Recording Noise? International Warranty?

Hey all,

So I just bought a battery powered stereo shotgun mic (Azden SMX-10) to record ambient sounds and samples on my travels with my new MPC-500 only problem is, when i record i get horrible noise, not just a little... shit loads.

Anybody had this problem? i've tested the mic on other devices, my audio interface and my flatmates Zoom H-4 portable recorder... sounds great on those!

I also seem to have some noise from the headphone out just whenever the mpc is on which i see some of you guys have also experienced, it didn't come through the main outputs so it didn't bother me... is this all related perhaps? noise on headphones is one thing, but recording?? arrrgh...

this is really getting me down as this was kinda the whole reason I bought the mpc, to record and sequence on my travels...

Anybody know if i have 2 take this back, will Akai's distributer in Hong Kong accept an MPC bought in Japan? or are they not international warranty?

I also have problems whith noise on recordings. Anyone that have a solution to this?!?

Its a grounding noise..
It usually only happens when your running on batteries..
When its plugged in it fine...

As retarded as it sounds...When im out and about, i usually have my macbook
with me so i just plug in the usb cable into the 500 and my laptop, and its not so loud any more...

I guess you could carry a grounding rod with you, and stick it into the ground when you are doing field recordings lol...

When you guys have nothing plugged into the inputs and go into record mode with monitor on (and set to record inputs not main)... do you hear a bunch of noise kick in? it is really bad on mine if the master is set to 0db

the noise seems to change dependent on the mic/line setting 2...

plugging the USB into my macbook didn't seem to do much, i can't check with AC power plugged in at the mo because I only have a japanese adapter and currently i'm in HK.

i just want to figure out if this is an MPC500 problem as a whole or mine is just bust.

also it seems with fresh batteries, my headphone noise problem goes away... using samples is crystal clear... but sadly the recording noise is just as bad.

hmmm it does sound like a grounding problem. but u said with fresh batteries it doesnt make as much noise? well for all of us 500 users, wen the batteries run low, it make a lot of noise. usually wen it gets lower than 6volts or something like that (it dies under 5volts if im not correct... or something similar to that). and then wen u wanna sample/record, it takes more voltage and picks up the sounds more that it really really makes more noise. that happens to me wen im only using battery and its running low. thats normal. it doesnt happen wen i hav it plugged in with the ac adapter. hey, big tip though, shut off the backlight and it reduces the noise a bit, regardless low battery or ac adapter.

first thing u would hav to do is test if it happens only with low batteries or not, then u hav to test somehow with a plug too... that should b as soon as possible. if it happens with charged batteries and even the ac adapter plugged in... it might be a grounding problem, but i never had a grounding problem so i cant give advice about that. and if worse comes to worse (which i doubt) and it doesnt work even after fixing all the problems... then yeah, warranty.

most likely its low battery though, happens to me too. get rechargable batteries keeping them charged above 7 volts, the higher the better. and keep the backlight off as much as possible, makes the battery last longer. good luck man.

Hi,

I just found out that my MPC500's headphone output generates weird noises depending on what the unit is doing (loading, saving, etc.) It does this with my new Sennheiser in-ear headphones (which I bought for my iPod), strangly I don't hear these noise with my original iPod headphone, so I guess it has something to do with impedance. On my studio headphones (AKG K240 Studio and Sennheiser HD256 linear) I never noticed any noise.

Also I am very low on batteries at the moment (around 5.12V) so that might be part of the problem.

Snerg

Have you formated your CF card to your 500? I had an issue with all sorts of crap prior to doing this. You will see a drastic change in the performance of your 500 once you do this.

Awol