Blue Snowball High Pitched Humming

[mrsomedude]

My blue snowball which just came in the mail this morning is making a high pitched noise. I have tried connecting it to all my usb ports but it still does it. Any help would be appreciated.

[kozikowski]

Describe the computer.
Koz

[Trebor]

My blue snowball which just came in the mail this morning is making a high pitched noise. I have tried connecting it to all my usb ports but it still does it. Any help would be appreciated.

The noise is the 1KHz + harmonics whine which is generated [and radiated] by the computer ...

frequency analysis showing peaks at 1kHz, 2kHz, 3kHz , etc.gif (36.05 KiB) Viewed 4345 times

it can be picked up by induction , (through the air , a bit like radio waves ), in the mic and mic cable.

A workaround is to use the code below in Audacity's "Nyquist Prompt" to notch-out the whine ...

Code: Select all

    (setq mysound s)
    (setq q 10)         ; set the base Q for the filter
    (setq iter 15)     ; set the number of iterations
    (setq freq 1000)  ; set base frequency

    ; start the DO loop
    (dotimes (i iter mysound)   
    (setf mysound (notch2 mysound (* freq (1+ i)) (* q (1+ i))))
    )                     ;end of loop

[mrsomedude]

Is their anyway to get rid of it for good?

[kozikowski]

Is their anyway to get rid of it for good?

And you never described the computer. It's a Windows laptop, right? While it is possible the trash is flying around the air through radiation, I've never had that happen. The usual point of injection is a ratty USB line.

The computer has to make five volt battery on the USB connection in order to run all those "Conveniently Powered From USB!!" devices like keyboards, mice, some sound mixers, etc. They don't care at all if the voltage is a little low or noisy, but your microphone does. It's expensive to make clean five volts and it's expensive and heavy to clean it up later, so both your devices are pointing fingers at each other.

If you're on batteries, try running from the wall outlet. Try it backwards. I bet if you try a different computer, the problem either goes away or is different.

The usual way to force this to work is put a wall-powered USB hub between the microphone and the computer. Clean battery to run the microphone then comes from the hub, not the noisy computer. It has to be wall-powered and you can only have the microphone on it.

That's the only convenient way I know of.

Koz

[Trebor]

If due to EMI radiating from the computer the noise will become louder if the mic is moved closer to the computer.
If due to a dirty power supply [what Koz says] then moving the mic about shouldn't make any difference to the volume of the whine.

[kozikowski]

Good point. If it's a distance issue, you are going to run into a USB Microphone Problem. You can't ever get further away from the computer than one USB, generally 6 feet (2M). Back to the HUB solution, that will give you 12 feet.

Commercial, Broadcast, or Entertainment non-USB microphones can go for a hundred feet or more. That's one of their advantages.

Koz

[mrsomedude]

I'm running on a desktop but if its anything to do with the power supply then I will be replacing that in a few days for my new gpu. My mic is about 4 foot away from the computer.

My current specs are as followed:
Intel Core i7 860 2.8ghz
P55-US3L Motherboard
8gb RAM
1gb Edition GTS 250
500gb Hard Drive
600w Power Supply

[kozikowski]

Did you try moving the microphone close and further away from the computer? That will rule out EMI and RFI problems if it doesn't change. If I had to guess at it, I would point to the motherboard USB services, not the power supply. But anything's possible until we nail it.

And try to keep up with the questions and comments. This is the second time we told you to do this.

Koz

[mrsomedude]

Even when I moved it the full length the lead will go it still makes the noise. Same with it being close to the pc.