February 9, 2008

• Today (well, yesterday) I recorded both the audio out of the room and the feed from the video camera onto my laptop during the scholarship luncheon with the K-State Singers.  It went well until the battery died on my laptop.  You would think that this shouldn’t be a problem, just plug it in.  Only I can’t.

  My power brick is noisy.  Not on its own, but it induces noise in the circuit that it is plugged into.  When I first tried this, I could use the speakers of the sound system to tell when the hard drive turned on or off, because the pitch of the noise as well as the magnitude of the noise would change.  Today, I tried it, just to check.  I didn’t get the same kind of noise, but instead it was the noise of a ground loop.  I think I’m going to have to isolate my computer from ground somehow, but I’m really nervous about trying this.

  Does anyone know anything about laptop power supplies and the noise they introduce into a circuit?

  • 1:11 am
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