• It's part of the design of PC power supplies that a small amount of current leaks to earth. It can cause problems with RCD's in large offices.

    Weird that the midi is causing it too but I suppose it could be a ground hum due to earth differences between the midi and audio connections.

    One of my favourite firewire options was the Motu 828, they are easy to pick up now although they had some issues with the 2 inputs on the front everything else is pretty good and the aes output stands up to some expensive stuff.

    Running balanced cables is only sorting out any interference picked up by the cable, if there is noise in the signal when it's sent it will be treated as signal.

  • Yeah it’s an odd situation and I’ve basically narrowed it down to something about the USB earth (although it’s typical RFI noise rather than hum - related to the graphics card iirc).
    I seem to remember it kicks in if you just touch usb earths without fully inserting the connector. Everything is running off the same wall socket and the problem has persisted through moving houses!

    My old band had an 828, it was a bit temperamental but great when it worked! Very happy I picked up a ‘broken’ RME fireface very cheaply a few years ago though.

About