Scratchy fuzzy noise in voice-over recording

[judithwest]

I record audiobooks in my home studio, and over the last year, have been occasionally getting a terrible scratchy noise during some recordings.

• The creepy-scratchy overlay (voice is audible "under" the noise) is not present at all in monitoring the recording, only in playback.
• The noise can happen at any point at which I started or resumed recording.
• When it has occurred, it generally doesn't happen the next time I restart during the same session.
• No changes have been made (nothing replugged, reset, etc.), other than stopping and starting.
• There's no discernible pattern to the recurrence of this anomaly.
• It doesn't seem to be associated with any external, nonrecording event.
• It started happening with my (recently jettisoned) Pro Tools system and has continued with my new Sound Forge setup --for both of which I use/d my original Mbox as an interface and a Glyph external hard drive for sound file storage. (I work on an IBM ThinkPad T42 running Windows XP.)

I'm pretty thoroughly befuddled. And, though I'm not even slightly audio-astute (just know what I need to know to get by), I've wondered if this might be an electrical, rather than electronic, problem.

For some reason I'm guessing this a hardware problem. Hope someone here can help or recommend something.


Cheers,

Judith

[Andrew_Malloy]

Does it happen when you are on battery power, AC power or both?

[judithwest]

Does it happen when you are on battery power, AC power or both?

I don't run on battery when recording, so only happens on AC.

[Andrew_Malloy]

Try running on battery power. I have seen it happen quite often where you will get noise from the power supply in the audio interface. If that is the problem, there is a simple solution.

[judithwest]

Try running on battery power. I have seen it happen quite often where you will get noise from the power supply in the audio interface. If that is the problem, there is a simple solution.

Andrew -

I don't think my battery would last long enough to get a useful test, unless the problem just happened to occur right off the bat. I can only run for an hour or so on battery, and my sessions tend to run at least three hours each. I'd have to stop and recharge every hour.

Is there another alternative? Do you think it might be a grounding issue or something? (Caveat: I don't know enough about electricity except to say "grounding" and look pleased with myself!)

Thanks for responding.

- J

[Andrew_Malloy]

You could try recording for a few mins with it plugged in, wait for the noise to happen, then unplug it to see if the noise goes away.