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Post by tasteliketape on Oct 17, 2016 7:35:13 GMT -6
Ran across this , it's supposed to suppress USB noise which I didn't know was a problem, so I'm asking your opinions. Or is this another debatable thing like high end cables? ifi-audio.com/portfolio-view/accessory-isilencer/They also have a device called idefender |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 17, 2016 7:48:49 GMT -6
oh oh - another problem i didn't know i had  |
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Post by tasteliketape on Oct 17, 2016 7:51:20 GMT -6
oh oh - another problem i didn't know i had That's why I'm asking is this snake oil? |
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Post by cowboycoalminer on Oct 18, 2016 19:43:30 GMT -6
It never ends. The quest for perfect audio to the masses whom most can't play a simple G chord.
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Post by Mister Chase on Oct 5, 2020 14:01:09 GMT -6
Actually, this is a problem I have been fighting for years. It just reared its ugly head again with my new Wes Audio Prometheus which is usb controlled and a session today with a keyboard player using usb for midi.
Inescapable annoying digital noise. I'll have to figure out how to get rid of it if I can.
I have the ifi device and it helped but didn't cure it.
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Post by mulmany on Oct 5, 2020 14:50:51 GMT -6
Actually, this is a problem I have been fighting for years. It just reared its ugly head again with my new Wes Audio Prometheus which is usb controlled and a session today with a keyboard player using usb for midi. Inescapable annoying digital noise. I'll have to figure out how to get rid of it if I can. I have the ifi device and it helped but didn't cure it. Is audio being sent over the usb? Control protocol should not effect noise, no audio is transferred. |
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Post by Mister Chase on Oct 5, 2020 15:01:33 GMT -6
Actually, this is a problem I have been fighting for years. It just reared its ugly head again with my new Wes Audio Prometheus which is usb controlled and a session today with a keyboard player using usb for midi. Inescapable annoying digital noise. I'll have to figure out how to get rid of it if I can. I have the ifi device and it helped but didn't cure it. Is audio being sent over the usb? Control protocol should not effect noise, no audio is transferred. Exactly. But it does. Somehow noise is getting in through somewhere. Motherboard to the thunderbolt of the interface? Bleeding in through the 500 series rack? I have no idea. |
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Post by svart on Oct 5, 2020 15:11:08 GMT -6
Generally it's ground loops/currents through the USB cable.
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Post by mcirish on Oct 5, 2020 15:41:29 GMT -6
The times I've run in to similar issues, it was easily resolved with an AC ground lift adapter. The last time was a ground loop between an interface and the laptop I used for the remote recording session. A ground lift on the laptops supply solved it.
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Post by Mister Chase on Oct 5, 2020 15:52:11 GMT -6
Generally it's ground loops/currents through the USB cable. I've been trying everything plugged into the same wall box, ebtech hum X adapters etc. Seems I'm still having trouble figuring it out. Same with some external preamps humming. Yikes. |
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Post by drbill on Oct 5, 2020 15:56:10 GMT -6
Generally it's ground loops/currents through the USB cable. ^^^. This. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 5, 2020 18:47:35 GMT -6
You need an intact cable with a ferrite bead. If the usb receiver chip on the interface is powered by the computer’s motherboard, you’re in widely varying sound quality across computers.
More usb gear needs to use electromagnetic and electrostatic isolation. Someone should develop transformer coupled jacks like AES/EBU.
The problem of USB sounding a lot worse than AES/EBU has been around forever. PCI-E, Thunderbolt, and Ethernet hookups with a BNC wordclock cable to slave the interface to the converter if your using a separate converter kill it for sound quality outside of a couple hifi converters and pro interfaces.
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Post by BenjaminAshlin on Oct 6, 2020 1:31:57 GMT -6
Generally it's ground loops/currents through the USB cable. ^^^. This. Agreed. It can be caused by ground loops on the motherboard and incorrectly grounded PSU and computer cases. Most of these issues have been resolved at the manufactures end. Last issue i had was ~2004. |
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Post by svart on Oct 6, 2020 8:25:09 GMT -6
Agreed. It can be caused by ground loops on the motherboard and incorrectly grounded PSU and computer cases. Most of these issues have been resolved at the manufactures end. Last issue i had was ~2004. I've told the story before, but I'll mention it again here. I had a computer that I connected a number of things to, but it seemed to suddenly make a lot of digital "whine" when I moved and installed it at my new location years ago. I first thought it was because it was due to plugging into multiple different power outlets, so I rewired the room to be a single circuit but it didn't help much. I also soldered the ground leads but that didn't help much either. Finally, I was plugging something in (I can't remember what at this point) and the noise became much, much worse. Simply touching the cable to the computer chassis made it worse. I took out the sound cards and actually made mu-metal shields for them thinking that it was EMI from the internals causing the noise, but overall it didn't help. I did some reading and found something about chassis grounds causing issues with noise in computers so I disassembled the machine and drilled out all the rivets holding the chassis together. During this process I realized that most of the rivet joints still had paint on them and most of the panels were not making good grounds to each other. I sanded all the rivet joints down to bare metal and used new pop rivets to put it all back together making sure that each joint was as tight as possible. The machine didn't have any more noise and was quieter than it had ever been before. In this case (pun intended) the chassis had internal ground loops but only when I connected something else did the noise become apparent. Different devices had different degrees of the symptomatic noise. |
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Post by Ward on Oct 6, 2020 10:20:19 GMT -6
It never ends. The quest for perfect audio to the masses whom most can't play a simple G chord. But they can add the pinky to make it the ultra cool rock'n'roll hipster G chord, and then bring the 1st and 2nd finger to the A and D strings to make it the ultimate cool 'C' (add 9 notwithstanding as they don't know what it is) or come down to the D and G strings for an 'F' and take off the 2ns finger for a 'D'! Now they know all the chords for every single hipster / new country / worship song ever written . . . just change the capo. hey, you know me and rabbit holes when you go off topic!! |
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Post by johneppstein on Oct 6, 2020 11:25:50 GMT -6
Actually, this is a problem I have been fighting for years. It just reared its ugly head again with my new Wes Audio Prometheus which is usb controlled and a session today with a keyboard player using usb for midi. Inescapable annoying digital noise. I'll have to figure out how to get rid of it if I can. I have the ifi device and it helped but didn't cure it. Is audio being sent over the usb? Control protocol should not effect noise, no audio is transferred. USB noise is sometimes transmitted as RFI. |
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Post by svart on Oct 6, 2020 12:15:29 GMT -6
Is audio being sent over the usb? Control protocol should not effect noise, no audio is transferred. USB noise is sometimes transmitted as RFI. Modern USB is 400mV terminated at 90 ohms. That's roughly 5dBm or about 3mW of power. We can convert that to ~115 dBuV at 90 ohms and compare to the FCC consumer limit for part 15 Unintentional Radiators which is about 50 dBuV conducted and 500 uV/M for field strength. So USB3 would emit roughly the same amount of noise as an LED lightbulb ballast that passes FCC part 15 at 6-9ft away. Differential mode transmission lines such as XLR cables and metallic chassis would easily defeat this noise. A lot of consumer USB devices decouple the grounds with ferrite or other noise blocking devices to pass FCC/CE but unintentionally cause ground loops this way. |
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Post by Mister Chase on Oct 6, 2020 13:16:38 GMT -6
Agreed. It can be caused by ground loops on the motherboard and incorrectly grounded PSU and computer cases. Most of these issues have been resolved at the manufactures end. Last issue i had was ~2004. I've told the story before, but I'll mention it again here. I had a computer that I connected a number of things to, but it seemed to suddenly make a lot of digital "whine" when I moved and installed it at my new location years ago. I first thought it was because it was due to plugging into multiple different power outlets, so I rewired the room to be a single circuit but it didn't help much. I also soldered the ground leads but that didn't help much either. Finally, I was plugging something in (I can't remember what at this point) and the noise became much, much worse. Simply touching the cable to the computer chassis made it worse. I took out the sound cards and actually made mu-metal shields for them thinking that it was EMI from the internals causing the noise, but overall it didn't help. I did some reading and found something about chassis grounds causing issues with noise in computers so I disassembled the machine and drilled out all the rivets holding the chassis together. During this process I realized that most of the rivet joints still had paint on them and most of the panels were not making good grounds to each other. I sanded all the rivet joints down to bare metal and used new pop rivets to put it all back together making sure that each joint was as tight as possible. The machine didn't have any more noise and was quieter than it had ever been before. In this case (pun intended) the chassis had internal ground loops but only when I connected something else did the noise become apparent. Different devices had different degrees of the symptomatic noise. Maybe this is what I need to explore. I assemble all my PC's for the last 20 some years but never knew how to explore chassis grounding. A whine is definitely what I am hearing. Anytime I unplug or plug in a usb device on the PC there is a brief break in the noise down to nothing before it resumes. |
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Post by johneppstein on Oct 6, 2020 14:18:07 GMT -6
USB noise is sometimes transmitted as RFI. Modern USB is 400mV terminated at 90 ohms. That's roughly 5dBm or about 3mW of power. We can convert that to ~115 dBuV at 90 ohms and compare to the FCC consumer limit for part 15 Unintentional Radiators which is about 50 dBuV conducted and 500 uV/M for field strength. So USB3 would emit roughly the same amount of noise as an LED lightbulb ballast that passes FCC part 15 at 6-9ft away. Differential mode transmission lines such as XLR cables and metallic chassis would easily defeat this noise. A lot of consumer USB devices decouple the grounds with ferrite or other noise blocking devices to pass FCC/CE but unintentionally cause ground loops this way. The USB RFI issues I'm aware of have almost all invoilved HiZ guitar connections, usually with cheap interfaces. |
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Post by Ward on Oct 6, 2020 15:35:43 GMT -6
So USB3 would emit roughly the same amount of noise as an LED lightbulb ballast that passes FCC part 15 at 6-9ft away..SNIP sure, but does it strobe like a Light Emitting Diode?
As a fun aside... does this look familiar? <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> <=> etc ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– It is an ASCII facsimile of roughly the pattern emitted by an LED display. After you spend enough time looking at LED screens, you can close your eyes in the dark and see this pattern, like a thousand rectangular hexagons flashing. There are many variations, but that one is pretty common. These basically . . .  |
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Post by Mister Chase on Oct 7, 2020 11:18:54 GMT -6
You need an intact cable with a ferrite bead. If the usb receiver chip on the interface is powered by the computer’s motherboard, you’re in widely varying sound quality across computers. More usb gear needs to use electromagnetic and electrostatic isolation. Someone should develop transformer coupled jacks like AES/EBU. The problem of USB sounding a lot worse than AES/EBU has been around forever. PCI-E, Thunderbolt, and Ethernet hookups with a BNC wordclock cable to slave the interface to the converter if your using a separate converter kill it for sound quality outside of a couple hifi converters and pro interfaces.
So basically, the interface is thunderbolt on a Gigabyte board - which is also USB type C I think. Not sure how its interacting with the other USB devices but it is. I just got a USB cable with a ferrite bead on it to try on the Wes Audio device and it solved the noise issue 100%. Now if I could just get the rest of the ground hums eliminated...
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Post by Guitar on Oct 10, 2020 8:48:53 GMT -6
There's a little box/adapter thing you can buy to galvanically isolate a USB connection. I had to use it with one of my old DAC's, did solve the issue at the time. Haven't run into the issue since then.
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Post by svart on Oct 10, 2020 9:18:06 GMT -6
You need an intact cable with a ferrite bead. If the usb receiver chip on the interface is powered by the computer’s motherboard, you’re in widely varying sound quality across computers. More usb gear needs to use electromagnetic and electrostatic isolation. Someone should develop transformer coupled jacks like AES/EBU. The problem of USB sounding a lot worse than AES/EBU has been around forever. PCI-E, Thunderbolt, and Ethernet hookups with a BNC wordclock cable to slave the interface to the converter if your using a separate converter kill it for sound quality outside of a couple hifi converters and pro interfaces.
So basically, the interface is thunderbolt on a Gigabyte board - which is also USB type C I think. Not sure how its interacting with the other USB devices but it is. I just got a USB cable with a ferrite bead on it to try on the Wes Audio device and it solved the noise issue 100%. Now if I could just get the rest of the ground hums eliminated...
Ferrites also slow the edges of high speed signals and will reduce the transfer speeds of the USB. |
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Post by Mister Chase on Oct 10, 2020 9:30:16 GMT -6
So basically, the interface is thunderbolt on a Gigabyte board - which is also USB type C I think. Not sure how its interacting with the other USB devices but it is. I just got a USB cable with a ferrite bead on it to try on the Wes Audio device and it solved the noise issue 100%. Now if I could just get the rest of the ground hums eliminated...
Ferrites also slow the edges of high speed signals and will reduce the transfer speeds of the USB. I suppose it's a a cost/benefit equation. Luckily with the usb on the Wes only being there for recall and changing values, I don't think I'll notice. An interface or USB keyboard perhaps I would? |
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