- #1
mattlima
- 5
- 0
Hi everyone,
I'm a musician and I'm having a very strange electrical issue with my home studio setup. I'm hoping someone here might have some advice for where I could investigate this further or who I could ask for more information. In a nutshell, my monitor speakers (JBL LSR4326P) are exhibiting a strange behavior where they half-power cycle or 'reboot' (as if they were turned off and on instantaneously). I was also having an issue with my mac pro tower not waking from sleep correctly and restarting instead. The apple store ended up replacing the power supply and the problem has become much less frequent but has not gone away. I suspected the problems were related and later noticed the monitor reboots coinciding with kitchen appliances like the fridge turning on and off. After some testing I've established that I can reliably cause the speakers to power cycle by lighting a burner on my stove (an electric ignition system I believe uses a sparking capacitor circuit but I'm way out of my depth there.)
OK, now for the really weird part. So far it looks like some sort of garden variety grounding or other electrical issue at home, right? So I disconnect ALL of my equipment (computer, speakers, etc) and reconnect it so everything is on my uninterruptible power supply. I then disconnect the UPS from the mains. Just to be clear: no part of the electrical system that constitutes my studio is connected to the electrical system in any way. The system is totally separated from the house electrical system and running on the UPS battery. I try the stove and STILL get the power cycling in the speakers. With no electrical connection between my computer/speakers/sound card/etc and the stove, how is this possible? Could the capacitor in the stove (which was just replaced, incidentally, because it wasn't lighting correctly, although this problem pre-dates that replacement) be creating a tiny EMP that's being picked up by the many cables in the studio? I realize that may sound stupid to a trained engineer, but I'm way out of my depth here and grasping at straws. Help!
I'm a musician and I'm having a very strange electrical issue with my home studio setup. I'm hoping someone here might have some advice for where I could investigate this further or who I could ask for more information. In a nutshell, my monitor speakers (JBL LSR4326P) are exhibiting a strange behavior where they half-power cycle or 'reboot' (as if they were turned off and on instantaneously). I was also having an issue with my mac pro tower not waking from sleep correctly and restarting instead. The apple store ended up replacing the power supply and the problem has become much less frequent but has not gone away. I suspected the problems were related and later noticed the monitor reboots coinciding with kitchen appliances like the fridge turning on and off. After some testing I've established that I can reliably cause the speakers to power cycle by lighting a burner on my stove (an electric ignition system I believe uses a sparking capacitor circuit but I'm way out of my depth there.)
OK, now for the really weird part. So far it looks like some sort of garden variety grounding or other electrical issue at home, right? So I disconnect ALL of my equipment (computer, speakers, etc) and reconnect it so everything is on my uninterruptible power supply. I then disconnect the UPS from the mains. Just to be clear: no part of the electrical system that constitutes my studio is connected to the electrical system in any way. The system is totally separated from the house electrical system and running on the UPS battery. I try the stove and STILL get the power cycling in the speakers. With no electrical connection between my computer/speakers/sound card/etc and the stove, how is this possible? Could the capacitor in the stove (which was just replaced, incidentally, because it wasn't lighting correctly, although this problem pre-dates that replacement) be creating a tiny EMP that's being picked up by the many cables in the studio? I realize that may sound stupid to a trained engineer, but I'm way out of my depth here and grasping at straws. Help!