getting rid of interference

[Bob Leibman]

I am working on dubbing material from an UHER portable tape recorder running on 5 D batteries to the Audacity program on my Mac to dub into digital format. The problem is with interference. I hear a radio station At low volume on my Uher when it is on and I have connected the first cable (I have several connected to each other to make the connection). The cable is for sending the UHER signal out. As set up it goes to a female/female RCA, then to a y male-2 males to separate the signal so it can be recorded on both tracks of the Audacity file. It then travels on a long cable from 2 RCA males at one end to a TRS cable which I connect with the input into the computer.

The interference does not depend on all of this. It begins as soon as the first wire is connected. This was made for me to be able to record from the UHER. Perhaps it is not sufficiently shielded - but I don't know whether I can do something with this or any of the other cables to shield them - and how to test the others as to their need for shielding. Or is there something else I need to do - ground it? How? Not really familiar with what to do.

 

[Speedskater]

Why does a battery powered unit need long cables?
Have you tried playing back in an other buildings?

 

[Rickster71]

Doesn't the Uher have the ability to used balanced cables? This type of situation is what they were made for.
Either move everything closer together or use balanced cables with short RCA adapters on one end.

 

[TLS Guy]

Firs of all, what is the model of your Uher machine?

Do you hear the radio station on the headphone output of the Uher.

Next it is not necessary to make a two track file. You can make a mono WAV, and most programs will convert the Wav to dual mono at the touch of a button.

All reel to reel machines are now old and not fit for purpose without the restorers hand. It is highly likely there is something wrong with the electronics making it prone to RFI. There are a lot of high gain circuits in tape machines that make them prone to this sort of thing. Just one poor connection will act as a radio detector.

If you do not here the radio station on the head phones, than get the machine close to the computer, with a short cable and record it mono.

What are your tapes? Are they full track mono, 1/2 track mono, or 1/4 track mono.

If you are trying to play a stereo tape on a mono machine this will not work.

So I need to know a lot more details of what you have and what you are doing.

Reel to reel machines are complicated, with a tone of different track lay outs.

That is why I have to have so many reel to reel machines for archiving.

If you can't solve this easily, you can sent the tapes to me for archiving. If you want good copies then my machines will give you much better fidelity than a battery operated Uher portable.