I'm an occasional kinda DJ and use a laptop, a couple of powered loudspeakers and a subwoofer. I do know a bit about ground loop and found a way to circumvent it. By running the laptop on battery, ground loop is minimized. Plugged to wall it's annoying to horrendous. Is some wiring/electricity in buildings "dirtier" than others? Do fluorescents or other electrical stuff contribute to ground loop noise? I was at a hall a couple days ago and the room only had two outlets and no apparent fluorescent lights. I'm not sure if the two outlets were on separate circuits. The sound was incredibly clean and loud with the laptop plugged into the wall and that's never happened before. I had forgotten my 3.5mm jack to female rca to connect to the computer and bought a new one, could that play a part? Are there too many variables to figure out a cause?
Looking for a better understanding of ground loop noise
- Thread starter DC_Madman
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Sounds like you already know about noise on power lines. Flourescents are bad, but a lot of problems are wth electrical devices you don't even see in the room you're in. A lot depends on how the building is wired. Often you can pick-up noise from flourescents on the same power line in another room, any motorized devices that aren't necessarily in the same room. Radio frequency devices your patrons may have with them. There isn't really any way to
know what you will run into in advance, as somebody can bring something into the room after you've already set-up and think you're good. You can buy filters for your own equipment incoming power, but that won't eliminate all the
possible noise sources. Beside your wall socket power, you can have RF interferrence from other sources.
Maybe you'll hear from someone here who does your type of work, and may be able to offer helpful ideas.
know what you will run into in advance, as somebody can bring something into the room after you've already set-up and think you're good. You can buy filters for your own equipment incoming power, but that won't eliminate all the
possible noise sources. Beside your wall socket power, you can have RF interferrence from other sources.
Maybe you'll hear from someone here who does your type of work, and may be able to offer helpful ideas.
Go buy a 'Ground Loop Isolator'.
This is common for devices that either have no ground, or a bad ground. Being on a separate power sources can make this problem worse.
Your audio lines carry a small electrical signal for audio transmission... now if you were to accidentally cause a current flow through your cables, your audio signal is now coupled with that other current flow.
Using a ground-loop isolator will physically disconnect the input/output sides of the isolator with audio transformers so that only a 'signal' can pass through, and not any current between the input/output side. This will not help you with noise induced by other means... like bad shielding or running power wires parallel to the signal wires, but will allow you to once again, plug your laptop into the wall again.
I can't believe out of all the information I've looked at online nobody mentioned a ground loop isolator or I didn't stumble across one. Or maybe they mentioned it but I figured it would be expensive and require an electrician. I'll be gobsmacked if a $10 isolator solves the problem and can't wait to try.
I had the exact same problem as you patching a laptop into the sound system of a local club, and this device fixed just that. If this does not fix your problem, make sure the audio cables you brought in/are using are not crappy dollar store cables. Bad shielding will pick up radiated noise from power cables and lighting which the ground-loop isolator will not resolve for you.
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