2008/8/14 nescivi <nescivi_at_gmail.com>
> Way late reaction...
> but we did experience this problem in the C-Base in Berlin during the
> LAC2007.
> We didn't find a solution for it, other than playing one of the pieces from
> two computers with manual synching.
> Frank Barknecht's performance suffered completely from this and we didn't
> project unfortunately... but you could look at his screen instead...
>
Yet later, I wonder now why I didn't reply before but it seems nobody so far
pointed out the option of lifting the laptop's adapter's ground This is -in
my experience with laptop performance- nearly always essential. The one
exception seems to be some soundcards that can be powered using their own
adapter but even then many situations benefit.
Wherever possible keep lighting and sound on separate electrical groups,
mainly because of light dimmers. This is what all larger clubs do. Of
course for livecoding you may not typically end up in large professional
clubs but you can "fake" it in more improvised situations running a long
power-cable to the local kitchen. Kitchens (or bathrooms with a bath) tend
to be held to higher grounding standards by law, I had good experiences
doing that in some squats that didn't have a high electricity that was
"clean" enough to run the notoriously sensitive MMT8 off. Yes, that will
raise eyebrows, just do it, if at all possible find the socket meant for
laundry machines and roll off the whole cable if you intend to power a PA
off that.
Also; DI boxes. I sugest always using DI's wherever available with the
exception of the situation where your own mixer or soundcard can supply real
ballanced XLR/ or TRS jacks to the PA.
Some types of power plug can be inserted in two ways, even grounded ones
(this is typical in the EU with the notable exception of Belgium). If you
have hum it can help to take such plugs out, twisting them 180° and
re-inserting which can bring different appliances in phase. Obviously there
is no need for that in situations where you can't do that (grounded US / UK
plugs).
If none of that helps you can start randomly switching ballanced and
unballanced audio cables around for especially supicious connections...
which sometimes helps for hum but won't cure "crackles" caused by mishevaing
latop adapters leaking to the grid and mucking up the sound of things like
analogue effects (in my experience BBD's hate them).
That's most of my hum-removal bag of tricks, perhaps it'll help people avoid
some of the disagreements with sound-men and torn out hairs I had to have to
build it up. If you only remember one thing of this list make it the lifitng
of all laptop adapter grounds in sight.
Yours,
Kas.
Received on Thu Aug 14 2008 - 15:53:33 BST