When a buzzing microphone started interfering with services at his local church, Engineer Dick Neubert realized he wouldn't be able to count on divine intervention to solve the problem.
As he describes in his EDN Tales From the Cube installment "Silence in the Sanctuary," Neubert describes his successfull efforts to locate (and mitigate) the offending party
"Touching the end of the microphone had little effect on the buzz, but covering the end with my hand considerably reduced it...The microphone was obviously sensitive to electrostatically coupled noise....I put the mic back in its place under the ceiling and turned off the ceiling lights. Quiet! I turned on the paddle fans. There was a familiar slight buzz.... I asked our pastor when he'd replaced the incandescent lights with compact fluorescent lamps, which coincided with the onset of the noise problem."
The solution? A custom Faraday Cage, of course. Problem resolved.
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Comments (1)
This seems like a solution where you are masking the problem instead of making it go away. Unless you're working in RF, then "Faraday Cage" is usually the wrong answer.
It could be a problem with the wiring itself - you should never get a buzzing noise in auxiliary equipment from lighting. I would get an electrician (from another firm) in to confirm that the wiring is done correctly. I would do this today. There's a good chance that either the ballasts are wired in backwards (with a hot ground), are underpowered for the lights, or are not isolated from the other circuits properly. Since there's a potential for either fire or shock, this should be looked at quite seriously very quickly.
Posted by themagni | July 30, 2008 5:09 PM