I purchased a Samson Meteor with great expectations and when it arrived, I can’t explain my thrill and happiness in words. I opened the pack, and connected it to my laptop, opened Audacity, switched the input to Mono and attempted my first recording. Recording all went fine but the recording has got a high frequency shrill noise through out. I tried pluggin in the USB in a Hub, but till its all the same. I played around with various options but its still the same. I can cancel out the noise but its a hell of a job and I want to know whether this is normal or is some problem. Please find an audio sample attached. I have kept quiet for the first few seconds so that you all can hear the frequency disturbance very clearly.
That’s the “Yeti Curse.” The USB data transmission system getting into the sound. I put it that your computer and the microphone hate each other.
Yes it is rough to get rid of. It has a lot of the characteristics of fingernails on blackboard. Even if your work passes ACX AudioBook specifications, you can still hear it whining in the background.
Steve generated a Nyquist filter to help and this is me looking for it.
Quick response R us. Nine time zone support will do that.
there is no permanent solution to this problem?
Not in the sense you mean, no.
is it the problem with my laptop or some manufacturing defect?
Yes.
USB microphones used to have a solid reputation for good performance at low cost. That was then. We stopped unconditionally recommending them because so many people have troubles.
I “suspect” manufacturers got a new chipset or technique that was “almost” as good as the old system…but half the cost. I have several small USB sound devices. Same model number. The older ones all work perfectly. The newer ones don’t.
Couple that with the insistence that all Windows laptops be as cheap as possible and thus cut corners on the USB system. Poof. Yeti curse. This is from the Blue Yeti microphones which used to be the highest quality of that type of microphone. Now, they have a curse named after them.
There is a permanent solution. Rip the microphone apart and change the electronics. In a slightly different job that’s what flynwill (forum elf) did to get rid of his whine.
I use an analog microphone, small mixer and a Mac with analog inputs. I don’t have this problem.
Just to test whether the whining sound is the USB transmission problem, I plugged in the Meteor to my ipad using an adapter and recorded it. Still I get that Yeti Curse…So I assume, the problem is with the Microphone.
It’s not that easy. You are listening to the USB data system leaking into the USB 5 volts. This is the 5 volts that runs your mouse or keyboard when you plug one of those in. Only the mice and keyboards don’t care.
In order to make the microphones as cheap and inexpensive as possible, they use the USB 5 volts directly to run the sound part of the microphone. Further, filtering and processing is expensive, so they leave it out. Your voice signal is typically a thousand times smaller than all of this garbage, so it’s not a stretch that it leaks.
What flynwill did was rip into the device (not a microphone in his case) and put his own clean, well-behaved 5 volts in there that he got from a laboratory power supply.
Poof, problem gone.
You know what I did. ACX/AudioBook went a different route. They recommend a good quality analog microphone into a USB interface. The USB interface doesn’t whine because they have extra-cost processing to stop it. The extra processing is required to run certain very good quality microphones, so everybody wins.
But it’s not $70.
If you got the Nyquist custom filter and Noise Reduction to work, you should probably stick with that. If your plans were for live gaming or other on-line, live podcasting or conferencing, that’s going to be a problem.
Did you drop a note to Samson? What did they say? They blamed your computer, right? It’s pretty terrifying when a major part of your product line stops working reliably.
Gauging from the difference between the whine and the normal thermal noise of the microphone in your test recording your microphone is a lot worse than many cases we have seen here. I would say you should definitely talk to Samson (or the vendor you purchased the microphone from ) and ask for a replacement. Yours may well have defective, missing or improperly installed components such that the USB data noise is making its way into the analog audio pathways far more than it should.
If you do that please come back and let us know what happens.
USB data noise is making its way into the analog audio pathways
And just to inject a little ray of sunshine, it’s also possible your computer USB noise is a lot worse than normal. The USB connection is intended for external devices and most of them don’t care.
Really, would you know if your USB mouse motion was 1/8" off?
I plugged in the Meteor to my ipad using an adapter
That’s a valid test assuming you used a wall-powered USB hub with nothing else plugged in.
Newer computers cut corners and new peripherals cut corners. The combination is not pretty.
I know this question is a bit old, but it turns up in google well so maybe it will help some others.
I noticed that the USB cable included with the Samson is very thin, long, and feels cheap. I tested with several other USB cables and found one which eliminated the irritating high frequency sound. This USB cable has a “Ferrite bead”, and is much shorter than the cable in the package. I included a photo.
“A ferrite bead or ferrite choke is a passive electric component that suppresses high frequency noise in electronic circuits. It is a specific type of electronic choke. Ferrite beads employ high frequency current dissipation in a ferrite ceramic to build high frequency noise suppression devices. Ferrite beads may also be called blocks, cores, rings, EMI filters, or chokes.”
There is some small noise left, but not much. I just bought Samson Sound Deck for $ 4 which reduces the remaining noise almost completely.
In my setup I also noticed that the power supply of my macbook makes a lot of high frequency noise in my headphones. After the power supply included with my macbook broke I bought a not original one. It was only $ 25, while the original one was $ 80. I bought this thing a year ago, never noticed any problems till I started to record audio.
