60 Cycle Noise Hum and Extra AC Cables

After plugging all of your gear into wall outlets, power strips, or whatever, avoid coiling extra AC cable into a circle to take up the slack. Doing so will create a nice little noise source (60 cycle hum) that can be very frustrating to track down. (Ed. note: What you’ve done is create a primitive transformer, which is inducing current into your audio cabling and devices.) Instead, take that neat little coil of extra cable length, and flatten it out (sort of making it look like a bow tie) then secure the middle with a tie wrap. This causes the electromagnetic field generated to collapse on itself and should help prevent induced noise problems.