Sonnox restoration plugs - are they included in Nuendo?

Thinking about it…
When planning the studio construction the first thing we did was making mains ground wire conns all in a star shaped manner. Quite usually those are often laid out in serial from one socket to the next. This introduces a difference in electrical potential causing hum. Some devices with asymmetrical layout don’t like this a bit.
Also, have mains ground of the house checked. If it is not zero Ohms towards the mains entry box to the house… problem…
We also build several mains circuits with fuses and residual current operated circuit breakers. Meaning, the control room with console, computer, rack devices, pre-amps, a.s.f., are on independent mains circuits and so is the recording room. The rest, like lights, gadgets outside the studio environment, aircon., vents, office stuff are on separate lines, too. In total we have 8 circuits with special star shaped grounding of all audio relevant rooms. On the backside of the racks we have a separate earthing cable, 16 Sqmm , connected to a Rackpotenzialausgleichschiene ??, where all cases and housings are connected to, as well.
Problems with noise and hum on stage or elsewhere is occasionally fixed with simply turning the mains plug. I am sooo grateful for those new light dimmers and LED lamps… :wink: Was a pain da bum in earlier years…
Ground Lines.jpg

Afaik guitar pick op noise is usually electromagnetic radiation. So it is coming through space (not from space of course :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:) not wires.
Any power transformer sends out this radiation. Crt monitors even more.

Our control room uses a star ground system. We don’t have any ground loop problems in the studio, but there is always a low level buzz from guitar pickups - even when the studio is switched off - unfortunately with high gain preamp/amp setups and compression this buzz gets to be a problem.

If it was EM radiation, I would expect it to be particular to certain locations in the building and directional, but it isn’t, it’s everywhere, including outside the building. For years I’ve lived with it by careful gating/filtering, but I really want to see if it can be eradicated.

The ground for the mains supply in UK (AIUI) takes place at the base of the supply pole - a fat copper wire buried at least 1 metre in the earth. I will be checking if there is any electrical resistance between the mains ground in the building

Thanks for the suggestions

Hi
is an electrical railway line or large electrical lines nearby? We have 2 railway lines 30 meters away.
This creates massive interference in guitars / basses and can only be reduced with an electromagnetic field compensation system.
I think we are the only recording studio in the world that has one. The technique is used in electron microscopy and is very expensive. The principle is the phase cancellation in all axes (x, y and z axis). The components are: central unit, 3 sensors and cable rings in the walls, floors and ceilings of the room for the recordings. The cable rings are switched as a coil and the central device generates an opposing field in real time.
A space without a magnetic field is created within the cable rings.

Please excuse the English … I only speak German
Maybe it helps
Greetings Michael

That’s interesting, thanks for posting. Our mains electricity comes from an overhead pole located about 15m from the studio building, I believe it’s at 7200v and there’s a distribution transformer on the pole supplying our house and studio (2 separate buildings).

There is a railway line about 100m away but it’s not an electrified line.

I do suspect the interference on pickups may be related to the proximity of the transformer, but it’s HF buzz, not a 50hz hum, and moving the guitar around doesn’t affect the interference.

I now have the Furman power conditioner, we’ll see if that helps.

Hi,
the transformer or the cable is the problem because they both generate a magnetic field. (the cable is probably the big problem) The frequency of the railroad is 16.5Hz in Germany. What we hear here as a disturbance are the overtones and their distortions (approx 600hz-5000khz … it is a whir). These disturbances are omnidirectional and no material can stop them, at most bend a little. (except µ-Metal in many thick layers … very expensive) The only solution is distance (approx. 80-100meters) or a magnetic field canceling system. Your cable is basically like our railway line. You can check this with a guitaramp with battery … and then walk away from the generator/cable and hear what happens.
Good luck
Greetings Michael

ffg David let me guess before you post:

The Furman did not fix the problem.

:slight_smile:

Yep, you’re right on.

Drat.

Getting the distinct feeling there isn’t a solution to this one.

It’s noticeable that the buzz is worse when I hold the guitar, like my body is picking up the interference and passing it on to the guitar. When I touch any of the guitar metalwork, the buzz almost disappears. Not noticeably worse with single coils vs humbuckers.

I am not an electronics/ impedance/ shielding/ balanced vs HiZ expert, and can’t analyze the technical reasons this is happening to you (it’s been explained to me and my eyes are still glazed over–and I’m sure there are people trained in old-school engineering here who could clarify), but I can tell you it happens to lots of people, myself included, from time to time. The guitar plays a large part in it. My Danelectro bari (great sound, except for that hellacious hum when you’re not facing in exactly the right direction) is one of the worst; Teles can be nasty, Strats as well, though you can use the “out of phase” position, if aesthetically compatible with your musical objective, to really cut the buzz. My Kent electric mandola, which is one of the coolest pieces of crap ever made, with its extraordinarily tone-full single coil, also can create a buzz that could saw through an oak log.

But what I’ve had good luck with, when all else fails, is to fix a wire to the, as you say, “metalwork” on the guitar, an alligator clip (or band aid) to the other end and put it in contact with skin… hip, arm, wherever. As you noted, body/ground can really zap the buzz. Give it a try!

Chewy

Thanks Chewy, I agree and I think all of us struggle with some variation of this issue.

The reason for this thread from my point of view is that I seem to have a low level buzz which isn’t entirely typical of the sort of interference we all get from pickups.

It IS quite low level, for clean guitar sounds I can easily gate it out. It becomes a problem with very overdriven and compressed tones.

It affects ALL guitars more or less equally

It can’t be tuned out by moving around the room or rotating the player.

It’s not a ground/earth loop issue, it affects guitar amps which aren’t even connected to the studio mains

It’s definitely related to grounding the player to the guitar, like you I’ve had some success grounding the guitar to the player with a wrist band.

I guess I was just hoping there might be an actual fix for the problem…

Yes I was right on.
Again, you touch the strings and it gets quieter, it is ground related.
Are you on a clean guitar patch, or heavy distortion when you hear the hum?
If it is distortion, a certain amount will be normal, and you can use a gate to reduce it.

However if the hum occurs in a clean patch, there are several steps you can take to minimize the hum.

Also, from my last post, did you try the 360° rotation I mentioned?
It should get quieter at one point, and quieter again at 180° from that point. This has to do with magnetic induction.
I also asked if you could measure between 2 grounds if you are using more than one AC plug, and do you get 0.000 volts?

If your answer is yes, I can give you a few steps to minimize the hum.

Thanks for this. Please see my reply above yesterday to Chewy.

No, rotating the player doesn’t help. Yes, grounding the player to guitar helps. Yes, the buzz is always there (same for any guitar) but obviously worse for overdriven/compressed tones. It’s easily gated out for clean tones, more troublesome for the heavier tones.

It’s not a ground loop as such, the buzz is there with a simple setup of guitar and amp.

Electrical resistance to true ground potential - I guess I could test this by driving a copper stake in the ground and checking resistance to mains ground? As I understand it, in the UK the mains ground originates at the supply pole which is close to the studio building, there is certainly a thick cable running down the pole (apart from the supply cable to the building).

Academically, it might be interesting to see what you’d get with a laptop running off of its battery, and recording through a bus-powered interface such as the UR-22, thereby removing it from house AC completely. I’d lend you one of my URs, but the commute’s impractical! :wink:

You COULD , crummy quality aside, and just for the purposes of knocking down troubleshooting variables, try going direct into your MacBook. For what it’s worth…

Chewy

Hmmm good call Chewy, I have an Audient ID4 which will run on USB power (without phantom powering enabled), I’ll try it

Well, that was worthwhile, in fact I’d say it’s nailed where the noise is coming from.

The culprit is the mains supply step-down transformer, located on a pole about 8m from one end of the studio building.

I devised a portable test rig consisting of my MacBook Pro running off battery, Audient ID14 powered by USB and a Strat, monitoring on headphones.

The noise got worse the nearer I got to the pole. Standing underneath it was strongest. Going to the farthest boundary away from the pole, the noise had almost gone.

Contrary to what I said earlier, it IS possible to reduce the interference by rotating the player, but it’s a very narrow node.

I’m going to get onto the power distribution company and pester them for a fix - I’m hoping they are bound by regulations about radiated EM interference.

Thanks to all who weighed in on this one.

I don’t know exactly how, but now you know the direction some Faraday cage like scheiding might be possible. You could try a small Alu foil or chicken mesh shield between the guitar and the pole to see if it has any effect. The shield might need grounding but I am far from an expert. More a marvel comic book reader in my younger days.
If a small scream works a large one is easy to make for between the pole and the guitar player.
Cheers and good luck!

Thanks vinark it may come to that if the power co can’t/won’t do anything.

I like the idea of a small scream, in fact I tried that already but it only helped me feel a bit better, didn’t fix the problem…

A super-stong G5 antenna which transmits Covid-19 in your area?
(Sorry, couldn’t resist)

Sorry 'bout your troubles.

Fredo

I blame Brexit

No, David, no. It’s the bats. BATS!

Chewy