I understand that. If the cabinet is touching something - floor, wall, whatever - that is vibrating, the object in question can pick up that energy and start moving on its own in harmonic resonance.
Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
Buzz/Hum when NOTHING is plugged into speaker.
- Thread starter SamuelHarris
- Start date
-
- Tags
- speaker
I understand that. If the cabinet is touching something - floor, wall, whatever - that is vibrating, the object in question can pick up that energy and start moving on its own in harmonic resonance.
Got it. I see where you're coming from now.
Sorry.
I did suggest earlier that he try moving the cab.
Might just be the "sea shell" effect.
If the tweeter is siiting behind the baffle with the baffle cutout forming a cavity, it could be resonating at some high frequency and accentuating a narrow range of ambient noise.
Just like holding a sea shell up to your ear.
-
If the tweeter is siiting behind the baffle with the baffle cutout forming a cavity, it could be resonating at some high frequency and accentuating a narrow range of ambient noise.
Just like holding a sea shell up to your ear.
-
A speaker system cannot make noise of any kind without being plugged into an amp. I think you are hearing something from another source. Do you hear voices perchance?
I beg to differ. I had a speaker in my basement that buzzed with nothing plugged in. If you plugged in an amp and turned it on, the buzz went away.
There was a water pipe behind the speaker. Currents from dimmers running down the pipe made a magnetic field that was picked up by a coil in the crossover. When an amp was connected and turned on, the low impedance shorted the buzz signal.
If you move you speaker, it'll stop making noise. If that doesn't work, THEN call the local exorcist.
Might not be related but I used to pick up a Mexican AM radio station on the earpiece of a certain, old school type, land line telephone. The person on the other end of the line couldn't hear it.
Last edited:
I think this is the answer!!
I picked up the cab, held the tweeter up to my ear and walked around the house.
The buzz, got louder/softer based on movement. Must have something to do with my electricity.
There's an outlet a few feet from where I normally put the cab, moving the cab to the other side of the room significantly reduced the buzz.
Eureka! Thanks for the help everyone. Still bizarre to me though...
Yes, you have been infiltrated with nano probes and are in the process of being assimilated. Pretty obvious, don't you think?
Tweeters in bass cabinets. Got to have them. Need them in case the guitar player forgets his amp
Never know when we forget the words and we need to hum
Never know when we forget the words and we need to hum
Beyond bizarre I'd say.
Speakers are such low impedance devices that it almost (said "almost") seems implausible that they would make noise like that except in the presence of a very strong magnetic field, like being right next to a power substation.
Even if that was the case, the drop off of energy would be so fast that I wouldn't expect you to be able to hear anything in all parts of a room.
Take this cab to somewhere else that is not your home (or wherever this happens) and see if you still have the problem.
I think there is still something going on that you've yet to uncover. Power lines essentially have sine waves and sine waves hum, not hiss.
There could be a lot of garbage, spikes, other noise getting into your electrical system from something inside or outside your home.
There may even be some kind of fault like a bad connection in your house wiring that is causing arcing.
Get a hold of a battery operated AM radio, (old nine volt transistor radio if possible) tune it so it's in between stations, start walking around your house and see if you can localize the source of the noise. It might be something that requires an electrician to fix before bad things happen.
A speaker system cannot make noise of any kind without being plugged into an amp. I think you are hearing something from another source. Do you hear voices perchance?
I hear the transformers buzz in certain amps, even when not connected to a speaker (and some do pass audible hum to the speaker) and I hear my LCD TV whine when the screen is dimmed, but this is new to me -- are you saying that the noise is electromagnetically induced -- not a "seashell effect" or something similar? What about with the amp plugged in?
I've experienced "noisy"/"dirty" power and various sorts of RF interference, but nothing exactly like this that I can recall.
As far as tweeters in bass cabs go (at the risk of derailing from discussion of this interesting phenomenon and into a well-worn track), it depends on the tweeter and its implementation in the overall design. I ran tweeter-less for several years (and still do sometimes) but I've heard the MAS 18 and liked how the tweeter worked with that cab on bass and with music. I'm considering one for a small doubling (EB and cello) cab. On the other hand, I suspect the tweeter-less version would be fine for 99% of EB use - my Hathor 1203 does fine with a 3" mid/high instead of a tweeter and I occasionally turn off the tweeters in my MAS cabs, depending on the situation -- generally, I like the extra bit of air/snap -- and they can help to give a better sense of space in recorded music -- but it all depends on your goals, the room, other instruments, and the other parts of your signal chain.
I might have to take my cabs for a walk and see what I hear!
I can confirm this. I have an EV FRFR speaker stored in my crawl space that is millimeters from a water main. The speaker is not plugged in and the tweeter “buzzes”. sounding a lot like AC hum. The further from the water main I place the speaker, the less it buzzes. The space is very small, and it never stops completely other than if I remove the speaker from the crawl space. Electromagnetic fields are pretty wild. When I first discovered it, it kept me up for a week I was so perplexed.
Last edited:
