Hard Drive noise thru Traveler?

[ZisBass]

Hey all, I searched the forums but maybe I have a unique problem.

Just got a Traveler and have noticed something strange. I've been running a synth and bass guitar direct (no mics) and recording with headphones. I've been hearing a high pitched noise of the hard drive when recording to disk. And it is coming through the headphones only when the hard drives spin up, ie if I'm monitoring through CueMix and NOT recording, no noise, hard drives are asleep no problem. I can audibly hear the hard drive whine on a track I recorded.

I'm new to the traveler and was wondering if anyone else had the same issue. I also noticed that playing bass while monitoring through cue mix a definite change in tone when monitoring through the computer if I change the gain on Mix 1 analog 5 (which has my bass pre plugged into it) changing the gain on the traveler from off to on does not mute it (when played through cue mix) but definitely changes the sound.

My setup:

PB G4 1.5ghz, 1.5gb ram, 10.4.7, firewire 400 HD hooked through firewire 800 port and Traveler plugged into the 400 port.

Anyone else experience this?

[rockitcity]

Yep, I've had the same problem. What kind of drives are you using? I have an EZ Quest Cobra FW400 that is quiet when looped through the Traveler, but I have several Hitachi Travelstar 7200 rpm drives in MacAlly cases that chatter like crazy when hooked up the same way. My solution was to get a Firewire PCMCIA card (I got an Adaptec on e-bay pretty cheap), and run my drives from it. Totally eliminated the drive chatter, and adds a completely seperate FW bus as well. The Adaptec came with a power supply that will run 3 drives as well.

AFAIK, the FW 800 and 400 ports actually share the same FW bus, so that when you plug in a FW 400 device, both ports operate at FW 400 speed. If you have a FW 800 drive, you could gain some performance by getting a FW 800 card for your drives.

Bob

[ZisBass]

Funny we both have the same setup. Maybe there's something with the firewire bus on the PB? Is yours the 17" model by chance?

I'll try looping the hard drive through the traveler tonight. I'm currently using an (ancient) VST 7200 rpm 75 gig FW400 and a generic case with a 250 gig (not being used for recording) also FW400 but connected to the FW800 port and the Traveler connected to the 400 port. I was hoping to avoid the PCMCIA, but maybe that's the way to go.

You haven't by chance talked to MOTU about this? I don't think the traveler is defective but it's frickin' annoying that a high end laptop targeted interface does this. I just got the traveler days ago so I'm just figuring everything out.

[rockitcity]

My PB is the 15" model, but otherwise pretty similiar to yours. I suspect the cause of the hard drive noise is some kind of grounding issue, but it was easier to solve with the Adaptec card than to track it down internally. I don't think the noise was recorded, it was just monitoring, but still unacceptable.

I did not contact MOTU, as it is probably not their problem. Most likely an Apple issue, and they are not going to do anything about it anyway.

FWIW, I got the Adaptec card for something like 50 cents plus shipping. It was worth it.

Bob

[ZisBass]

I'm thinking of heading the card route too. I do video editing also and I was looking into the new SATA cards with an external drive or a fast FW800 drive. Any thoughts? I'm hoping to track at 192, and I have no idea what kind of drive horsepower the audio world uses.

[Cyclone]

I've had this too. In my situation my Acer laptop hard disk was being heard in the audio from the Traveler. Found the easiest solution was to get a power filter and plug the Traveler power adapter into it. The Traveler power has to be filtered after the laptop power, so plugging a filter into the wall, a 4-way into the filter, and the laptop and Traveler into the 4-way doesn't work!

[cyanbaby101]

I have a similar issue guys and none of the above helps.

First of all, I get hard drive noise (and other noise) when I plug in the laptop power supply and/or the external fire wire drive.

Second of all, I tried Cyclones solution with no success. I bought a Radio Shack surge protector with 40DB noise filtering and plugged the traveler power adapter into it. I sill get the noise. I even tried plugging the laptop power adapter into the surge protector and the noise stays.

The only time I have clean monitoring is with no external drive and no laptop power to the laptop, but i can't work that way.

Anyone have any more ideas?

[Cyclone]

CyanBaby101: Just PM'd you and then read this!
Sorry to hear it didn't work.
Did you only plug the Traveler into the power filter?
Is the external HD powered from the laptop, or does it have it's own PSU?
Have you tried plugging the Traveler and the studio monitors into the filter?