Okey-dokey. I just spent a demoralizing hour or so trying to figure out why my good microphone, to line matching transformer to Griffin iMic no longer works. I recorded a purty xmas tune for the Chiffy Chatters years ago and it was super clean.
Online, I found all these complaints but nobody really knew.
I think it’s the Airport device. That’s the only thing that’s changed in my setup, other that moving up the versions of osX.
So, seriously, how can I shield my iMic from the Airport box? I found that just by moving it a foot and a half away, the awful static went down a lot.
Try to look for the positive in every experience. IIRC they were able to use the ability to pick up the airport to their advantage in one of the Die Hard movies.
What’s the model of microphone?
Does it have a built-in chord, or are you plugging in an XLR cord to it?
I would guess that the interference was due to a badly shielded cord,
so if you can try upgrading to a more well-shielded coax, you might
solve the problem.
You might try grounding the mic to the airport. You’d have to run a
wire between them and connect one end to a screw or exposed metal
on the mic, and do the same with the airport on the other end.
Your Faraday cage idea has merit, but you probably would want to
ground the metal shield to the mic. It would take experimenting. It
should be pretty simple, though. Just wrap foil around a paper towel
tube and slide it over the mic to see what happens.
There should be pretty good music stores in SanFran. Find one where
people know about mics, and ask there. I’ll bet they’ve dealt with this
sort of interference before.
It’s a Shure SM-58, though I have others. It’s pro quality cable, that I use in gigs. I literally pulled the stuff out of my gig bag. The xlr goes through a line-matching transformer and is reduced down to the mini-pin that fits in a Griffin iMic. I have two different transformers, The old setup, which I used on the xmas chiffy tunes, had the transformer with a 1/4’ on one end, that down to a female 1/4 to 1/8 stereo and into the hockey puck (iMic). But somebody gave me a HOSA transformer straight to the little pin, just for the purpose i am using. I tried both with similar results. I tried a cheaper radio shack mic that went straight to a 1/4, and it was a bit worse.
I tried changing the USB port, just in case, no difference, I made sure and checked that the MIDI audio setup was the same as the Audacity, and so forth.
When I pulled the iMic about a foot and a half farther from the Airport, which happens to sit at the back of the desk I work at, much of the static disappeared. There was actually a pulsating sound on the playback and it was expressed in the graphic display of the program.
But I will try the grounding thing…to see. For all I know, it’s a bad surge protector.
But this once worked just fine, the only variable is the Airport device and perhaps an Audacity upgrade… I went on the iMic site (Griffin) , looking for info or upgrades and they only reference their new version of the product. I could spend 39.95 and have the same problem.
Once your signal has gone digital you are not going to pick up noise, so I wouldn’t worry about that end of it. It is while you are still in the analog world that you will get this. In digital, you either have a signal or you don’t. In the anaolg world, everything is valid, whether you want it or not.
Make sure your audio cables are not touching or anywhere near power cables, which are surrounded by an electromagnetic field and are prone to reacting to any form of electicity near them. The whole purpose of the extra wire in XLR is to double the strength of the signal. When you mix down to a two-wire cable configuration for your mini-plug you are exposing your analog audio signal to every stray voltage in the room. Minimize this as much as possible by using shielded cables and staying away from power cables.
Considering the plethora of power cables in the vicinity, this might be it. I dunno, it’s typical. A computer, a modem, an airport, a printer, a scanner and monitor. All within three feet of each other…but I definitely will move the cable as far as possible from the various power cords when I get home.
