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persistent hum in air chain after thunderstorm

G

Greg Goodfellow

Leading Participant
My son-in-law does IT work for a local Christian FM station, which has recently developed a pronounced hum after a thunderstorm last week. I'm not an engineer, and I've not listened to this station lately. They are having their engineer stop by in the next week or so, but this got me curious: Again, I know this could be wide-open, but I'm sure many engineers on here have dealt with this repeatedly. Does it sound like the transmitter is, and I'm showing ignorance here, 'out of phase'? Perhaps the storm had nothing to do with it except as a coincidence, and we have to consider the sound card. Again, I'm curious...what could it be, pros? Thanks in advance for taking the time to respond, if you do!
 
You have to isolate it out by the air chain, starting at the program out of the board, thru the processing, to the feed to the transmitter, the exciter, etc etc etc.

Hums are USUALLY bad grounds, or grounds from 2 different circuits not agreeing with each other.

Start at the board and work to the transmitter....

Once you figure out where the hum is getting induced into the audio, then we can address the cause
 
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THANK YOU! I will pass this along to my son-in-law, who needs to convince the station owner to become part of this group!

Greg
 
MRBIboredop said:
You have to isolate it out by the air chain, starting at the program out of the board, thru the processing, to the feed to the transmitter, the exciter, etc etc etc.

Hums are USUALLY bad grounds, or grounds from 2 different circuits not agreeing with each other.

Start at the board and work to the transmitter....

Once you figure out where the hum is getting induced into the audio, then we can address the cause
Click to expand...

Excellent advice. Textbook "Troubleshooting 101" there.
 
MRBIboredop is correct. The cause could be anywhere. Start at the program output and work down the chain. Once the equipment is isolated, we could help him resolve the issue.
 
I've heard humming noises can come from bad cables, so it might just be a cable that needs replacing.
 
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