Radio noise!! The sound guy’s (gal’s) worst enemy!

We had a church built about a year ago with a really nice sound system that was AMAZINGLY better than the old one.  I was constantly fighting noise of some kind in the old church, so this new one made me almost giddy with excitement. I was like a kid in a candy store!

Then it happened.  We had a lightning strike!  NOOOO!!!!

Not everything was taken out, but just enough to limit our capabilities for a couple of weeks.  We called in the professionals and they replaced everything that was apparently affected, but now we have a country-western radio station rearing it’s ugly head intermittently.

Now don’t get me wrong – I have nothing against country-western music.  I enjoy all types of music in their proper place.  It’s just that I’m kind of a control freak and don’t appreciate uninvited music stations during the church service!!

I think it may be coming in through the electrical service somehow, but the electricians that wired the new church are now out of business and the elders are hesitant about paying for someone to come in and troubleshoot the problem, so it looks like I’m going to have to get off my lazy butt and spend some time tearing into the church’s electrical systems to see if I can find a clue.

Sigh….  honeymoon’s over.

One positive note, though – I do enjoy a good challenge, and by golly, I’m not letting a radio ghost kick my butt!!

More later…

I FOUND IT!!

Somehow one of the aux outs from my sound board got plugged into a line in.

I’m going to blame one of the video guys because it was behind their computer  ;>).

I can see how it happened, though.  First, let me explain how I have the video computer set up:

There is a dual adapter plugged into the video computer speaker jack – one line goes to the sanctuary sound system and the other one is supposed to go to the local computer speakers.

There is also an output from the sanctuary sound board that goes to the computer for recording the audio portion of the church service.

At some point, the speakers got unplugged and the recording input line got plugged into the dual speaker output adapter.

After I corrected it, the sound system output increased a lot, and the radio noise went away. (Please don’t make me explain where the radio noise came from or went to because I can’t)  It took a couple of weeks to reset all my gains, but now I’m back in my happy place!