I haven't attempted to measure the noise floor of my modular. Considering
that my modular consists of 37 modules that can be connected in many, many
different ways, making such a measurement would be sort of silly. I mean, I
could either choose between the output of a single VCO, or the output of the
same VCO fed through a series of seven filters, nine VCAS, and four
Buchla-style low-pass gates. I could choose whether or not to use the output
of a MOTM 830 mixer directly, or I could use the output of my hand-built
balanced-output module which I built specifically to drive long cables
across the room from my modular to my Apogee converters, going past a
computer and its two monitors and half a dozen wall warts.
In any case, my modular is free enough of noise that the noise level is a
non-issue for commercial recordings. As you said, good gear has a low enough
noise level that we needn't obsess about it--until something goes wrong. :-)
I read that Wendy Carlos interview also. I dare say that the S/N ratio in my
studio is at a level she could only dream about with the recording gear she
had at the time. As someone else said, we enjoy the advantages of 30 years
of electronics development. I suppose I could have asked her about Faraday
shielding when I met her at a trade show, but I babbled foolishly about
vocoders instead.
--Adam
> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Mahoney [mailto:jmahoney@...]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2006 7:54 PM
> To: 'MOTM litserv'
> Subject: RE: [motm] Cabinet shielding
>
>
> >I'll chime in even though I'm saying the same thing that's been said:
> >shielding the cabinet isn't necessary. My modular is in the
> same room
> >as half a dozen or so computers and other miscellaneous electronic
> >devices, including some completely unshielded digital circuits on
> >breadboards, and I don't seem to have any trouble with it
> picking up noise.
>
> Oh, your modular is ∗completely∗ free of noise? ;-) Of course
> you didn't say that, so consider this:
>
> Wendy Carlos said that building a Faraday cage around her
> entire studio reduced the noise level throughout. She
> concluded that RFI (radio frequency interference) is usually
> heard as broadband noise.
> So, where there's electrical noise (i.e. everywhere), there
> may well be an RFI issue.
>
> Fortunately, the noise level of good gear is low enough that
> we needn't obsess over this. I'm sure not interested in
> shielding my entire studio room! I'm not even sure how to do it.
> --
> john
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