JohnSwenson wrote: 
> This got me thinking about how computers can affect things. I started
> running tests in my system, and other peoples systems. We did find that
> there was significant difference in sensitivities, some systems more
> than others. At this point I was not interested in a more rigorous
> testing to try and figure out correlations (what was it about a system
> that made it more sensitive).

I often practice with my electric guitar in front of a laptop, so I can
have scores/lyrics/whatnot available on the screen. My guitar used to
pick up harddisk activity and screen scrolling. The guitar amp emitted a
constant hiss/whine from the computer, with disk and graphics card
activity sounding like an old modem on top of that. When I tried to move
away from the computer, towards my fish tanks, I could hear the
fluorescent tubes from the fish tank lights instead. All this noise was
so annoying it impaired my playing (and it also made it impossible to
record anything, of course). 

Then I bought $20 worth of copper tape off ebay, and lined the guitar
cavities containing wires, pots and switches with it. The pickups cannot
be shielded, though. Anyway, now I'm hard pressed to detect any PC (or
fluorescent tube) activity through my guitar amp, no matter where I'm
playing. The guitar is a Telecaster with single coil pickups, a 1950s
design infamous for its ability to pick up electromagnetic noise. There
was probably less EMI floating around in the 1950s, so Leo Fender didn't
bother with shielding when he designed the first electric guitar. And
the Fender company never upgraded the design with shielding since. 

Anyway, the point of this anecdote is that shielding for audio frequency
EMI seems to be a really, really easy, inexpensive and effective thing
to do, but despite that, it is not always done. For reasons that elude
me.

JohnSwenson wrote: 
> Since this has little to do with the thread topic I'll shut up now.

Ok, me too.


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