Topic: Bewildered by pops in my recordings

[HarpDoc]

I started a thread a while back because I was getting pops in my recordings from DIY mics>ST-20 pre>H120. Got some suggestions which I've tried to implement. Since then I've upgraded to CA-11 mics and a CA-9100 pre. Some thought the problem was that I was hanging my recording gear from the mic stand. I recorded my band at a party over the weekend. Had the mics shock-mounted about 7 feet high on a standard mic stand. I velcro'd the mic cable to the stand and had the pre and H120 on a table next to the stand (out of reach of partyers). The pre and H120 were velcro'd together and connected with a 1" cable that is too short to move around. The party was packed, so I'm sure people bumped into the stand during the night. The recording, while very good for the most part, is still full of frequent pops. Not giant spikes, but loud enough that they must be removed. I can do this with Soundforge 8, but it is a SLOW process of finding/removing one at a time.

I just had a thought that is probably completely silly. I've been using NIMH 9v batteries in the pre. Could it be somehow giving spikes of current that could cause pops?

I'd like to get to the bottom of things so the pops no longer happen. Any other ideas? If not, does anyone know a program that can find/remove pops all in one shot, rather than manually? Thanks.

HarpDoc

[vanark]

Chris Church discourages the use of NiMH batteries in his preamps.  Alkaline is the way to go - the voltage will stay higher than in the NiMH.

BTW, I have no idea if this is the cause of your problem, but sure is easy to change the battery to alkaline and see what happens.

[bugg100]

Did you clean the jacks and plugs with 92% alcohol?  If the stand was bumped, the cables could be twisting as well. 

Joe

[HarpDoc]

Yep, carefully cleaned jacks.

[bugg100]

Can you take some photos of you rig as run when you got pops?

[jkbyram]

possibly a fragmented hard drive. format the hard drive using the iriver original firmware then reload rockbox and record again.

[HarpDoc]

I don't think it's a bad drive, since I formatted it a few recordings ago and have had the pops in every one since. I'll format again though, just to be safe. Here are the requested rig pics. This is how I was set up, although this was against a back wall.

[jkbyram]

dang those are big shock mounts for those mics

[bugg100]

First things first.....

the interconnect between the 9100 and iriver, swap that for a reasonable sized interconnect.  Look at how short but thick that cable is to be bent 180 degrees.  That could be a great deal of torque, right there.  An unshielded cable from any store would be plenty to run a test and eliminate that as source of your trouble.


Did you use the same cable when you were running DIY mics?