I have recently moved house and was shocked when I fired up my kemper and mac in my lovely new studio to have a hum from hell. I have followed a bunch of advice and after hours of experimenting have tracked the source to a pair of dimmer switches in the kitchen below. Question is what do I do now? Anyone got any advice?
Bad hum
- andrewwarne
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shield the dimmers with copper foil or get rid of them and put some normal switch in.
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Hi Andrew,
I've been through similar..... Our kitchen dimmers are quite a way from my studio but still put some hum on the Kemper. The big offender in my case was actually energy saving light bulbs in our hallway. Not dimmed, but just horrific. They were far worse than the dimmer in my case but in general I absolutely feel you pain. Any noise bar what I'm making drives me nuts!!!!
At the moment, it's a case of replacing the energy saving ones in the hall and lights off in the kitchen' when I'm recording. The dimmer switches are decent quality so, other than replacing the switches, that's my cure.
As for shielding the switch - I'm not convinced. These are in metal, earthed wall boxes so all of the bit you could possibly screen are already done in my case. I think these things put noise out into the actual wiring.
My long-term solution for out kitchen is replacing all the lights (12v halogens but there are 230w worth in there!!) with LED and getting rid of the dimmers. That'll sort it but I need floorboards up etc. Not for the lighthearted!
Anyway, here's an article I found very useful. Good luck in your quest for silence
