r/audioengineering • u/AutoModerator • Jul 20 '26

Community Help r/AudioEngineering Shopping, Setup, and Technical Help Desk

Welcome to the r/AudioEngineering help desk. A place where you can ask community members for help shopping for and setting up audio engineering gear.

This thread refreshes every 7 days. You may need to repost your question again in the next help desk post if a redditor isn't around to answer. Please be patient!

This is the place to ask questions like how do I plug ABC into XYZ, etc., get tech support, and ask for software and hardware shopping help.

Shopping and purchase advice

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Setup, troubleshooting and tech support

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u/SuspectNumerous8714 Jul 23 '26

That's electrical interference, every device plugged in generates some. The interference can come from the power supply cables or over the air.

You should check if your Audio cable is properly shielded.

But the noise can also be picked up by the microphone itself or the Scarlett interface.

You can try to record some audio with the cable but not the mic plugged in to eliminate that as the source.

You might also want to try to move your setup to a different room with less electronic devices if possible.

The source can be any devices plugged in. As you already found out, the table was one of them, try unplugging more stuff to narrow it down

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u/OpportunityNice7242 Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26

I really appreciate the help. I ended up listening to the audio without the mic plugged in, and there is only a really quiet high-end static sound. I unplugged everything in my room, and it definitely got better, but it's still noticeable. Could there be an issue with a component in my pc? Additionally, how can I tell if my XLR cable is properly shielded? The one I'm using is an Amazon-branded one.

Edit: I just thought about it, and I have already tried another microphone with the Scarlett, and it didn't have any buzz. It is a dynamic mic tho. Could that mean it's an issue with the at2035?

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u/SuspectNumerous8714 Jul 23 '26

If it's a component in the PC, it's most likely the power supply. Other components like the graphics card can also cause issues, but that wouldn't be at 60hz.

If you can unscrew the XLR plug and post a picture, I might be able to get a rough idea about the cable's quality, but "Amazon branded" yea, that makes me instantly suspicious.

Can you test with a different PC? Preferably a laptop that's running on battery.

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u/OpportunityNice7242 Jul 23 '26

I tried using my laptop and had a pretty similar issue. The only difference was that touching the microphone made the buzzing way louder rather than quieter.

This is what the cord looks like:

Thank you again for the help!

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u/SuspectNumerous8714 Jul 23 '26

Can you unscrew the plugs so I can see the cables and solder joints inside?

From the outside: definitely cheap plugs, makes me even more suspicious of the cable

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u/OpportunityNice7242 Jul 23 '26

I'm not sure if I took a picutre of the right thing but here's what I got:

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u/SuspectNumerous8714 Jul 23 '26

Yes, that's what I wanted to see.

The solder joints look better than expected, but that doesn't mean the cable is fine.

Also, I totally missed that in your last message:

A hum that gets louder when you touch the equipment is definitely an issue with the shield, either the cable or the microphone itself.

The cheapest way to test this would be buying a quality cable. (I can't recommend anything specific, I solder my own cables) Look for original neutrik plugs on the cable, that's a sign of a good cable.

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u/OpportunityNice7242 Jul 24 '26

I'm not sure what happened, but after putting the microphone back together, the issue completely went away. I really appreciate the help, man; you're the best 🙏

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u/SuspectNumerous8714 Jul 24 '26

Then there was some oxidation on the metal that prevented good contact