Good day to all!

This is KILLING ME!!!!

It's not even cell phone useage in my studio (I have an "ALL CELLS OFF" policy in the studio).

It's coming from an adjacent studio, next door, behind my main work area's wall (their studio has no such policy).

The static blurbs coming out my my Dyn BM5a's is getting more and more disturbing. Even a little is too much!

For the record, I have an "LG" phone with Cingular as the provider here in Brooklyn, NY. Whatever my neighbors are using I don't know.

Anyone hear about a fix for this major annoyance?

Thanks for any tips!

Are those monitors magnetically shielded? I never have such noises in my PMC TB2SM-A's, tho my phone usually is less then 1m from them

Lead walls? Tin hat?

More realistically, better cabling.

i'm really skeptical to believe better cabling is going to help something like this.

EMI is a tough problem. Short of building a Faraday cage around your studio you'll have to experiment. Try some clamp-on ferrite emi supressors on your cables (Try searching for fair-rite corporation.). I assume you're using good quality cables? Is your grounding set up properly? Make your cables as short as possible, i.e. don't use a 30ft coiled cable when you only need 3 ft. Sometimes a broken shield connection in a cable (that you don't know about) can cause problems so try swapping out your cables one by one, or using an ohmmeter to make sure the sheilds are good.

Good luck,

John

Are the phones in your studio off, or just set to silent? I'd remove all batteries upon entry to be sure....

The other thing that can work for you is distance. Are you monitors on the wall that divides you from the offending studio? If so, move them. Make sure that your cables and patch bay are as far away from the source as you can get them.

The GSM phones suck.




-tINY

Cell-phone jammer

Make sure there all OFF and if that dosent work,........


Try this

Shielding that works heh

just wrap the whole outside of your studio in foil... yea, that's what i would do.

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/theatre/n...027498,00.html


These guys have the right idea. heh

I have the same problem with Cingular phones in Brooklyn.. My wurlitzer speaker picks up the incoming signals and it sounds like I plugged my cell into a pignose amp
Probably the only solution for dealing with your neighbors is to covertly jam the signal
tough call though....

Hi.

Are you using balanced or unbalanced cables? If it's comming in through the cable balanced cables would help.

I think it has to do with Cingular also, I had a Verizon LG for years with no interference problems.

I moved to a new location where my Verizon phone had terrible reception, so I switched to a Cingular.

Now my reception is excellent but the interference with speakers is crazy.

I would just try talking to the other studio tenants to see if you can come up with a solution, if to no avail, try talking to the landlord.

I don't think the Dynaudios are shielded very well. I have RFI problems with mine. No cell phone, but I pick up radio stations loud and clear. I've read about a few others having issues.

I doubt a cell phone jammer would help even if you could get one. It's gotta put out some noise on the same frequency as a cell phone to work, right?

If it's just the Dynaudios giving you grief maybe you could put some copper netting around them. Pimp them out in gold lame'... or as I posted somewhere before there's always this thing:

http://news.thomasnet.com/fullstory/474398/736

Thanks for the replies. It seems there's no clear cut solution.

IS there anything manufacturers of audio monitors (Televisions too!) can do in future revisions/designs of their products?

I'm sure it would be a great marketing tool as well as a neccessary need in these modern times.

Thanks again and perhaps keep 'em coming!

Seriously,....

Find out if its being recorded, if not i wouldn't worry to much about it


i wonder why the other studio cant hear the RF




.

This is by no means scientific, but in my experience, in the US, phones with Sprint, and Verizon service are far less suceptible to that annoying interference with speakers than phones with T Mobile and Cingular. I think it might have something to do with Cingular and TMobile using GSM and Sprint and Verizon not. So before they enter your studio, make sure they change their plan...

Let me just say this:

My day job is a wonderful heh customer service job @ T-Mobile (which uses GSM, like Cingular). I used to always leave my cell sitting on the right side of my desk - within arms grasp. Everytime I would be talking with a customer and someone would call my phone - I would get the "cell interference" signal you're referring to - very loud in my ear. After awhile, I got tired of it - so I simply lifted it up the next time someone called in and found that anywhere I put it to the left side of my desk - there was no interference whatsoever. After further experimentation, I've found that (at least in my call center), I know exactly what areas I can place my phone in as to avoid interference. I imagine the same would be true in your studio. I do realize that the people next door will at times be moving around and not stationary - but you should still be able to find where in your studio that the frequencies are cutting through.

So, here's what I would do if I were you: I would simply ask the neighbors if they would allow you to place some "test calls" from their studio and have someone move your speakers around while trying to find that "no-cell-interference" sweet spot. It may take a few minutes and a dozen phone calls, but it seems that it would be worth it if you were willing to relocate your monitors

nextels are the worst, by far. they seem to phone home every minute and are much louder than other phones. i remember a few years ago my friend was on his phone in a store and the speakers in the ceiling were getting affected by it.

the bassist in the band i play in has a sidekick and hoenstly we could all be listening to something, his phone being in the other room and somebody will call it and it almost drowns out everything else in the speakers. but my verizon phone, absolutely nothing; when its in my pocket, while i sit right next to the speaker.

Yeah - same here - I've only had problems w/GSM phones - never CDMA. Of course, we rarely have CDMA phones around, but when we have, I can never remember any interference issue. I don't know as much as some of our engineers do - but I do know that the way the phone signal bounces through the frequency spectrum is very different between CDMA and GSM. I think that GSM phones cause more of a problem because they're designed to bounce off of multiple locations in order to get the signal through and w/CDMA - I believe it's more of a straight, narrow line.

For those who aren't aware - Sprint Nextel and Verizon use CDMA while Cingular (ATT) and T-Mobile use GSM.

I've actually come to know the room I work in at my call center well enough that I can usually tell if I'm going to pick up cell interference or not simply based on where my co-workers place their phone. At first, I thought it was just random - but now I've realized that there are actual lines (or, at least, directions) that the cell signals will cross through in order to route from the cell itself to the tower

What do CDMA & GSM stand for?

Thanks

GSM = Global System for Mobile communications. CDMA = Code Division Multiple Access. I believe that approx 80% of global cell networks use GSM, whereas approx 15% use CDMA

Something we use in the studio at work is to simply place a cell phone on an anti-static bag, you know, the gray plastic bags that hard drives and the like come in. It's pretty amazing--when a call comes in, there is no interference, but if you lift the phone from the bag while the ringing is still happening, you'll hear that annoying cell phone interference loud and clear.

So maybe suggest your neighbor has folks lay their cell phones on anti-stat bags? Maybe do the same in your studio as well, because as Tiny suggested, if folks have them switched to 'silent' the signal is still happening.

Or maybe, similar to what some other folks suggested in jest, you need to add shielding of some sort to your monitors. Maybe copper foil or some of this anti-static plastic material is the way to to. I am not sure, but at least it is SOMETHING to try, right?

Of course, as was also asked: does the cell phone noise actually effect the recording? If not, and if shielding is not an answer for you, then maybe you'll just have to live with it, as annoying as that may be.

Question: Are you really really close to a cellphone tower???

(I really can't imagine an actual cellphone handset having enough power to interfere with audio equipment.)

If you are near a tower, you need to ring up the owners as they have a legal responsibility to investigate and eliminate interference with other electronics, same as with any radio or tv station.

I would also question your wiring runs and your electricity mains.

I once had interference when visiting my brother-in-laws house with a portable recording setup and it turned out he had a 'radio over house wiring' setup that leaked into everything plugged into his electrical circuits.

The pink, sickly whiff of spam from this poster dredging up a 5 year old thread to sell 10 year old crap tech that probably didn't work in the first place.


PS... if you think a cell phone causes a bunch of interference in your studio... imagine what a device made to jam cell phone transmissions and reception is going to do.

Oh shoot, I wish I had looked at how long ago some of these posts were! Quite right--that is a thinly veiled attempt to spam. Argh, I got sucked into it!

Like the anti static bag idea, just build a mini Faraday cage to put the cell phones in.

Put the cell phone on a CD...... that will knock it down at least 50% or more.
and now you'll have a use for all those CD's too!

oooh but I want one for the classroom! And taping those classical concerts. Oh, and every movie theater and restaurant I ever go into EVER. And the train!

their site is in China

jammers are illegal in the US, so it dubious that your product will make it through customs, and you probably would be out the money...

passive methods of blocking cell phone signals are legal, you can get some chicken wire - or a LOT of EZ-Pass read-prevention bags - and make your own Faraday cage.

Believe me I have been thinking about it. I wonder what the dumpster out back from EZ-Pass looks like?