Powered speaker white noise...with a twist

[John Allo]

Here's the deal.

Last Saturday night, set up everything, sound checked fine and then hooked up my Starball, which I rested on top of my FBT sub.

I tested that and it worked fine, but (coincidence?) suddenly the 12" FBT powered speaker on a speaker stand behind the sub starts acting funny.

A bizarre white noise could be heard, just from that one speaker. The one on the other side worked fine as did the sub.

Here's the twist...if I rotated the speaker a bit on the stand, the noise would fade (but not completely go away.) After a moment, the noise would get louder until I rotated the speaker, and then it got softer again.

It was noticeable on soft volume, but when I turned up the volume for dancing, the white noise did not get louder. The music then drowned it out the rest of the night.

I haven't had a chance to check things back here, but I figure it was either a fluke thing, or a problem with the output from the sub. Keep in mind that only one speaker acted up, not both. I even tried using different cables to connect to the power and mixer out, but the noise remained.

Anyone have an idea as to what's going on?

[Mike Mahoney]

hmmm, that is odd. The only thing I can think of is if the Star ball uses magnets to operate.

Did it make the white noise when the star ball was unplugged?
Would the other speaker make the same noise if the star ball were placed in front of it?

That's all I can think of right now. Anyone else?

[John Allo]

The noise was still present after turning off the Starball and then unplugging it from its power source.

I didn't have time to switch things around, it was 7:45 when I noticed it and guests were coming in at 8:00 and I still hadn't changed. [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/blink.gif[/img]

[Art Dearing]

[img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/huh.gif[/img] John, where were the speaker power cords pluged? Does your main powered speaker plug into the sub and the sub to the powering source? How about the speaker set on the other side of your setup? Plugged into what?

Mike's diagnosis is certainly worthy of consideration, but I'm no electrical genius by any stretch of the immagination.

Just out of curiosity, what size subs FBT do you have? 15's or 18's?

The white noise scenario is one that we all may want to follow. I've had overhead tube lights (flourescent) that were on the same plug line as my main setup that caused considerable white noise. I believe the overhead lights were also on a dimmer switch.

Interested observer. :shrug

DJ Art

"Less Mic, more music for dancing!"
"Still spinning after all these years...vinyl and CDs"