Turdus Posted March 25, 2011 Posted March 25, 2011 Using an Allen and Heath Zed, USB out to Audacity.Getting excessive noise, even with board fully muted, or powered off. If USB cable is unplugged, noise goes away. Have tried 2 USB cables.I can't believe this is inherent... either laptop USB bus sux, my board, or audacity (win 7 beta) is causing the problemThoughts?
zorrow Posted March 25, 2011 Posted March 25, 2011 What kind of noise do you get?If it's more a "hum" than a "hiss", just connect the ZED to a power source different than the computer's, and/or "ground lift" your amp -use something like this: http://www.filmtools.com/grliadco41.html.If it's a "hiss", then check the levels of your laptop's mixer. If the levels are low in the software mixer, you'll get a terrible signal/noise ratio.Hope this will help.
zenmindbeginner Posted March 25, 2011 Posted March 25, 2011 How did the plug and play installation of the ZED go? Did you configure the Audio hardware in Audacity to recognize the ZED? You'll have to monitor from the mixer since the same USB device for recording is the same used for playback. Your computer's audio in and out will be shut off.If the plug and play installation went well and you have the audio hardware I/O configured correctly in Audacity... and you are monitoring through the ZED... and don't have the "Record Bus" and "Aux-FX" pressed down, then get a shielded USB cable with a metal shelled USB connector that is electrically bonded to the metal housing. Your USB might be playing the role of a RF antenna.If none of that works... your ZED most likely has an issue with Audacity's beta version for Windows 7 that might not be able to be resolved right now.
Turdus Posted March 25, 2011 Author Posted March 25, 2011 The noise would best be described as a constant swish, registering 25% on the meters.. even with the board powered off, and cable attached. If I unplug the cable, it stops. If I reattach cable, there is no noise until I power on the board. It is an odd cycle.The ZED board came with SONAR LE. This seemed to worked great at first. Then, I started running into a buffer overflow, etc. Researched that, and then upgraded to the latest version. That fixed the buffer issue, but I was never able to record music in stereo. They may have hidden a feature someplace, but I never found it. Gave up, and tried audacity. Only thing I did in audacity was to set input and output to USB. Works, with the exception of excessive noise.I've got a fairly powerful LINUX box, so thinking about getting Audacity for LINUX, and seeing if that works.Thanks.
geoff_hartwell Posted March 27, 2011 Posted March 27, 2011 Have you tried Reaper? It's free (until you want to pay for it, if ever) and tends to do a great job. Geoff
Turdus Posted March 27, 2011 Author Posted March 27, 2011 I just tried the ZED with a win XP desktop and Audacity 1.3 beta. The noise is not there.The platform, where the noise occurred, was a newer laptop, win 7, and Audacity 1.3 beta.I've not tried it on LINUX, but plan to as soon as I can rebuild my server.
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Turdus
Using an Allen and Heath Zed, USB out to Audacity.
Getting excessive noise, even with board fully muted, or powered off. If USB cable is unplugged, noise goes away. Have tried 2 USB cables.
I can't believe this is inherent... either laptop USB bus sux, my board, or audacity (win 7 beta) is causing the problem
Thoughts?
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