To learn electronics in a very different and effective way, and gain access to Mr Carlson's personal designs and inventions, visit the Mr Carlson's Lab Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/MrCarlsonsLab
Very interesting. I have shared this with my brother who is a specialist in RFI and EMC regulations and circuit design to minimise interference. Big Clive has a youtube chanel where he strips down mostly chinese electronics and back engineers them looking at safety and design. You might be interested?
Big Clive has come up with a very creative way of teaching circuits by printing out a colour picture of the PCB and using it to explain everything. I've not seen anyone else do it. But Mr. Carlson's description of the bridge rectifier with LED lights is so far the best.
I’m neither a valve guy, or a vintage radio guy, yet this is still one of my favourite YT channels. Entirely because of the quality technical content and knowledge of the presenter. 👍
I’m a 67 year old lady trying to learn how to transmit my ham radio with less noise. I don’t have the capacity for understanding much electronics. But the way you’ve explained this I understand WAY MORE than I could ever before. THANK YOU MR. Carlson! I will definitely share this with some of my ham buddies.
Mr Carlson, you are a man of your word!!! For a year ago did a Patreon ask you if you would make a video about RF and EMI noise and how to solve it. You said that you would make such a video and write it down. You told us all that you had a lot of already planned videos, so it would be after these. Respect to your keeping your promises and did in fact write it down!
@@mavamQ Of cause, I'll try to ask him, but I think I can already tell you now. Magnetic paint is normal paint with some magnetic dust in it, and to protect against EMI, do you have to make an enclosure that block that frequency.
I'm a ham radio operator, often working at 7MHz 3.8 MHz and 1.6 MHz and this is the bane of my existence. The capacitor draining slowly made me laugh. Typical wisdom to find noise is to shut down the whole service panel, make an analysis for baseline. This determines if it is within the house or outside. Then you turn on one circuit at a time until noise appears to help narrow down the circuits where they may be lurking and hopefully eliminate or at least identify the sources. During one session I was just toggling circuits on and off, but fairly rapidly. I have two particular radiators that are just intensely strong and a real issue. The first many times I was trying to find them, I would toggle the breaker off and then on too quickly. Both sources (a DC motor variable speed ceiling fan and the control board for my heat pump system) have caps that hold on for nearly a full minute, so toggling the breaker never killed the noise. I was sitting on the radio frustrated by the intense noise that replicated in broad band way and on many harmonics and suddenly the noise stopped. I yelled out to my wife "What did you just turn off?" and that's how I found the ceiling fan. After learning that lesson, I leave breakers down for at least a fully minute as I go through them. It's just endless the sources of noise these days. They pretty much dropped all regulation and/or enforcement for noise emissions. Even AM broadcast radio is almost completely obscured now unless it's a 50kW clear channel station that is S9+40.
Great session. My wife has actually figured out a way to antagonize me while I am listening to one of my AM console radios. She will sneak into another room and turn the light dimmer up halfway then come by giggling. Just another reason I love her so much.
Excellent treatise, I upgraded my Hi-Fi system twenty years ago, very much aware on mains noise ( in the UK, we have 240v 50hz line to neutral), I hired a "Mains Noise Sniffer", and plugged in it to every socket outlet, one socket, a spur on a ring main, was broadcasting a Long Wave radio station Radio 2, it was just perceptible to hear voices, when I heard the BBC pips for the hour, it confirmed the fact. Great vlog thanks for sharing.
I built the super probe and capacitor leakage tester. But through hole versions which is much easier when having a cnc router machine. Love the 2 projects. This guy is an angel 😇 May god give you many more years and healthy to live and be able to share your valuable knowledge. A pleasure to support you on Patrion . It’s worth every penny. Thank you regards from 🇲🇽
I’m very interested in this series. As an commercial AV/ Acoustics designer installer/ live sound contractor for decades, I’ve had to solve many noises issues. Armed with anything from a Fluke toner probe to Tek RSA507A, Icom R8600 for RF/EMI, Smaart software and Earthworks microphones, it’s a noisey world. One example, Network lines in one part of the building passing led fixtures would bring noise into a conference system in another part of the building. A series of questions to the buildings and grounds manager was part of the process, such as when and where equipment was added. This system was previously noise free. I had his crew reroute all analog lines and it’s finally back to noise free operation. Now smart meters are on my hit list.
I use a am radio on a frequency with no stations and turn it to maximum volume and I can find a lot of noise. I do not allow any noisy devices anywhere near my Ham Shack and run off of Batteries with Linear Power supply chargers! These new devices are terrible.....Not to mention our Cell phones which I keep them away from my Ham gear as well. Thanks for your videos Sir.........
Something interesting I would like to add is I was accused of causing interference to TV sets in a caravan park where I lived. These people went as far as saying my vertical amateur radio antenna was blocking the signal. I spoke to those who were doing the accusing, then saw they had indoor antennas. I then said they needed outdoor antennas mounted at least 10 feet up on a pole. I demonstrated on my own TV, & they later apologised, except for one, who was adamant I was causing TV-I. Despite my conversations, & proving his indoor antenna was at fault, he said he was going to contact the relevant authority. He lost his case.
As an Extra Amateur radio operator,, I really have to say this is your most understandable and easy to follow video I have seen from your channel. I clicked because I have a 20db (on the meter) hash noise on 75 meters. I am going around the house on a hunt.
This episode reminds me of the *classic* car AM radio problems if you didn't use resistor spark plugs or properly shielded spark plug wires between 1950 and 1970(ish). Some models needed both. Generators never had a problem. But any unshielded alternator and new high energy 12V coils that output 50,000 volts were fun. Even standard ignition coils with points and condenser were very noisy without RF spark plugs. Those were the days! Sometimes RF type spark plugs were in short supply and customers would buy the standard plugs and you warned them not to use the radio unless they liked the sounds you illustrate in this video. They would call daily until we were restocked.
Great video Mr. Carlson! So happy you made it. You have no idea how many times I see people removing entire RF shields from older computers or other components (not the paper cardboard stuff but real metal shields) and stating things like "they are not needed anymore". They even go as far as to write the most ridiculous stuff on forums to explain it with clearly no understanding whatsoever of what RF interference is. Love the show by the way!
I've had an ongoing EMI issue coming from my next door neighbour causing issues primarily to the 60m amateur radio band. I've also had problems with switched mode PSU's suddenly becoming noisy and again causing issues so needing to be hunted down by a process of elimination and the PSU for my Lenovo laptop is an HF killer. I ended up putting a VLF/MF/HF magnetic loop for receive at the end of my garden and works brilliantly! Whilst it's not as sensitive as a resonant antenna, the s/n ratio is significantly higher because magnetic loops are less susceptible to near field signals such as local noise. You can always add gain but with a poor s/n to start with, you are fighting a losing battle. I went for a Wellbrook loop but there are some lower cost products such as the MLA 30+ which can be had for about $40. I have one but I've not started testing it yet - there are lots of video's on here regarding its performance - don't change the loop construction though as it can end up becoming noisy. Anyone with an interest in LF - HF radio should seriously consider a loop antenna - it could make your life a lot easier IMHO. One of the things that has been helpful in Europe is CE marking and to get a product on the market it has to conform to standards for EMI susceptibility. That made the lives of amateurs a LOT easier. The flip side is that PLT (power line networking) became a huge issue because these things claim to comply with emissions standards but I personally proved in a NAMAS approved test lab that they were 40dB (10,000x) over the limits described in EN55022 and both Ofcom and the EU stated that they could not put barriers to trade in place so we lost the war on PLT. However we did get them banned in Norway. Fighting EMI below VHF is a real on-going battle against things that can just come up out of the blue.
I use DC power (almost) exclusively for all my charging of devices...ran off of 4 different battery banks that are charged with linear power supplies & BMS devices. Two of the banks are 12VDC...one is 24VDC (dropped to 19VDC for charging laptops)...and one is 6VDC (dropped to 5VDC for charging my phone & many tablets).
Good timing with this video. I have been having the worst interference on my Audio Rack and the computers that I use for my musical instrument's. None of it plays nice together. I can hear the computer "talking" over the audio because it is so sensitive. I have 2 Furman power conditioners and a line filter on every single audio line going to the Mixer, 2 computers, Audio Processing Equipment and the list goes on. About 10 grand worth of equipment with all the noise is maddening. Even my guitar pickups pickup noise getting too close to the computers. I hear data being read/written over the mic chords they are so sensitive to it. Trying to accomplish perfectly clean audio is now an obsession for me.
all I can say is: things sure are DIFFERENT in Canada! :) Here, in the US, its usually less than EVER when a "frustrated neighbor" would be "more than willing to participate" in a "let's find the issue with YOUR set" games.. Once I lived in an apartment complex where a neighbor down the hall would "watch GOLF on a GOLDSTAR brand TV with RABBIT EARS" and, since she paid a higher rent than I did.. I got my lease "added" with the clause "no electronics to be used by tenant".. this included my OWN TV and musical keyboard! (which the landlord deemed causing her issues) and... (did that fix the issue, BTW?? NOPE! turns out the "problem" was caused by arching power lines behind the building.. but that didn't stop the incident of me coming home from work only to find my power was completely CUT OFF (and the food in fridge was warm and spoiled!) yeah.. neighborly love must be different over there in Canada- oh, how, I envy you! :)
Wow Zath, that would be pretty serious over here. The landlord would be paying for damages in a heartbeat, and probably fined too. Thanks for sharing your story!
@@MrCarlsonsLab heh.. it just goes to show that owning a house has its benefits :) I DO wonder if they ever figured out the issues- especially AFTER I moved out?! (I bet they simply thought "he DAMAGED my TV now it doesn't work at all..." and since we both know that arching wires don't ever improve... I guess that meant LOTS of balls on the court!) the point here was they were VERY quick to assume- and after that, there is little room for negotiation.. and that is just how things were back then... thanks for the reply!
I work on a lot of old AM radios, transistor and tube. When it comes time to test them I practically have to turn off my entire bench in order to hear any AM station. RF noise is getting really bad and all but killing AM.
I too have a special container for poorly (cheaply) built SMPS. As one of the benefits of my tax dollars, someone comes and empties that container twice a week. There are plenty of decent SMPS out there. And if you want to be extra quiet, quite a lot of stuff is happy to run at 13.8v. Power it all through say a big Astron supply and be done. This has the added bonus of stopping "vampire power" devices that always draw current. When the big switch is off, all the stuff really is off as well.
Speaking of RFI and neighbors... I once had a neighbor accuse me of attracting lightning to a tree on his property because of a near by dipole antenna I installed. I told him my experiment was an astounding success and I just got a job as head of a research team at DARPA.
Your neighbour was right, one of the poles of your antenna is the hot side, that is no problem. But the other pole of the dipole is earth or ground. It is connected with a very conductive wire to the set. A tree is a merely a bad conductor, wet wood is hardly attractive to lightning, but the all metal antenna is for sure a good conductor. Big thunderclouds will come especially to the house with the biggest antenna, for kilometres around lightning will find the highest spot with the best connection to ground. Don't they teach you anything at DARPA? On the main building of DARPA there are lightning deflectors, and they are not there for fun. It is for the protection of trees nearby, so that people can hug a tree, even in a thunderstorm.
When the US/British teams developed the WWII originally-super-secret "Proximity" or "Variable Time (VT)" (official obscure secret title) nose fuze for anti-aircraft shells (later also used for area-effect "shrapnel"-type anti-surface use by US Army artillery in Europe), first allowed to be used in mid-1943, primarily originally used against Japanese aircraft in the Pacific, mostly replacing and augmenting the older time-fused shells (the old shells being set by set by a special calculator and nose time dial setter just before loading the AA shells of guns 90mm and up -- tiny vacuum tubes kept it from being used in smaller guns until after WWII when solid-state electronics was introduced). They used a tiny radio transmitter/receiver with a range of only a couple of hundred feet, mostly even less, that could sense the reflection of the signal it created and time it, so that when the time between sent and received signals from a nearby sideways target (the fuze was blocked from directly ahead to allow a direct hit, if such very occasionally happed) shortened to as preset value, the shell was deemed close enough and the shell exploded. These new VT shells were obviously dangerous if somehow armed with any radio outside EMI and on a WWII warship with all of its radars and radios, there were LOTS of potential EMI flying around. To add the extra EMI safety to these now-ubiquitous fused shell in storage and until just before loading, then they were readied for use, new shell nose coverings had to be created, so these new fuzes could only be used in new, special-made shells. What was done was to drill a larger hole in the nose of the shell body than the older time fuzes needed due to the larger VT fuze, and, to allow the longer VT fuze to fit, compressing the explosive booster and safe/arm devices -- called "Auxiliary Detonating Fuzes" in the US Navy, for example -- located between the VT or time fuze and the internal main explosive charge. Another things was also done to the hole in the projectile nose: Adding a new threaded step around the hole. What this was for was a thin cup-shaped metal EMI shield that screwed down over the VT fuze, completely isolating it from the outside, being grounded to the steel shell body itself. This was kept on the shell from the moment the shell had the VT fuze installed (unlike most earlier nose-fuzed "HE/HC" shells, you could not swap out various kinds of nose fuzes or insert a hardened nose plug for some impact functions using a base fuze, as many larger shells of this type could) until, in the gun mount just before loading, you had somebody who had a special wrench just for quickly removing that EMI shield for immediate loading of the now-bare-nosed shell into the gun. This was on top of the retained-from-older-fuzes internal mechanical safe/armed interlocking mechanisms inside the fuze to keep it inert until firing of the shell pushed, pulled, and rotated a Chinese-puzzle of stops to finally allow the shell to explode as designed. The US Navy especially was almost psychotic concerning ordnance safety (for very good reason!!) and even using a more powerful, but slightly more sensitive to impact, explosive in these shells to widen their kill area, as was also eventually done for these AA shells, took some time to pass in the shell design. Many historians consider the VT fuze only slightly less important than the atomic bomb -- and much more useful all-around -- during WWII for the Allied war effort. So EMI is not an afterthought in designing anything that handles such radio signaling.
I'm reminded of the older 40-200MHz Pentium CPUs from the 1990's. You didn't need a sensitive electronic device to actually hear it popping and buzzing when it was doing something, just a regular quiet room was sufficient.
There also really handy for tracing wires in walls before you drill. I used to use something very similar to trace Telephone lines when I worked at British Telecom years ago.
A proper shielded enclosure does not need to be grounded. Indeed, a conductive metal sphere floating in mid-air would be an excellent shield. Shielding depends on conductivity and thickness of the shield (and that the shield must have no electrical discontinuities). Grounding of a shielded room is primarily done for electrical safety.
@@wb6wsn All true... The last RF resistant room I was in had 3 layers of mu metal foil surrounding a welded 11 gauge carbon steel inner structure, with 3 progressive sized metal doors with metallic finger gaskets the 3 door perimeters... .... but in the context of the joke, with an unknown floor condition, more like walking into a galvanized grain elevator that most people can relate to, the "grounded" element it was a 'thrown-in'. Boils down to the difference between an engineering or physics class, and a joke.
@@jenniferwhitewolf3784 The 11-gauge steel (seams MIG welded) is the standard for a good quality shielded enclosure. With the outer layers of mu-metal, it sounds like the enclosure was protecting against nearby magnetic fields. Was it a room for some science experiment or maybe a medical facility? Sorry, maybe after >40 years of building shielded enclosures, I was a bit triggered by your humor. Still, the best jokes ARE engineering or Physics jokes. :)
@@wb6wsn It was a low noise chamber for measuring emitted fields from electronic apparatus. It needed to be both magnetic and radio wave quiet. Many such facilities that were built in the cold-war period no longer exist. There was a time when many companies were working on EW and ECM. Even outside the electronic warfare game, there were some pretty neat 'quiet rooms' built for industry. Tektronix had one. When it was torn down the custom made low pass filters that fed the 60Hz/115VAC line into the chamber went to a friend of mine, and now in my possession. Amazing filters.. they pass 60Hz, but are dozens of dB down at 120. I was told the three filters ( one for each AC line) cost Tek about $50,000 at time of construction.
Thanks. You've made the problem and some solutions very clear. There is a related problem that is a bit obscure (and niche!) but I'll outline it anyway, and that's modulation hum. As you know many vintage radio enthusiasts build low-power transmitters (Part 15 in the US I believe) to transmit a signal around their home from CDs, podcasts, internet music etc. A persistent but unpredictable problem is hum on that signal - and only that signal - as received on some radios. It has something to do with RF getting into the mains wiring and getting rectified by semiconductors in LED lighting, electric blankets, chargers etc. sometimes even when they are switched off! Sometimes it's not a problem, but when certain combinations of items are on, the problem appears. Ceramic capacitors across the radios' mains inputs and rectifier diodes, sometimes works, but sometimes makes matters worse! Running the transmitter from batteries sometimes works, but not always...
I did an experiment with the family a while ago because I was talking about RFI en EMI, that we get used to, but is always there. I switched off all the breakers in our main panel, and then switched off the main breaker and had everyone turn off all their devices for 8 hours. (refrigerator and freezer were on the lanai at the time and away from the house. At 8 hours, I have them switch on all their devices and I turned on the main, and then each breaker one at a time, and they all actually "heard" the general hum in the house from all the devices. Now I have a bit of a monster on my hands as they are aware of he noise and want me to "fix it. I suggested turning everything off again and leaving it all off. :)
Yes, we are surrounded by noise, and have become accustom to it. Just a simple experiment like what you did will really reveal how loud these appliances actually are.
Who cares about a bit of noise, I'm more concerned about the noxious fumes coming out of the tailpipes of internal combustion engine vehicles that I'm forced to breathe every day.
@@dannelson8556 Most modern cars put out next to no evaporative emissions. It’s also hilarious to me that you are using the internet which runs off energy that may be dirty and likely a device that was transported by many vehicles producing those fumes. You want to run my life but you won’t adhere to your own extremist philosophy in your own.
I work in the WiFi world which is in the 2.4 Ghz and 5Ghz range and we also deal with RF interference and how to mitigate it between devices inside a household. I had to share this video with the rest of my team. Always excellent to watch your videos Mr. Carlson.
@@Edsvideovault5150 What do you mean by human speech? How does it show in regards to your camera? When you say 2.4 GHz is that the frequency it operates as a direct connection or is it WiFi enabled? What’s the make and model of the camera?
Thanks very much for making this video, as someone who has only a basic knowledge of electronics dating back from the 1960's onwards, I often wondered how these small switch mode powers supplies were working and you have explained that very clearly so that I can understand, even with my basic, rather old, knowledge. I will certainly make sure that I un-plug these things when ever possible now knowing how much noise they are emitting. I find I can understand the basics of most of your excellent videos because you explain things so clearly.
fun example of RF getting into places, depending on your cell carrier and which G they are using. You can hear it in some cheaper PC speakers when a text is coming in before the phone makes its ping if you have the phone right by the speaker.
A great solution I implemented for my electronic music studio was to purchase a balanced power isolation transformer (specifically a Furman IT-1210) into which all equipment handling analog audio is connected. There is no detectable hum or noise whatsoever.
"Radio falls silent for death of Marconi ..." On Wednesday 21st July 1937 the radio waves fell silent from 17:00 to 17:02 GMT out of respect for Marconi who had died the day before at the age of 63. Man-made RF Interference has been with us ever since, as never again would it ever be possible to even attempt a global shut-down of technology !
Interesting! I have a portable tape player with radio. It is fun listening to AM . There are no AM stations in Norway. Walking around with it, whenever you are in line of sight of cell towers, they make this kinda multi tone noise.. power cables under ground make a lot of hum. I once took it up to the nearest weather radar. They are not fenced up in Norway. You can hear a couple of bzzt for every revolution of the radar. Im guessing it is the side lobes of the beam that reach the ground. I dont know. Fun it is 🙂
I use to have an X-10 home automation system. The AC power line noise got so bad from all the choppers that the system would no longer work. A lot of 60Hz noise in complex audio systems isn't caused by outside sources but from ground loops within the system. That often happens when two or more pieces of interconnected audio equipment have their AC grounds connected a different points. Sometimes it can be a real bear to find and even harder to (legally) eliminate it. I think it's the pro audio industry that keeps the makers of those 3-prong adapters in business.
Dear Mr. Carlson, this topic is so useful that no one mention (business secret?), thank you for your teachings, I'm glad you share the knowledge, thank you very much!
Greatly enjoy your channel and old tube electronics - this is a great learning channel. I strongly believe too many people these days stay in the theoretical and don't get their hands "dirty" - they forget or overlook the fundamentals found in studying the old ways (and I'm not all that old). Your video is timely here ... we have Samsung 245BW monitors everywhere - great monitors - and apparently they can send signals back through the mains, when their power light indicates off/standby, but its main power switch is on. So many thanks for your videos on this topic ... and for the fun and useful bits to build (for these modern problems, and for fixing the occasional fun old late-40's TV or 20's/30's radio). All the best, Christopher/KA4DQE.
June 22nd 2022 hello my name is Richard Velez I have a problem and I can pay money for your help with an RFID tag / antenna It's implanted If the size of a grain of the rice I don't know the frequency . And it's a passive device Is this something you have knowledge worth please help thank you
Thank you for the excellent video. I was aware of the wall wort noise extravaganza but didn’t know about the plasma TVs noise. I occasionally get serious interference on my am radio and have tried to eliminate it in my house. Now I am thinking one of my neighbors must have a plasma tv. Looking forward to more on this. Also your antenna build.
I had a HUGE rf noise issue and finally realized it was an Iphone aftermarket charger my daughter left here. A hammer solved that. My radio room has all halogen or incandescent lighting because LED units made too much noise. Still have a couple lights I can't use in the house if listening to my old AM radios.
Thankyou Paul for your awesome videos I watch daily and am learning a load. I rebuild and repair Hammond organs and love working on 122 leslie speakers. You are my favourite utube electronics guy out there. Thankyou!
Thank-you Mr. Carlson. I like your style and handy gadgets. Keep up the good work. I thought you were going to go around the house flipping off breakers with the probe turning them on and listening to refrigerators freezers TV's clothes washers and dryers, " smart appliances " or properly setting up a local noise antenna to notch out the offensive signal from the desired one. Thanks again looking forward to the microphone modification.
I have a terrible noise issue from my solar inverter and controller, I've been searching the internet for ideas on how to reduce it. Thanks for this insight into noise and how to reduce it.
One of the first videos i saw Mr. Carlson was fixing a red fire bird .... i think some kind of custom cct module that got his car back working better than before. Since then I've been hooked. :)
We have an old RCA console stereo that I restored. I went on the hunt for RF noise sources and found that our fancy pants refrigerator was the main culprit of messing with FM and completely killing AM reception intermittently! After moving the refrigerator circuit breaker to the other hot “phase” in the breaker box the noise is mostly gone. Unfortunately I noticed a much more faint, but annoying interference that seemed to come and go. I turned of everything in the breaker box except for the stereo and made sure nothing was plugged in on that circuit but the noise persisted. I was almost ready to give up and claim that the noise was inherent to the stereo then my cell phone battery went dead and the noise went away. Nope, wasn’t the phone, but rather the Bluetooth module I put inside the stereo that would create noise on its power supply when my phone would pair with it :o
Youre the only person I've seen explain this in a practical yet scientific way, very well said. I could really, really use your help.. I have been going crazy the past month trying to figure out where this subsonic/infrasonic noise is coming from. Gets up to -20 dB of noise between 5hz to 50hz, goes up to 150hz at around -50 dB then has a sharp cutoff right at 150hz with preamp set to about 40% and all other appliances/electronics are turned off (I have wa47 as well with apollo). On the analyzer it looks very shaky almost like a flutter. I've tried using laptop power (unplugged) and turned off all the breakers in my house and it still does it, even in various spots of the house. Tried multiple cables (including mogami gold), 3 computers, 2 interfaces, 4 outlets/outlet combinations. Got a Furman power conditioner. I've also tried putting sand bags on top of drop cieling as well as rockwool and still no luck. Key findings: noise in 5-50hz range jumps up when I *very lightly* press on my wall, as well as my drop cieling; some spots more than others I've noticed, but all spots at least to some degree. So I'm like oh well must be structural vibration issues with my wall paneling and cieling tiles/structure, right? However, when I "lightly tap" 7 pin cable coming from power supply near the mic-side, it does the same thing, those freq jump up, making me question if it could be an electrical/EMI, RF issue. There is a power line on my yard about 30 yards away. There is also a well (for water) under the yard. There are wires coming from garage that goes over drop cieling, as well as a vent-tube. Any help and/or tips would be greatly, greatly appreciated you have no idea. I just want to have clean recordings and not have to use a low pass filter everytime to only help alleviate noise but still have that flutter-y interference that affects the rest of the frequencies. Thank you for reading and I hope you can find the time to reply even if it's just a sentence! 🙂
Probably a mechanical vibration that the mic is picking up. IE: Furnace motor blowing air continuously, air conditioner or heat pump running, fridge or an appliance that's on, dehumidifier, bathroom fan.... so on. 5 to 50 Hz is below mains frequency, so again most likely a vibration. If you unplug the mic and it goes away, its pretty hands down at that point. One odd issue could be, the mic is breaking into oscillation, IE: a problem with the circuitry, but that would be rare, especially with a WA47. You could swap the tube out in case it's the issue.... again rare issue though.
For my amateur radio 📻 I do not use a switching power 🔋 supply for the reasons you gave. My traditional 30 amp power 🔋 supply, Astron, is no problem in this case. Ray W2CH (60 years licensed).
Interesting. During my 22 years in the U. S. Navy, RFI and EMI suppression was a big deal. I expect it still is. I spent the first couple of years assigned to Naval Security Group Activities. I was a CTM (Communications Technician Maintenance). I spent a lot of time converting teletype from High Level signaling (60 ma current loop) to Low Level signaling (+/- 6 VDC). Aboard ship, one of the simplest EMI fixes was bonding straps on watertight doors and on armored cable, where the cable passed through bulkheads.
Here in the UK we were not allowed CB till 1981, we got allowed to use FM. Maybe just as well as I got an AM CB and started to use it from home, well, the neighbours TV was totally wiped out. No picture, only sound was me talking on the CB, which was illegal at the time. He heard me s clearly he knew who it was coming from! I got a knock on the door, I was asked to stop using the CB. Just till the weekend or he could fix it. He fixed old black and white TVs as a hobby, so he knew what was causing it. So I waited till after the weekend, he duly came to the door and asked me to transmit and at full power. So I did and no more problems. Not so with the other neighbour, they threatened all sorts of things, we will get the authorities on to you. Told them it was their TV that was at fault, it was as wide as a barn door. I fitted a filter to the coax of their TV (they still didn't believe me, but the picture was fine after that, but there was slight sound distortion. The other neighbour was asked by them if he got problems from me, he said he had, but he fixed it very easily, he explained to them that it was the TV that was at fault, not me. He said he would fix it for them, just this once. I paid the neighbour to sort it and we all lived happy ever after. Strangely, I was living at home and all my parents TV did was give a slight buzz (more of a click) as I keyed up, then ignored the CB completely! Thankfully I had a neighbour that understood what was happening :-))
I would love to see you do a follow up to this video and check some common computer parts. An SSD, a mechanical drive, a network card, motherboard and PC power supply. I think that would be fascinating to see the noise that comes from those parts!
Wow! That has been one of my favorite videos of yours so far! I love the easy to understand descriptions, and I feel like I learned a lot about noise issues! Made me want to really work on vetting the power supplies I use around my music studio, and figure out a way to prevent noise and radio signals from getting into my spring reverb tank guitar pedal.
June 22nd 2022 hello my name is Richard Velez and I need your help. This is not my field. A professionalism As to my problem I have an RFID implanted size of a grain of a rice I don't know the frequency that activated is a passive device I can pay money I can pay cash it's just something you can help me with please thank you
Story at the phone company, they rolled out adsl to residential customers and it git popular. One neighborhood had consistent complaints about their internet going out most days in the evenings. They fixed and double checked all the cable and dsl equipment. Finally they hired a contractor who specializes in finding weird trouble. He drove around with his AM radio on and found someone with a shoddy TV. FCC would take too long to respond, and they guy wouldn't just stop so they bought him a new tv and traded for his old one. Funniest part is the bad tv was never destroyed or disabled. It sat in the office for years until everyone forgot, and then was put out on the curb for free. Someone grabbed it, hopefully they recycled it though.
I am so glad I found this channel. Even though I probably wont be working on much radio or old audio equipment unless im doing my DJ stuff, I do love doing my own electrical work. Im learning so much more every day. You are making me confident that I can actually build circuits now.
Local and pirate radio on the FM band... Lot's of them have issues with RF interference. The math... Wavelength = 3 meters. Standard RCA audio cables (CD player to mixer) are 75 cm... 300/100(MHz)=3(mtr)/2(ideal dipole total length)=1.5(mtr)/2=0.75cm each pole = resonant! (Discarding the velocity factor, that's not very critical at the receiving end). Now I understand why they have those issues!! Tanks!!
WOW....one in ever 100 videos (at least in my experience) legitimizes RUclips. I could listen to "Mr. Carlson" all day long. He simplifies things for people, and doesn't make what's become an epidemic assumption of another person's knowledge when explaining things. Let's face it....if you're coming RUclips for info, then by default you're a "beginner". I still don't know how to find/shield whatever noise is coming through my studio monitors (which seems strangely connected to either my bluetooth mouse/keyboard, or PC in general). But, knowing what's causing it (fundamentally), was fascinating to learn. Now...if I could just get on of those silver doo-higgies, with the little pointy-thing-a-ma-bobber. Now....some golden knowledge for Mr. Carlson, to make HIS life much more worthwhile; The words "Doo-higgie" OR "thing-a-ma-bobber", are NOT in the average spell-checker.....just sayin'.
I am an Amateur Extra Class radio operator. One afternoon a very strong intermittent noise source showed up on the 7 Mhz band. It had a cadence like a washing machine: zaap zaaaaap zaap. It remained a persistent problem for weeks. Finally, I built a 2 turn electrostatically shielded loop antenna about a meter in diameter, plugged it into a portable shortwave receiver, and began walking around the neighborhood. It had a bidirectional pattern, but that was good enough for me. It turned out that the guy wire on a nearby utility pole was intermittently shorting against the steel cable that supported the cable TV and telephone lines. The steel cable ran parallel to and underneath 14kV power lines, so it picked up some power inductively. The guy wire provided an intermittent path to ground when the wind blew. I called the power company with my findings. A couple of days later the noise stopped, and I got a call from the engineer at the power company. He was amazed that I was able to find the RFI source without expensive gear. His crew had installed stiff plastic insulation to prevent the guy wire from rubbing the horizontal cable.
One of the worst offenders is powerline ethernet bridges. There is one in a house near me and it generates S9 interference from 6 MHz to 30 MHz. Since the electric for multiple houses is on a single transformer, it wipes out the entire neighborhood. Interestingly the ham bands are notched out including WARC. But it makes WWV 15 MHz unusable.
Have a long wave radio? It's a great RF noise detector. Worst thing I have is a paper shredder. Luckily it only runs for a minute. But during that minute it spews devastating RF hash, clobbers TV reception, even on UHF. An SFX form factor power supply made so much noise I could hear it in my power lines all the way down the block. I've had noisy lights and a few other noisy power supplies. Although the products functionality are pretty good, D-Link networking devices are notorious for being noisy with lots of RF on your Ethernet wires. Swapping for Netgear or TPLink or whatever, leaving wiring as is and it's dramatically quieter. Yeah, I have a plasma TV. I love it, for watching, but wow it's noisy. You just don't get 600Hz refresh rates with that brightness from anything else. But you can't use a radio and the TV at the same time. What's that, a Samsung product that worked?
Even after auditioning 3 separate AVR's, the same ambient sound of the room was still present! That told me the unwanted faint background signal noise I had been experiencing had nothing to do with the actual components. Therefore, my attention changed to the cables. And even then It was only on the third occasion after I finally purchased shielded cables that the noise floor within my small room finally came down to satisfactory levels. Cables often act as antennas for attracting RF, and the longer the cable, the better the antenna. Probably explains why when I used to disconnect my heights and surrounds within 10 minutes, the faint background signal noise (RF/EMI) within my small room used to disappear/dissipate. The more cables I shield, the quieter my room becomes. In fact, the last group of cables I shielded were my HDMI's, and Lo behold the room became slightly quieter yet again.
Awesome vid! Not done watching yet, but wanted to point out... Another benefit to switched mode supplies/regulators is efficiency. Linear regulation burns off excess as heat. I had to deal with this a lot for low power (iot) applications where battery life is at a premium. Thats more of an issue with regulators, but even switched supplies are more efficient, just noisy af :)
In the case of XLR microphone cables, any noise should be removed via common-mode rejection at the inputs of an op-amp. That is what makes balanced inputs so great, especially for long runs of audio cable.
This is the voice of Sandman...lol. I love how you take things apart then put them back together seamlessly. I'm a Math/Phys teacher. I will be looking at more of your content to understand your delivery style. Lastly some of my high school student I give advice too ask about which directiin to go into. Depending on their interest I generally say BME or Electronic Engineering. But some are interested in Bioelectronics. Any suggestions about schools in Canada? Thanks👏👏
Hi Paul, I must admit I sat and smiled like the Cheshire Cat, knowing how fantastic the Super Probe and the Non Contact Signal Injectors are, and both on my bench, as well on yours. I have benefited from your videos immensely and I have improved in my competency in electronics beyond by my trade school training and years with working with electricity and electronics, both professionally and personal. For as always, I give thanks to you, for what you do Paul.
This reminded me of an amusing episode of Metalocalypse where the sound engineer was going nuts trying to isolate a buzz on Skwisgar's guitar, and resorted to trying to record him from a steel submersible capsule on the bottom of the ocean.
Awesome video, thanks. I have a pretty annoying noise problem at home. Electric guitars hum and buzz quite badly when plugged into either an amp or my recording interface. If I touch the bride or strings it eliminates some of the 60Hz, and if I orient my guitar differently in space it picks up more or less RFI. Often times the noise is too intrusive and I am unable to record guitar. Even plugged directly into my interface (switching PSU) & laptop running on battery. It can be frustrating. The same guitars and amp are nominally quiet at a friend's house in a different neighbourhood. Thankfully we rehearse at his place.
@@Hermiel Well, it all depends on who wired your house. I've seen some pretty scary stuff in my time! If your amp is humming at your place, and not your friends place, I would suspect something may be wrong with the house wiring. Possibly the hot and neutral are reversed in some outlets? You can purchase a device from most hardware stores that you can plug into your outlets to verify that they are wired correctly.
Excellent content. I have terrible noise issues whenever I try to play my single-coil electric guitar and I am afraid there is nothing I can do about it, except build a metal box large enough for me to sit in it and play like that. I live on a hill in a large city and there are several transmitters scattered all around me. There is a transmitter sitting on top of a skyscraper just 450 meters from me, I see it from my window. Supposedly it transmits 2 FM radio stations, but lord knows what else it is blaring. Not to mention about 25 wifi networks from surrounding flats and the office building across the street.
A rather amusing (sometimes!) thing the "Reverse-Super-Probe" signal-leakage finder device reminded me of was in US Navy's modern 1200-pound/sq.-inch pressure-boiler steam-powered warships before they were all removed from service, other than nukes, between 1990 and 1992 (I was caught up in this sudden and unexpected decision, since all of the TERRIER-equipped guided missile ships were eliminated by this action and I, as a computer engineer, had to find a new job -- TARTAR until it too was removed as the Aegis guided-missile system took over the long-range missile air-defense of all US Navy fleets). I was told that to find small steam leaks in the pipes, they had to be extremely careful because the steam was invisible for some distance as it jetted out until it cooled enough to condense into a visible vapor. This meant that you had usually a small needle-like jet of super-hot extremely-high-pressure steam which was invisible for several feet from the hole making it. This was EXTREMELY DANGEROUS!!! In fact, to find such leaks they used a very simple method: They got long broom handles with their tips held far away from the person holding them and very slowly swung the tip around to where they suspected the jet came from. They knew they had found it when the tip of the handle was SLICED OFF LIKE WITH A SAW BLADE! Rather more serious a technique than Mr. Carlson's probe system,. wouldn't you say?
With the subject being *Stop RF and EMI Interference* I had hoped to see some suggestions on how to lower the video noise floor in a video recorder. For instance by better EMI-shielding of the PSU, better RF-shielding of the Y/C signel lines by substituting the PCB-tracks with thin Belden RF-cabling and by other means. All in recognition that a lot if not all of prosumer videorecorders were manufactored within a pricerange and that corners were cut. And thereby it would be possible to some extend to exceed factory specifications (Video noise -43dB) if one were to fiddle around and change stuff in the right places. I bet refurbishers out there could use some tips, guidelines, experiments and results.
u probably already know this mr carlson and everyone else but dat touchscreen tablet made the buzzing noise because the touch screen, to detect stuff, attempts to form a capacitor with whatever is right above the screen at every point on the screen in a very fine grid of plates to find when a conductive finger is touching somewhere on the glass creating capacitors with the grid of plates below the glass. But to detect a capacitor you need to apply AC to it so there is always a weak AC electric field emitted by the plates of the touch screen grid if there is nothing to complete the capacitors and sink the electric fields
June 22nd 2022 my name is Richard,Velez I have a problem.. That I can pay cash for your help.. I have an RFID implant microchip tag./antenna.. it's a passive device. I do not know the frequency. That activates other devices Through my device Please if you can help me thank you. I can pay cash.
Most interesting *noise* I've come across is _CPD_ and its causes which is the bane of CATV RF distribution systems because it *wipes out* the entire return path spectrum 5Mhz to well past 80Mhz
Yep had random interference when carrying out a if alignment. Every time I changed position on my seat .or stood up loads of noise. In the end I Found that it was my vap in my pocket that was the culprit
![Antenna Build, [Mounting Fabrication] Part 2!](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/7TRskR9SHNI/mqdefault.jpg)
![Antenna Build, [Mounting Fabrication] Part 2!](/img/tr.png)
To learn electronics in a very different and effective way, and gain access to Mr Carlson's personal designs and inventions, visit the Mr Carlson's Lab Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/MrCarlsonsLab
Excellent as always, thanks!
@@electromatik2000 You're very welcome Vladimir!
Very interesting. I have shared this with my brother who is a specialist in RFI and EMC regulations and circuit design to minimise interference.
Big Clive has a youtube chanel where he strips down mostly chinese electronics and back engineers them looking at safety and design. You might be interested?
@@williamarmstrong7199 Big Clive is a great fella! I know Clive quite well.
Big Clive has come up with a very creative way of teaching circuits by printing out a colour picture of the PCB and using it to explain everything. I've not seen anyone else do it. But Mr. Carlson's description of the bridge rectifier with LED lights is so far the best.
I’m neither a valve guy, or a vintage radio guy, yet this is still one of my favourite YT channels. Entirely because of the quality technical content and knowledge of the presenter. 👍
Thanks for your kind comment!
Yep got to agree Mr C knows his stuff. GB :)
I’m a 67 year old lady trying to learn how to transmit my ham radio with less noise. I don’t have the capacity for understanding much electronics. But the way you’ve explained this I understand WAY MORE than I could ever before. THANK YOU MR. Carlson! I will definitely share this with some of my ham buddies.
Thanks for your kind feedback!
Mr Carlson, you are a man of your word!!! For a year ago did a Patreon ask you if you would make a video about RF and EMI noise and how to solve it. You said that you would make such a video and write it down. You told us all that you had a lot of already planned videos, so it would be after these. Respect to your keeping your promises and did in fact write it down!
@fried, please see my post above and ask if he can test magnetic paint as sold at Lowes for EMI shielding. Thanks
@@mavamQ Of cause, I'll try to ask him, but I think I can already tell you now. Magnetic paint is normal paint with some magnetic dust in it, and to protect against EMI, do you have to make an enclosure that block that frequency.
I'm a ham radio operator, often working at 7MHz 3.8 MHz and 1.6 MHz and this is the bane of my existence. The capacitor draining slowly made me laugh. Typical wisdom to find noise is to shut down the whole service panel, make an analysis for baseline. This determines if it is within the house or outside. Then you turn on one circuit at a time until noise appears to help narrow down the circuits where they may be lurking and hopefully eliminate or at least identify the sources.
During one session I was just toggling circuits on and off, but fairly rapidly. I have two particular radiators that are just intensely strong and a real issue. The first many times I was trying to find them, I would toggle the breaker off and then on too quickly. Both sources (a DC motor variable speed ceiling fan and the control board for my heat pump system) have caps that hold on for nearly a full minute, so toggling the breaker never killed the noise.
I was sitting on the radio frustrated by the intense noise that replicated in broad band way and on many harmonics and suddenly the noise stopped. I yelled out to my wife "What did you just turn off?" and that's how I found the ceiling fan. After learning that lesson, I leave breakers down for at least a fully minute as I go through them.
It's just endless the sources of noise these days. They pretty much dropped all regulation and/or enforcement for noise emissions. Even AM broadcast radio is almost completely obscured now unless it's a 50kW clear channel station that is S9+40.
Thanks for sharing your story!
Great session. My wife has actually figured out a way to antagonize me while I am listening to one of my AM console radios. She will sneak into another room and turn the light dimmer up halfway then come by giggling. Just another reason I love her so much.
thats a paddlin
Superglue will fix that...
As a radio ham, understanding how switch mode power supplies make noise is very useful to me, thank-you!
Excellent treatise, I upgraded my Hi-Fi system twenty years ago, very much aware on mains noise ( in the UK, we have 240v 50hz line to neutral), I hired a "Mains Noise Sniffer", and plugged in it to every socket outlet, one socket, a spur on a ring main, was broadcasting a Long Wave radio station Radio 2, it was just perceptible to hear voices, when I heard the BBC pips for the hour, it confirmed the fact.
Great vlog thanks for sharing.
I built the super probe and capacitor leakage tester. But through hole versions which is much easier when having a cnc router machine. Love the 2 projects. This guy is an angel 😇 May god give you many more years and healthy to live and be able to share your valuable knowledge. A pleasure to support you on Patrion . It’s worth every penny. Thank you regards from 🇲🇽
Thanks for your kind comment Esau!
I’m very interested in this series. As an commercial AV/ Acoustics designer installer/ live sound contractor for decades, I’ve had to solve many noises issues. Armed with anything from a Fluke toner probe to Tek RSA507A, Icom R8600 for RF/EMI, Smaart software and Earthworks microphones, it’s a noisey world. One example, Network lines in one part of the building passing led fixtures would bring noise into a conference system in another part of the building. A series of questions to the buildings and grounds manager was part of the process, such as when and where equipment was added. This system was previously noise free. I had his crew reroute all analog lines and it’s finally back to noise free operation. Now smart meters are on my hit list.
Thank you. The thing you did with your palm at the beginning is what I needed to know where my microphone was picking up interference from!
I use a am radio on a frequency with no stations and turn it to maximum volume and I can find a lot of noise. I do not allow any noisy devices anywhere near my Ham Shack and run off of Batteries with Linear Power supply chargers! These new devices are terrible.....Not to mention our Cell phones which I keep them away from my Ham gear as well. Thanks for your videos Sir.........
Faraday cage solved this from outside interference but didn't solve the interference of things running inside it ! Love your channel !
Something interesting I would like to add is I was accused of causing interference to TV sets in a caravan park where I lived. These people went as far as saying my vertical amateur radio antenna was blocking the signal. I spoke to those who were doing the accusing, then saw they had indoor antennas. I then said they needed outdoor antennas mounted at least 10 feet up on a pole. I demonstrated on my own TV, & they later apologised, except for one, who was adamant I was causing TV-I. Despite my conversations, & proving his indoor antenna was at fault, he said he was going to contact the relevant authority. He lost his case.
As an Extra Amateur radio operator,, I really have to say this is your most understandable and easy to follow video I have seen from your channel. I clicked because I have a 20db (on the meter) hash noise on 75 meters. I am going around the house on a hunt.
An AM radio tuned to an empty channel or weak signal makes a good direction finder, if the RFI exists on that band.
This episode reminds me of the *classic* car AM radio problems if you didn't use resistor spark plugs or properly shielded spark plug wires between 1950 and 1970(ish). Some models needed both. Generators never had a problem. But any unshielded alternator and new high energy 12V coils that output 50,000 volts were fun. Even standard ignition coils with points and condenser were very noisy without RF spark plugs.
Those were the days!
Sometimes RF type spark plugs were in short supply and customers would buy the standard plugs and you warned them not to use the radio unless they liked the sounds you illustrate in this video.
They would call daily until we were restocked.
Great video Mr. Carlson! So happy you made it. You have no idea how many times I see people removing entire RF shields from older computers or other components (not the paper cardboard stuff but real metal shields) and stating things like "they are not needed anymore". They even go as far as to write the most ridiculous stuff on forums to explain it with clearly no understanding whatsoever of what RF interference is. Love the show by the way!
This is A GREAT detailed analysis of RF and other noise issues! Thank you!!!
You're very welcome Walt!
So this is why my SW experience now is completely different than my childhood. Great video as usual.
I've had an ongoing EMI issue coming from my next door neighbour causing issues primarily to the 60m amateur radio band. I've also had problems with switched mode PSU's suddenly becoming noisy and again causing issues so needing to be hunted down by a process of elimination and the PSU for my Lenovo laptop is an HF killer. I ended up putting a VLF/MF/HF magnetic loop for receive at the end of my garden and works brilliantly! Whilst it's not as sensitive as a resonant antenna, the s/n ratio is significantly higher because magnetic loops are less susceptible to near field signals such as local noise. You can always add gain but with a poor s/n to start with, you are fighting a losing battle. I went for a Wellbrook loop but there are some lower cost products such as the MLA 30+ which can be had for about $40. I have one but I've not started testing it yet - there are lots of video's on here regarding its performance - don't change the loop construction though as it can end up becoming noisy. Anyone with an interest in LF - HF radio should seriously consider a loop antenna - it could make your life a lot easier IMHO.
One of the things that has been helpful in Europe is CE marking and to get a product on the market it has to conform to standards for EMI susceptibility. That made the lives of amateurs a LOT easier. The flip side is that PLT (power line networking) became a huge issue because these things claim to comply with emissions standards but I personally proved in a NAMAS approved test lab that they were 40dB (10,000x) over the limits described in EN55022 and both Ofcom and the EU stated that they could not put barriers to trade in place so we lost the war on PLT. However we did get them banned in Norway.
Fighting EMI below VHF is a real on-going battle against things that can just come up out of the blue.
I am a simple cable installer and this is extremely fascinating.
I use DC power (almost) exclusively for all my charging of devices...ran off of 4 different battery banks that are charged with linear power supplies & BMS devices.
Two of the banks are 12VDC...one is 24VDC (dropped to 19VDC for charging laptops)...and one is 6VDC (dropped to 5VDC for charging my phone & many tablets).
Good timing with this video. I have been having the worst interference on my Audio Rack and the computers that I use for my musical instrument's. None of it plays nice together. I can hear the computer "talking" over the audio because it is so sensitive. I have 2 Furman power conditioners and a line filter on every single audio line going to the Mixer, 2 computers, Audio Processing Equipment and the list goes on. About 10 grand worth of equipment with all the noise is maddening. Even my guitar pickups pickup noise getting too close to the computers. I hear data being read/written over the mic chords they are so sensitive to it. Trying to accomplish perfectly clean audio is now an obsession for me.
all I can say is: things sure are DIFFERENT in Canada! :) Here, in the US, its usually less than EVER when a "frustrated neighbor" would be "more than willing to participate" in a "let's find the issue with YOUR set" games.. Once I lived in an apartment complex where a neighbor down the hall would "watch GOLF on a GOLDSTAR brand TV with RABBIT EARS" and, since she paid a higher rent than I did.. I got my lease "added" with the clause "no electronics to be used by tenant".. this included my OWN TV and musical keyboard! (which the landlord deemed causing her issues) and... (did that fix the issue, BTW?? NOPE! turns out the "problem" was caused by arching power lines behind the building.. but that didn't stop the incident of me coming home from work only to find my power was completely CUT OFF (and the food in fridge was warm and spoiled!) yeah.. neighborly love must be different over there in Canada- oh, how, I envy you! :)
Wow Zath, that would be pretty serious over here. The landlord would be paying for damages in a heartbeat, and probably fined too. Thanks for sharing your story!
@@MrCarlsonsLab heh.. it just goes to show that owning a house has its benefits :) I DO wonder if they ever figured out the issues- especially AFTER I moved out?! (I bet they simply thought "he DAMAGED my TV now it doesn't work at all..." and since we both know that arching wires don't ever improve... I guess that meant LOTS of balls on the court!) the point here was they were VERY quick to assume- and after that, there is little room for negotiation.. and that is just how things were back then... thanks for the reply!
@@WarpRadio sounds like you needed an attorney well versed and tenant landlord law
Ah nothing better than sitting back, relaxing, and learning something new from Mr. Carlson all while my project boards etch :D
40 mins is a loooooong time for etching ...
You just sprinkle a ton of information about stuff while you explain the main topic. You are a treasure tome of knowledge! Thanks for sharing!
My pleasure!
I work on a lot of old AM radios, transistor and tube. When it comes time to test them I practically have to turn off my entire bench in order to hear any AM station. RF noise is getting really bad and all but killing AM.
I hear same here my darn cable model and wifi router just kill the am band .
@@richardbrobeck2384 I found moving my mouse cursor on my LCD monitor is like scratching a record on my AM radios. Good Times!
Look at an active magnetic loop.
Probably the bees too! I jest, but only partially.
I too have a special container for poorly (cheaply) built SMPS. As one of the benefits of my tax dollars, someone comes and empties that container twice a week.
There are plenty of decent SMPS out there. And if you want to be extra quiet, quite a lot of stuff is happy to run at 13.8v. Power it all through say a big Astron supply and be done. This has the added bonus of stopping "vampire power" devices that always draw current. When the big switch is off, all the stuff really is off as well.
Speaking of RFI and neighbors... I once had a neighbor accuse me of attracting lightning to a tree on his property because of a near by dipole antenna I installed. I told him my experiment was an astounding success and I just got a job as head of a research team at DARPA.
Your neighbour was right, one of the poles of your antenna is the hot side, that is no problem. But the other pole of the dipole is earth or ground. It is connected with a very conductive wire to the set. A tree is a merely a bad conductor, wet wood is hardly attractive to lightning, but the all metal antenna is for sure a good conductor. Big thunderclouds will come especially to the house with the biggest antenna, for kilometres around lightning will find the highest spot with the best connection to ground. Don't they teach you anything at DARPA? On the main building of DARPA there are lightning deflectors, and they are not there for fun. It is for the protection of trees nearby, so that people can hug a tree, even in a thunderstorm.
@@vanhetgoor LOL, cool story bro. Let me guess? the earth is flat as well?
When the US/British teams developed the WWII originally-super-secret "Proximity" or "Variable Time (VT)" (official obscure secret title) nose fuze for anti-aircraft shells (later also used for area-effect "shrapnel"-type anti-surface use by US Army artillery in Europe), first allowed to be used in mid-1943, primarily originally used against Japanese aircraft in the Pacific, mostly replacing and augmenting the older time-fused shells (the old shells being set by set by a special calculator and nose time dial setter just before loading the AA shells of guns 90mm and up -- tiny vacuum tubes kept it from being used in smaller guns until after WWII when solid-state electronics was introduced). They used a tiny radio transmitter/receiver with a range of only a couple of hundred feet, mostly even less, that could sense the reflection of the signal it created and time it, so that when the time between sent and received signals from a nearby sideways target (the fuze was blocked from directly ahead to allow a direct hit, if such very occasionally happed) shortened to as preset value, the shell was deemed close enough and the shell exploded. These new VT shells were obviously dangerous if somehow armed with any radio outside EMI and on a WWII warship with all of its radars and radios, there were LOTS of potential EMI flying around. To add the extra EMI safety to these now-ubiquitous fused shell in storage and until just before loading, then they were readied for use, new shell nose coverings had to be created, so these new fuzes could only be used in new, special-made shells. What was done was to drill a larger hole in the nose of the shell body than the older time fuzes needed due to the larger VT fuze, and, to allow the longer VT fuze to fit, compressing the explosive booster and safe/arm devices -- called "Auxiliary Detonating Fuzes" in the US Navy, for example -- located between the VT or time fuze and the internal main explosive charge.
Another things was also done to the hole in the projectile nose: Adding a new threaded step around the hole. What this was for was a thin cup-shaped metal EMI shield that screwed down over the VT fuze, completely isolating it from the outside, being grounded to the steel shell body itself. This was kept on the shell from the moment the shell had the VT fuze installed (unlike most earlier nose-fuzed "HE/HC" shells, you could not swap out various kinds of nose fuzes or insert a hardened nose plug for some impact functions using a base fuze, as many larger shells of this type could) until, in the gun mount just before loading, you had somebody who had a special wrench just for quickly removing that EMI shield for immediate loading of the now-bare-nosed shell into the gun. This was on top of the retained-from-older-fuzes internal mechanical safe/armed interlocking mechanisms inside the fuze to keep it inert until firing of the shell pushed, pulled, and rotated a Chinese-puzzle of stops to finally allow the shell to explode as designed. The US Navy especially was almost psychotic concerning ordnance safety (for very good reason!!) and even using a more powerful, but slightly more sensitive to impact, explosive in these shells to widen their kill area, as was also eventually done for these AA shells, took some time to pass in the shell design.
Many historians consider the VT fuze only slightly less important than the atomic bomb -- and much more useful all-around -- during WWII for the Allied war effort. So EMI is not an afterthought in designing anything that handles such radio signaling.
I'm reminded of the older 40-200MHz Pentium CPUs from the 1990's. You didn't need a sensitive electronic device to actually hear it popping and buzzing when it was doing something, just a regular quiet room was sufficient.
There also really handy for tracing wires in walls before you drill. I used to use something very similar to trace Telephone lines when I worked at British Telecom years ago.
After spending 12 hours inside a grounded metal building, someone asked how it went... I said I a had a Fair-a-day
A proper shielded enclosure does not need to be grounded. Indeed, a conductive metal sphere floating in mid-air would be an excellent shield. Shielding depends on conductivity and thickness of the shield (and that the shield must have no electrical discontinuities). Grounding of a shielded room is primarily done for electrical safety.
@@wb6wsn All true... The last RF resistant room I was in had 3 layers of mu metal foil surrounding a welded 11 gauge carbon steel inner structure, with 3 progressive sized metal doors with metallic finger gaskets the 3 door perimeters...
....
but in the context of the joke, with an unknown floor condition, more like walking into a galvanized grain elevator that most people can relate to, the "grounded" element it was a 'thrown-in'. Boils down to the difference between an engineering or physics class, and a joke.
@@jenniferwhitewolf3784 The 11-gauge steel (seams MIG welded) is the standard for a good quality shielded enclosure. With the outer layers of mu-metal, it sounds like the enclosure was protecting against nearby magnetic fields. Was it a room for some science experiment or maybe a medical facility? Sorry, maybe after >40 years of building shielded enclosures, I was a bit triggered by your humor. Still, the best jokes ARE engineering or Physics jokes. :)
@@wb6wsn It was a low noise chamber for measuring emitted fields from electronic apparatus. It needed to be both magnetic and radio wave quiet. Many such facilities that were built in the cold-war period no longer exist. There was a time when many companies were working on EW and ECM. Even outside the electronic warfare game, there were some pretty neat 'quiet rooms' built for industry. Tektronix had one. When it was torn down the custom made low pass filters that fed the 60Hz/115VAC line into the chamber went to a friend of mine, and now in my possession. Amazing filters.. they pass 60Hz, but are dozens of dB down at 120. I was told the three filters ( one for each AC line) cost Tek about $50,000 at time of construction.
Mr Carlson records at 3:15am and I'm usually up watching until about 3:15am, coincidence? I'm not sure! :)
Thanks. You've made the problem and some solutions very clear. There is a related problem that is a bit obscure (and niche!) but I'll outline it anyway, and that's modulation hum.
As you know many vintage radio enthusiasts build low-power transmitters (Part 15 in the US I believe) to transmit a signal around their home from CDs, podcasts, internet music etc. A persistent but unpredictable problem is hum on that signal - and only that signal - as received on some radios. It has something to do with RF getting into the mains wiring and getting rectified by semiconductors in LED lighting, electric blankets, chargers etc. sometimes even when they are switched off! Sometimes it's not a problem, but when certain combinations of items are on, the problem appears. Ceramic capacitors across the radios' mains inputs and rectifier diodes, sometimes works, but sometimes makes matters worse! Running the transmitter from batteries sometimes works, but not always...
I did an experiment with the family a while ago because I was talking about RFI en EMI, that we get used to, but is always there. I switched off all the breakers in our main panel, and then switched off the main breaker and had everyone turn off all their devices for 8 hours. (refrigerator and freezer were on the lanai at the time and away from the house. At 8 hours, I have them switch on all their devices and I turned on the main, and then each breaker one at a time, and they all actually "heard" the general hum in the house from all the devices. Now I have a bit of a monster on my hands as they are aware of he noise and want me to "fix it. I suggested turning everything off again and leaving it all off. :)
Yes, we are surrounded by noise, and have become accustom to it. Just a simple experiment like what you did will really reveal how loud these appliances actually are.
Who cares about a bit of noise, I'm more concerned about the noxious fumes coming out of the tailpipes of internal combustion engine vehicles that I'm forced to breathe every day.
Whenever we have a power outage I'm always amazed at how quiet the house gets.
@@dannelson8556 Most modern cars put out next to no evaporative emissions. It’s also hilarious to me that you are using the internet which runs off energy that may be dirty and likely a device that was transported by many vehicles producing those fumes. You want to run my life but you won’t adhere to your own extremist philosophy in your own.
@@daa3417 you might want to put the crack pipe down 🤣🤣🤣
I work in the WiFi world which is in the 2.4 Ghz and 5Ghz range and we also deal with RF interference and how to mitigate it between devices inside a household. I had to share this video with the rest of my team. Always excellent to watch your videos Mr. Carlson.
What can cause RFI in the form of human speech into a 2.4ghz security camera?
@@Edsvideovault5150 What do you mean by human speech? How does it show in regards to your camera? When you say 2.4 GHz is that the frequency it operates as a direct connection or is it WiFi enabled? What’s the make and model of the camera?
@@laurigardner6227 voices , as in people talking on a device that bleeds into the camera and gets recorded.
Thanks very much for making this video, as someone who has only a basic knowledge of electronics dating back from the 1960's onwards, I often wondered how these small switch mode powers supplies were working and you have explained that very clearly so that I can understand, even with my basic, rather old, knowledge. I will certainly make sure that I un-plug these things when ever possible now knowing how much noise they are emitting.
I find I can understand the basics of most of your excellent videos because you explain things so clearly.
fun example of RF getting into places, depending on your cell carrier and which G they are using. You can hear it in some cheaper PC speakers when a text is coming in before the phone makes its ping if you have the phone right by the speaker.
A great solution I implemented for my electronic music studio was to purchase a balanced power isolation transformer (specifically a Furman IT-1210) into which all equipment handling analog audio is connected. There is no detectable hum or noise whatsoever.
"Radio falls silent for death of Marconi ..." On Wednesday 21st July 1937 the radio waves fell silent from 17:00 to 17:02 GMT out of respect for Marconi who had died the day before at the age of 63. Man-made RF Interference has been with us ever since, as never again would it ever be possible to even attempt a global shut-down of technology !
Macaroni was just noodling around with technology that Tesla invented.
Interesting! I have a portable tape player with radio. It is fun listening to AM . There are no AM stations in Norway. Walking around with it, whenever you are in line of sight of cell towers, they make this kinda multi tone noise.. power cables under ground make a lot of hum. I once took it up to the nearest weather radar. They are not fenced up in Norway. You can hear a couple of bzzt for every revolution of the radar. Im guessing it is the side lobes of the beam that reach the ground. I dont know. Fun it is 🙂
I use to have an X-10 home automation system. The AC power line noise got so bad from all the choppers that the system would no longer work.
A lot of 60Hz noise in complex audio systems isn't caused by outside sources but from ground loops within the system. That often happens when two or more pieces of interconnected audio equipment have their AC grounds connected a different points. Sometimes it can be a real bear to find and even harder to (legally) eliminate it. I think it's the pro audio industry that keeps the makers of those 3-prong adapters in business.
Dear Mr. Carlson, this topic is so useful that no one mention (business secret?), thank you for your teachings, I'm glad you share the knowledge, thank you very much!
You are very welcome Johnson!
That is a mighty impressive microphone, And might go a long way as to why your vocal audio is so. good. Very good video. learned a lot here.
Greatly enjoy your channel and old tube electronics - this is a great learning channel. I strongly believe too many people these days stay in the theoretical and don't get their hands "dirty" - they forget or overlook the fundamentals found in studying the old ways (and I'm not all that old). Your video is timely here ... we have Samsung 245BW monitors everywhere - great monitors - and apparently they can send signals back through the mains, when their power light indicates off/standby, but its main power switch is on. So many thanks for your videos on this topic ... and for the fun and useful bits to build (for these modern problems, and for fixing the occasional fun old late-40's TV or 20's/30's radio). All the best, Christopher/KA4DQE.
June 22nd 2022 hello my name is Richard Velez I have a problem and I can pay money for your help with an RFID tag / antenna
It's implanted
If the size of a grain of the rice
I don't know the frequency .
And it's a passive device
Is this something you have knowledge worth please help thank you
There are no words to describe your apparent wealth of knowledge in your field. I get excited to learn more every time I watch your presentations.
Glad you're enjoying, and thanks for your kind comment!
Thank you for the excellent video. I was aware of the wall wort noise extravaganza but didn’t know about the plasma TVs noise. I occasionally get serious interference on my am radio and have tried to eliminate it in my house. Now I am thinking one of my neighbors must have a plasma tv. Looking forward to more on this. Also your antenna build.
Glad it was helpful!
I had a HUGE rf noise issue and finally realized it was an Iphone aftermarket charger my daughter left here. A hammer solved that. My radio room has all halogen or incandescent lighting because LED units made too much noise.
Still have a couple lights I can't use in the house if listening to my old AM radios.
Not much that beat an good old Weidlerizing to some piece of crap.
Thankyou Paul for your awesome videos I watch daily and am learning a load. I rebuild and repair Hammond organs and love working on 122 leslie speakers. You are my favourite utube electronics guy out there. Thankyou!
Thank-you Mr. Carlson. I like your style and handy gadgets. Keep up the good work. I thought you were going to go around the house flipping off breakers with the probe turning them on and listening to refrigerators freezers TV's clothes washers and dryers, " smart appliances " or properly setting up a local noise antenna to notch out the offensive signal from the desired one. Thanks again looking forward to the microphone modification.
I have a terrible noise issue from my solar inverter and controller, I've been searching the internet for ideas on how to reduce it. Thanks for this insight into noise and how to reduce it.
Glad I could help Colin.
The only electrical work I do is automotive but I absolutely love this channel!
Lots of RF and EMI in them.
One of the first videos i saw Mr. Carlson was fixing a red fire bird .... i think some kind of custom cct module that got his car back working better than before. Since then I've been hooked. :)
I know right, it helped me starting building my synths and sound effects but this channel is the best
We have an old RCA console stereo that I restored. I went on the hunt for RF noise sources and found that our fancy pants refrigerator was the main culprit of messing with FM and completely killing AM reception intermittently! After moving the refrigerator circuit breaker to the other hot “phase” in the breaker box the noise is mostly gone. Unfortunately I noticed a much more faint, but annoying interference that seemed to come and go. I turned of everything in the breaker box except for the stereo and made sure nothing was plugged in on that circuit but the noise persisted. I was almost ready to give up and claim that the noise was inherent to the stereo then my cell phone battery went dead and the noise went away. Nope, wasn’t the phone, but rather the Bluetooth module I put inside the stereo that would create noise on its power supply when my phone would pair with it :o
Youre the only person I've seen explain this in a practical yet scientific way, very well said. I could really, really use your help..
I have been going crazy the past month trying to figure out where this subsonic/infrasonic noise is coming from. Gets up to -20 dB of noise between 5hz to 50hz, goes up to 150hz at around -50 dB then has a sharp cutoff right at 150hz with preamp set to about 40% and all other appliances/electronics are turned off (I have wa47 as well with apollo). On the analyzer it looks very shaky almost like a flutter.
I've tried using laptop power (unplugged) and turned off all the breakers in my house and it still does it, even in various spots of the house. Tried multiple cables (including mogami gold), 3 computers, 2 interfaces, 4 outlets/outlet combinations. Got a Furman power conditioner. I've also tried putting sand bags on top of drop cieling as well as rockwool and still no luck.
Key findings: noise in 5-50hz range jumps up when I *very lightly* press on my wall, as well as my drop cieling; some spots more than others I've noticed, but all spots at least to some degree. So I'm like oh well must be structural vibration issues with my wall paneling and cieling tiles/structure, right? However, when I "lightly tap" 7 pin cable coming from power supply near the mic-side, it does the same thing, those freq jump up, making me question if it could be an electrical/EMI, RF issue. There is a power line on my yard about 30 yards away. There is also a well (for water) under the yard. There are wires coming from garage that goes over drop cieling, as well as a vent-tube.
Any help and/or tips would be greatly, greatly appreciated you have no idea. I just want to have clean recordings and not have to use a low pass filter everytime to only help alleviate noise but still have that flutter-y interference that affects the rest of the frequencies. Thank you for reading and I hope you can find the time to reply even if it's just a sentence! 🙂
Probably a mechanical vibration that the mic is picking up. IE: Furnace motor blowing air continuously, air conditioner or heat pump running, fridge or an appliance that's on, dehumidifier, bathroom fan.... so on. 5 to 50 Hz is below mains frequency, so again most likely a vibration. If you unplug the mic and it goes away, its pretty hands down at that point. One odd issue could be, the mic is breaking into oscillation, IE: a problem with the circuitry, but that would be rare, especially with a WA47. You could swap the tube out in case it's the issue.... again rare issue though.
For my amateur radio 📻 I do not use a
switching power 🔋 supply for the reasons
you gave. My traditional 30 amp power 🔋
supply, Astron, is no problem in this case.
Ray W2CH (60 years licensed).
Amazing. Making me think of the pulses inside my pc and cellphone like it's a living organism.
Interesting. During my 22 years in the U. S. Navy, RFI and EMI suppression was a big deal. I expect it still is. I spent the first couple of years assigned to Naval Security Group Activities. I was a CTM (Communications Technician Maintenance). I spent a lot of time converting teletype from High Level signaling (60 ma current loop) to Low Level signaling (+/- 6 VDC). Aboard ship, one of the simplest EMI fixes was bonding straps on watertight doors and on armored cable, where the cable passed through bulkheads.
How do you stop frequencies
Here in the UK we were not allowed CB till 1981, we got allowed to use FM. Maybe just as well as I got an AM CB and started to use it from home, well, the neighbours TV was totally wiped out. No picture, only sound was me talking on the CB, which was illegal at the time. He heard me s clearly he knew who it was coming from! I got a knock on the door, I was asked to stop using the CB. Just till the weekend or he could fix it. He fixed old black and white TVs as a hobby, so he knew what was causing it. So I waited till after the weekend, he duly came to the door and asked me to transmit and at full power. So I did and no more problems. Not so with the other neighbour, they threatened all sorts of things, we will get the authorities on to you. Told them it was their TV that was at fault, it was as wide as a barn door. I fitted a filter to the coax of their TV (they still didn't believe me, but the picture was fine after that, but there was slight sound distortion.
The other neighbour was asked by them if he got problems from me, he said he had, but he fixed it very easily, he explained to them that it was the TV that was at fault, not me.
He said he would fix it for them, just this once. I paid the neighbour to sort it and we all lived happy ever after.
Strangely, I was living at home and all my parents TV did was give a slight buzz (more of a click) as I keyed up, then ignored the CB completely!
Thankfully I had a neighbour that understood what was happening :-))
Thanks for sharing your story Bob!
Here in the US, CB was 27 MHz and tv Chan 2 was 54 MHz and ch 5 was 81 MHz, so yeah
I would love to see you do a follow up to this video and check some common computer parts. An SSD, a mechanical drive, a network card, motherboard and PC power supply. I think that would be fascinating to see the noise that comes from those parts!
Thank you. I struggle with electronics.
Thank you for making it easier to understand.
Happy to help!
Wow - I got to make one of these! Thanks Mr Carlson! This kinda stuff is why I’m a Mr Carlson Patreon 💯
So that's two more items to add to my projects list. Excellent stuff 👏
Wow! That has been one of my favorite videos of yours so far! I love the easy to understand descriptions, and I feel like I learned a lot about noise issues! Made me want to really work on vetting the power supplies I use around my music studio, and figure out a way to prevent noise and radio signals from getting into my spring reverb tank guitar pedal.
June 22nd 2022 hello my name is Richard Velez and I need your help. This is not my field. A professionalism
As to my problem I have an RFID implanted size of a grain of a rice I don't know the frequency that activated is a passive device I can pay money I can pay cash it's just something you can help me with please thank you
@@richardvelez2284 What?
Story at the phone company, they rolled out adsl to residential customers and it git popular. One neighborhood had consistent complaints about their internet going out most days in the evenings. They fixed and double checked all the cable and dsl equipment. Finally they hired a contractor who specializes in finding weird trouble. He drove around with his AM radio on and found someone with a shoddy TV. FCC would take too long to respond, and they guy wouldn't just stop so they bought him a new tv and traded for his old one.
Funniest part is the bad tv was never destroyed or disabled. It sat in the office for years until everyone forgot, and then was put out on the curb for free.
Someone grabbed it, hopefully they recycled it though.
I am so glad I found this channel. Even though I probably wont be working on much radio or old audio equipment unless im doing my DJ stuff, I do love doing my own electrical work. Im learning so much more every day. You are making me confident that I can actually build circuits now.
Thank You for your feedback!
I think of the linear power supply as an “analog” type supply, and a switching type as a digital one.
Local and pirate radio on the FM band... Lot's of them have issues with RF interference. The math... Wavelength = 3 meters. Standard RCA audio cables (CD player to mixer) are 75 cm... 300/100(MHz)=3(mtr)/2(ideal dipole total length)=1.5(mtr)/2=0.75cm each pole = resonant! (Discarding the velocity factor, that's not very critical at the receiving end). Now I understand why they have those issues!! Tanks!!
WOW....one in ever 100 videos (at least in my experience) legitimizes RUclips. I could listen to "Mr. Carlson" all day long. He simplifies things for people, and doesn't make what's become an epidemic assumption of another person's knowledge when explaining things. Let's face it....if you're coming RUclips for info, then by default you're a "beginner". I still don't know how to find/shield whatever noise is coming through my studio monitors (which seems strangely connected to either my bluetooth mouse/keyboard, or PC in general). But, knowing what's causing it (fundamentally), was fascinating to learn. Now...if I could just get on of those silver doo-higgies, with the little pointy-thing-a-ma-bobber. Now....some golden knowledge for Mr. Carlson, to make HIS life much more worthwhile; The words "Doo-higgie" OR "thing-a-ma-bobber", are NOT in the average spell-checker.....just sayin'.
I am an Amateur Extra Class radio operator. One afternoon a very strong intermittent noise source showed up on the 7 Mhz band. It had a cadence like a washing machine: zaap zaaaaap zaap. It remained a persistent problem for weeks. Finally, I built a 2 turn electrostatically shielded loop antenna about a meter in diameter, plugged it into a portable shortwave receiver, and began walking around the neighborhood. It had a bidirectional pattern, but that was good enough for me. It turned out that the guy wire on a nearby utility pole was intermittently shorting against the steel cable that supported the cable TV and telephone lines. The steel cable ran parallel to and underneath 14kV power lines, so it picked up some power inductively. The guy wire provided an intermittent path to ground when the wind blew. I called the power company with my findings. A couple of days later the noise stopped, and I got a call from the engineer at the power company. He was amazed that I was able to find the RFI source without expensive gear. His crew had installed stiff plastic insulation to prevent the guy wire from rubbing the horizontal cable.
Thanks for sharing your story John!
One of the worst offenders is powerline ethernet bridges. There is one in a house near me and it generates S9 interference from 6 MHz to 30 MHz. Since the electric for multiple houses is on a single transformer, it wipes out the entire neighborhood. Interestingly the ham bands are notched out including WARC. But it makes WWV 15 MHz unusable.
Have a long wave radio? It's a great RF noise detector.
Worst thing I have is a paper shredder. Luckily it only runs for a minute. But during that minute it spews devastating RF hash, clobbers TV reception, even on UHF.
An SFX form factor power supply made so much noise I could hear it in my power lines all the way down the block.
I've had noisy lights and a few other noisy power supplies.
Although the products functionality are pretty good, D-Link networking devices are notorious for being noisy with lots of RF on your Ethernet wires. Swapping for Netgear or TPLink or whatever, leaving wiring as is and it's dramatically quieter.
Yeah, I have a plasma TV. I love it, for watching, but wow it's noisy. You just don't get 600Hz refresh rates with that brightness from anything else. But you can't use a radio and the TV at the same time.
What's that, a Samsung product that worked?
Ditch the paper shredder and just get a burn barrel.
Thank You for another entertaining, and educational video Mr. Carlson. Always learn something new. You sir, are d'man.
Even after auditioning 3 separate AVR's, the same ambient sound of the room was still present! That told me the unwanted faint background signal noise I had been experiencing had nothing to do with the actual components. Therefore, my attention changed to the cables. And even then It was only on the third occasion after I finally purchased shielded cables that the noise floor within my small room finally came down to satisfactory levels.
Cables often act as antennas for attracting RF, and the longer the cable, the better the antenna. Probably explains why when I used to disconnect my heights and surrounds within 10 minutes, the faint background signal noise (RF/EMI) within my small room used to disappear/dissipate.
The more cables I shield, the quieter my room becomes. In fact, the last group of cables I shielded were my HDMI's, and Lo behold the room became slightly quieter yet again.
Love your channel Carlson!! I'm always humored by the way you pronounce solder!!
Looking forward to your mic mod video. Thanks for this excellent video.
For Ham Operators switching power supplies are brutal in the 3-30MHz range. I have one that causes RFI up on the 6m (50MHz range)
Awesome vid! Not done watching yet, but wanted to point out... Another benefit to switched mode supplies/regulators is efficiency. Linear regulation burns off excess as heat. I had to deal with this a lot for low power (iot) applications where battery life is at a premium. Thats more of an issue with regulators, but even switched supplies are more efficient, just noisy af :)
In the case of XLR microphone cables, any noise should be removed via common-mode rejection at the inputs of an op-amp. That is what makes balanced inputs so great, especially for long runs of audio cable.
Wow!! Pure electronic knowledge gold!! Thanks!!
Cheers from Mexico
This is the voice of Sandman...lol.
I love how you take things apart then put them back together seamlessly. I'm a Math/Phys teacher. I will be looking at more of your content to understand your delivery style. Lastly some of my high school student I give advice too ask about which directiin to go into. Depending on their interest I generally say BME or Electronic Engineering. But some are interested in Bioelectronics. Any suggestions about schools in Canada? Thanks👏👏
How much of today's junk passes FCC part-15 noise floor in my house is incredible and it's a collaboration of everything.
Hi Paul, I must admit I sat and smiled like the Cheshire Cat, knowing how fantastic the Super Probe and the Non Contact Signal Injectors are, and both on my bench, as well on yours. I have benefited from your videos immensely and I have improved in my competency in electronics beyond by my trade school training and years with working with electricity and electronics, both professionally and personal. For as always, I give thanks to you, for what you do Paul.
Thanks for your kind feedback Gary!
This reminded me of an amusing episode of Metalocalypse where the sound engineer was going nuts trying to isolate a buzz on Skwisgar's guitar, and resorted to trying to record him from a steel submersible capsule on the bottom of the ocean.
Awesome video, thanks. I have a pretty annoying noise problem at home. Electric guitars hum and buzz quite badly when plugged into either an amp or my recording interface. If I touch the bride or strings it eliminates some of the 60Hz, and if I orient my guitar differently in space it picks up more or less RFI. Often times the noise is too intrusive and I am unable to record guitar. Even plugged directly into my interface (switching PSU) & laptop running on battery. It can be frustrating.
The same guitars and amp are nominally quiet at a friend's house in a different neighbourhood. Thankfully we rehearse at his place.
This reads like a ground issue. There are multiple ways to solve this, but it's probably going to involve modifying the amp. I wish you luck.
@@MrCarlsonsLab Do you mean that there are multiple paths to ground in the house wiring?
@@Hermiel Well, it all depends on who wired your house. I've seen some pretty scary stuff in my time! If your amp is humming at your place, and not your friends place, I would suspect something may be wrong with the house wiring. Possibly the hot and neutral are reversed in some outlets? You can purchase a device from most hardware stores that you can plug into your outlets to verify that they are wired correctly.
Not going to lie, the tablet noises immediately made me remember Atari 2600 games like pitfall. Thx for the nostalgia @MrCarlson
Excellent content.
I have terrible noise issues whenever I try to play my single-coil electric guitar and I am afraid there is nothing I can do about it, except build a metal box large enough for me to sit in it and play like that.
I live on a hill in a large city and there are several transmitters scattered all around me. There is a transmitter sitting on top of a skyscraper just 450 meters from me, I see it from my window. Supposedly it transmits 2 FM radio stations, but lord knows what else it is blaring. Not to mention about 25 wifi networks from surrounding flats and the office building across the street.
This is at least my second viewing of this video. Learned a few more things.
Thanks again.
A rather amusing (sometimes!) thing the "Reverse-Super-Probe" signal-leakage finder device reminded me of was in US Navy's modern 1200-pound/sq.-inch pressure-boiler steam-powered warships before they were all removed from service, other than nukes, between 1990 and 1992 (I was caught up in this sudden and unexpected decision, since all of the TERRIER-equipped guided missile ships were eliminated by this action and I, as a computer engineer, had to find a new job -- TARTAR until it too was removed as the Aegis guided-missile system took over the long-range missile air-defense of all US Navy fleets). I was told that to find small steam leaks in the pipes, they had to be extremely careful because the steam was invisible for some distance as it jetted out until it cooled enough to condense into a visible vapor. This meant that you had usually a small needle-like jet of super-hot extremely-high-pressure steam which was invisible for several feet from the hole making it. This was EXTREMELY DANGEROUS!!! In fact, to find such leaks they used a very simple method: They got long broom handles with their tips held far away from the person holding them and very slowly swung the tip around to where they suspected the jet came from. They knew they had found it when the tip of the handle was SLICED OFF LIKE WITH A SAW BLADE! Rather more serious a technique than Mr. Carlson's probe system,. wouldn't you say?
Love your show’s,keep up the good work. Thank you for great content.
With the subject being *Stop RF and EMI Interference* I had hoped to see some suggestions on how to lower the video noise floor in a video recorder.
For instance by better EMI-shielding of the PSU, better RF-shielding of the Y/C signel lines by substituting the PCB-tracks with thin Belden RF-cabling and by other means. All in recognition that a lot if not all of prosumer videorecorders were manufactored within a pricerange and that corners were cut.
And thereby it would be possible to some extend to exceed factory specifications (Video noise -43dB) if one were to fiddle around and change stuff in the right places. I bet refurbishers out there could use some tips, guidelines, experiments and results.
u probably already know this mr carlson and everyone else but dat touchscreen tablet made the buzzing noise because the touch screen, to detect stuff, attempts to form a capacitor with whatever is right above the screen at every point on the screen in a very fine grid of plates to find when a conductive finger is touching somewhere on the glass creating capacitors with the grid of plates below the glass. But to detect a capacitor you need to apply AC to it so there is always a weak AC electric field emitted by the plates of the touch screen grid if there is nothing to complete the capacitors and sink the electric fields
Phenomenally helpful. So glad you uploaded this video, thank you!
Glad it was helpful Anthony!
I’ve been hoping to exactly this video.
The differences. And the reasons they fail or lose power.
If only I had more thumbs to give thumbs up! Thank you for your excellent content!
I appreciate that!
Very well done! Just the right amount of reduction of details. Thank you, Mr. Carlson!
June 22nd 2022 my name is Richard,Velez
I have a problem..
That I can pay cash for your help..
I have an RFID implant microchip tag./antenna.. it's a passive device.
I do not know the frequency. That activates other devices
Through my device
Please if you can help me thank you.
I can pay cash.
Most interesting *noise* I've come across is _CPD_ and its causes which is the bane of CATV RF distribution systems because it *wipes out* the entire return path spectrum 5Mhz to well past 80Mhz
Verry nice, great info. Especially impressed with your drawing ability.
Yep had random interference when carrying out a if alignment. Every time I changed position on my seat .or stood up loads of noise. In the end I Found that it was my vap in my pocket that was the culprit
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is Mr. C's first plunge into smartphone synthesizers.