albee1952]

Yeah, never any noise or latency issues from firewire cables here either. I bought some heavy duty cables from cablestogo.com and they seem to work great. As for physical noise from the computer(like fans and drives), isolation is the way to go, and it can be done cheaply. I built a box out of oak plywood, that was oversized. I lined it with Auralex Sheetblock, slid the tower in and then put 2" foam on the sides and top. The foam extended out the back about a foot past the end of the computer, creating a foam tunnel. Even with the front uncovered, I could record vocals and acoustic just 5-6' away

[SpinningDisk]

How do you keep that cool (computer) albee?

[Legion6789]

Well the noise is definitely being caused by activity in the computer, either hard drive activity, GPU or CPU. It's definitely an EMI/RFI issue. If the interference is getting into the signal from the Firewire bus inside the case, then you are right, moving it won't help. But if it's occurring outside the box then it should help. The other thing is, I've noticed that it comes through my guitar pickups as well, but if I stand about 8 feet away it stops coming through.

Oh and the case is aluminum, a SilverStone Temjin TJ10 if that matters.

[The Dougfather]

Are you using balanced cables from the profire to your monitors (I assume the outputs are balanced). I used to pick up loads of crap, HD noise, mouse noise etc when using unbalanced cables and my 002R?

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by SpinningDisk

How do you keep that cool (computer) albee?

Never had a heat issue with it. Front and rear were open to the air. The rear simply had close to a foot of foam around the outside, which helped to suck up the fan noise. That was when I had a 1 room setup. My present rack chassis is noisier, but with a vocal booth, its not an issue(I was assuming the OP had a noise issue from the computer itself)

[Legion6789]

Yep, I'm using balanced cables. I tried unbalanced first, was almost unusable.

[jbrown7282]

May be a Electrical issue..... That dang 60hz hum sh#@
Is your Studio power on separate breakers??