hey Tom, thanks and depending upon the soldering, I might be up for the task. I do pretty well with soldering cables together. NEver could quite get the hang of soldering wire to those small pins you find on boards and such. You might just have a point and I'll have to try a few things I guess, but the transformer sounds interesting. On Mar 3, 2009, at 2:37 PM, Tom Fowle wrote:
> Hi Scott, > Max's idea of using ballanced inputs may work if your mixer has > them, but I > doubt that it does, that's usually limited to commercial audio gear. > > What you probably need to do is "break" the ground to one or other > of the > computers, probably the laptop. Now, of course, just breaking > the ground won't work because you'd loose signal. What you need is > transformer > isolation. There are setups intended to connect audiofrom ham radios > to computers that perform this trick, but they aren't cheap and may > require > a deal of fiddling around to adapt to your setup. > > I wonder if somebody makes a transformer isolated stereo cable? I'll > look > around and see if i find anything. I'm pretty sure radio shlock > makes small audio transformers having a 1 to 1 turns ratio which is > what you need, but I assume you're not into doing much soldering up of > cables your self. > > With all the similar hookups people are doing these days an isolated > cable should > be a product whose time has come. > > As for understanding ground loops, read what max's site > has to say, and know that you need a degree in magnetics and that may > not even help. Basically when you have lots of stuff with common > "grounds" > which of course have nothing at all to do with real "earth" ground, > runnig > through lots of wires, noise energy couples between and amongst them > and > things end up at different potentials in relationship to > each other thus generating unexpected current flow where you don't > want it--- > hum. > > Everybody nuts yet? > If not, why not, i tried! <GRIN> > Tom > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
