Interference noise from PC

[Shredd]

Welcome to the forum @MikisGtr!

@MikisGtr

Do you use Speakers or headphones? What kind of guitar cables do you use and do they run close to the power outlets? Any LED lights in your PC / room?

Headphones.

The guitar cables I’ve tried so far are cheap, basic brands from Thomann, I don’t know very much about them in fact! By power outlets you mean wall sockets? No, in my kitchen test the cable ran straight from the guitar’s output towards the interface. Moving cables near power sources or sockets doesn’t change the noise.

My room ceiling light is a LED, but it’s off during testing. There are gaming-style RGB LEDs in my processor fan, RAM sticks and GPU. Some tiny single-color strips on the motherboard itself. I can’t switch those off, unfortunately. I recently added two more identical RAM sticks though and the noise did not get any worse at least.

@MikisGtr

I always had the same noise problem. It got significantly less when I put a hum suppressor between my interface and my studio monitors

Was your noise also radiating from the PC tower so that it disappeared when you moved the guitar further away? Was it the same kind of noise as in my clips, with the high pitched whining or frying sound that appears or intensifies while USB gets accessed? If so, what type of suppressor was that?

@MikisGtr

it completely disappeared when I switched from HDD to SSD in my Desktop PC.

This leads me to think it’s not the same noise. I disconnected my HDDs to test this, because I thought the noise was coming from HDD activity, but that did nothing. Now it’s looking more like it’s USB activity that causes it to radiate from the motherboard.

@MikisGtr

recording guitars with passive pickups.

It doesn’t happen with actives for you? Mine happens with actives and passives, but not with piezo.

[kgk]

Do you have a metal enclosure on your PC? Is it grounded correctly? Do you have metal screen over the fans? Are there any big holes in it that are empty or filled with plastic? Can you post a photo of it?

McMaster-Carr

[Pineapple15]

Sounds like a grounding issue. Maybe your guitar isn’t grounded or has some electro magnetic interference inside the cavity. Also, your wall socket may need to get replaced or just a line conditioner or maybe a good noise gate. Hope this helps.

[MikisGtr]

@Shredd

Headphones.

I never used headphones when I had the problem so I can’t tell you if the same problem occured on headphones. For my speakers I used a cheap Behringer HD400 Hum Destroyer between Interface and speakers. But I don’t think it works the same for Headphones.

@Shredd

Moving cables near power sources or sockets doesn’t change the noise.

That rules out badly shielded instrument cables.

@Shredd

Was your noise also radiating from the PC tower so that it disappeared when you moved the guitar further away? Was it the same kind of noise as in my clips, with the high pitched whining or frying sound that appears or intensifies while USB gets accessed?

Yes, it was the same noise and got less the further away I moved from my computer. Everytime I used my mousewheel or clicked the high pitched noise would get get really loud. When you hold your wireless mouse really close to your pickups does the noise gets louder? It might not be the main cause of the noise but can add to your problem. You can also try if touching any metal parts of the Interface while not touching the guitar helps in any form since the SSL 2+ can’t be grounded through a separate wall socket there might be a groundloop.

@Shredd

It doesn’t happen with actives for you? Mine happens with actives and passives, but not with piezo.

For me with active pickups it’s in a negligible amount that isn’t audible in recordings. With passives it’s way worse. It makes sense that it doesn’t happen with a piezo since the piezo works through mechanical stress and not induction like regular pickups and wouldn’t pick up any electromagnetical interference.

It’s probably a grounding issue of some kind, so a grounded wall socket and a power conditioner could help.