mostlyharmless Posted September 2, 2006 Share Posted September 2, 2006 Does anyone know whether this problem would affect an external soundcard? As another option would be to use something like http://www.dv247.com/invt/32730/ rather than the shocking onboard one on my laptop... And might have the other advantage of having an acceptable input (well, for £20) rather than the line in I have at the moment? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew C Posted September 2, 2006 Share Posted September 2, 2006 It can. I too have an Acer laptop, and I tried a couple of Tascam external I/Os and still had problems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mostlyharmless Posted September 2, 2006 Share Posted September 2, 2006 It can. I too have an Acer laptop, and I tried a couple of Tascam external I/Os and still had problems.Ah, thats not good news then. I think I'm going to have to find someone who has a USB interface and give it a go to see what happens. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bruce Posted September 2, 2006 Share Posted September 2, 2006 Does anyone know whether this problem would affect an external soundcard? The answer, as discussed in this thread is "maybe". Some have reported that an external soundcard fixed or reduced the problem. Personally, using a Steinberg MI2, I found it made absolutely no difference. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bobbsy Posted September 2, 2006 Share Posted September 2, 2006 In my experience, changing to a USB external sound card has a 50% success rate...but that's on a sample of only 2 laptops with the problem! My present cheap IBM doesn't give me any issues! Bob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jamesperrett Posted September 4, 2006 Share Posted September 4, 2006 It can. I too have an Acer laptop, and I tried a couple of Tascam external I/Os and still had problems.Ah, thats not good news then. I think I'm going to have to find someone who has a USB interface and give it a go to see what happens. One more point of reference - an M-Audio Mobile Pre USB interface still gave me noise problems with my Acer laptop. It sounded much better than the internal sound system though. If you don't want to use transformers then think about using an optical interface with appropriate external A/D or D/A convertors. Cheers James. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Renny Posted September 4, 2006 Share Posted September 4, 2006 We had a pretty serious problem with this recently on a laptop a visiting company brought in. I have to say as a Mac user I was astonished at the amount of noise generated by it. Anyhoo 2 DI boxes with earth lift later and it was fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbuckley Posted September 4, 2006 Share Posted September 4, 2006 Yeah, there are two seperate but related problems at work here. One is that the headphone output on a lappie (for that is what they are, they are not a line out) is inherently noisy, some lappies far more so than others, the second is ground loops. Adding a DI box (with ground lift) to remove the ground problem will remove the ground loop hum and buzz, but if the laptop is a noisy thing then you'll still get all the laptop internal noise loud and clear. Using an external USB device will remove at a stroke the internal racket from the lappie, but (and especially assuming a USB box with unbalanced outs, the most common type) any ground loop problems will remain, so its a cleaner signal, but maybe with hum. You may need to use both a USB box and a DI with ground lift to address both problems, or use a USB with balanced outs (and have your grounds sorted), which are rare. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simonimus Posted September 5, 2006 Share Posted September 5, 2006 I've had the same problem with my Dell inspiron 8500 I tried all manor of cabling options and through a Di etc etc - the onboard sound was still rubbish! We've got one of those edirol external boxes at work - the UA5 I think. sadly I had the same interference coming through but at a fairly reduced level. I did manage to get rid of the problem though - I changed the USB cable from a 1mtr to a 5mtr cable and moved the edirol box far away from the laptop. so I had my laptop sitting on top of the outboard rack and the soundcard box sitting on the far left of the desk. the result was no noise at all - Wonderful!! Now I know this doesn't explain away the problem but it works around it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mostlyharmless Posted September 5, 2006 Share Posted September 5, 2006 Well, I've just got that transformer from maplins, and it works! It seems to reduce the quality very slightly, however for listening to mp3s through the onboard sound card this is fine. The next purchase is a decent (well, better than the onboard) interface. I might give your idea of a long usb cable a go with that then, else its using this transformer, or just batterys. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peternewman Posted October 24, 2006 Share Posted October 24, 2006 Time to bump this thread again. Will the ground loop isolators mentioned above be a benefit on the audio input too, or only on the output? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bean Posted October 25, 2006 Share Posted October 25, 2006 I recently had the same problem, There were several parts though: Dimmer hum (I change power points) Earthloop (put all sound into the same power) Laptop psu hum, (The sound output was actually fine, It was the ground on the LightJockey's DMX output that sent the hum through the sound (Chassis grounded XLR from DMX and Sound touching)) -- I again had this problem come up with an acer laptop, but it wasn't mine so I didn't take the time to fix it. (10 mins before the gig) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew C Posted January 19, 2008 Share Posted January 19, 2008 A bit of thread necromancy! Last night I connected my known to be noisy laptop to a TT24 digital desk via USB to do some routing and stuff. As the theatre was quiet I noticed that the digital noise was induced in the desk WITHOUT an audio connection. As before, only when running on mains, battery operation was OK. Something to bear in mind if you are thinking about going digital. I'll do some experimentation at some point and see what happens if I lift the USB power connection. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TDS Posted January 19, 2008 Share Posted January 19, 2008 I use this very successfully with my Dell Laptop. http://www.thomann.de/gb/search_dir.html?s...cc&sw=HD400 You simply run a balanced TSR/TSR cable from the "box" to a stereo line level input on your mixer. I am pleased to say that there is absolutly no power supply noise and the sound quality is excellent. I can now confidently use the laptop as a mass music library. <_< Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
david.elsbury Posted January 19, 2008 Share Posted January 19, 2008 As the theatre was quiet I noticed that the digital noise was induced in the desk WITHOUT an audio connection. As before, only when running on mains, battery operation was OK.I had the same thing last week with a firewire soundcard, with all the audio routing pulled down at the desk end. GRR! <_< EDIT: Which unfortunately means I need to buy a d3sktop c0mput3r for my audio work, rather than being able to use my lapt0p... grr... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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