{"id":5138,"date":"2013-12-06T08:45:12","date_gmt":"2013-12-06T16:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/?p=5138"},"modified":"2013-12-06T08:45:12","modified_gmt":"2013-12-06T16:45:12","slug":"chasing-ghosts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/2013\/12\/06\/chasing-ghosts\/","title":{"rendered":"chasing ghosts"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was picking up radio on the ribbon mic’s pre-amp, at really high amplification gain. Ribbon mics need tremendous gain, because the base signal is so low, which meant this mattered. It wasn’t enough to appear in most – emphasis on most<\/em> – recording situations, but I didn’t want it at all<\/em>, because it indicates a potential circuit problem.<\/p>\n

For the record, you start listening to EMF noise boosted by 96 to 142db (from extremely<\/em> low levels), and you start chasing some serious fuckin’ ghosts. Somebody get me a skiffy channel show, stat.<\/p>\n

Anyway, earlier in the day, I’d gone through all my patch cables, isolating the most RF-tight via comparative testing. It was a pretty big range. But even the best ones were still picking up some of that radio sound, and with some work, I could get it in clearly – tho’ always at extremely low levels.<\/p>\n

Now, before I set about finding my best patch cables, I’d isolated out the microphone connection, to reduce complexity and eliminate other noise sources.<\/p>\n


This is called a Null Signal Wire.<\/i><\/center><\/p>\n

Turns out, a 3mm run of unshielded null signal wire can bring up a surprisingly durable<\/em> amount of RF, in the form of BBC World Service on shortwave. Pulled that back out, popped in a microphone cable (connected to the ribbon mic): no more radio.<\/p>\n

The goofy thing is that Cascadia is notorious<\/em> for shitty shortwave reception. I can’t get BBC World Service reliably on my shortwave radio<\/em>. AND YET.<\/p>\n

At least it’s sorted, now. I still need to evaluate a few more cables, but the explanation is in hand, and that’s the important thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was picking up radio on the ribbon mic’s pre-amp, at really high amplification gain. Ribbon mics need tremendous gain, because the base signal is so low, which meant this mattered. It wasn’t enough to appear in most – emphasis on most – recording situations, but I didn’t want it at all, because it indicates [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,11,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diy","category-recording-gear","category-studio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}