Tech Tip - 10/19/12 (Radio Interference in Studio A Gone!)

After some research and concept testing we have purchased some gear that has "eliminated" the radio interference that has been a headache in studio A.  While we won't be able to completely eliminate the problem due to environmental factors, through the use of a device called a microphone pre-amp, or "mic pre", we have been able to overpower the noise and get a clean signal.

For those interested in the tech side of things...

Microphones put out a weak signal and need to be run though an amplifier anyway, hense the difference between mic and line level sound sources.  Part of the issue we saw here was that when we were using put out a weaker signal (like our standard lav mics) needed to have the levels up really high to get a good strong signal, this was true for both the gain and fader.  Doing this also increased the background noise (the radio).  So we thought, what if we could increase the signal strength going into our board, that way we wouldn't have to raise the gain and fader up so high...The mic pre, does just that...running the mics though a pre, increases the signal strength and out putting a line level signal.  We then run this much stronger signal into the mic side of our production mixer (even more amplification) and we can drop the gain and fader levels down and still get a nice strong signal without raising the background noise. The result, no radio station interference.