Dark Rift Noise

[RowanB]

Hi guys,

After your fantastic help I managed to get my first build up and running and sounding great. My dark rift was all good, so I was just waiting on finishing up laser etching my enclosure which arrived at the weekend. Today I put the guts into the enclosure, but when I fired it up I discovered that there is now a weird noise on the delay repeats... Here is the noise:

https://soundcloud.com/rowanb%2Fdark-rift-noise

I took it all out of the enclosure again and tested it and the noise remains. The only thing that's changed is that I swapped out the blue LED for a red LED. I tested it with different cables, two different power supplies, a battery pack and 2 different guitars. The noise isn't there when bypassed.

Any ideas on what could be causing the issue and what I can do to solve it would be gratefully received!


Thanks,

Rowan

 

[RowanB]

I followed a few other threads on similar issues and tried the LED in line to reduce the input level, I also tried replacing the PT2399 and that didn’t help either.

Any ideas anyone has to solve this would be much appreciated! Thanks.

 

[Betty Wont]

Not helpful, but I quit messing with the pt2399 due to that noise. I hear it on most of them regardless of the chip or circuit design. I see it described as "lo-fi" and "tape-like" in marketing hype, but it is unbearable digital hash to me.

 

[RowanB]

Not helpful, but I quit messing with the pt2399 due to that noise. I hear it on most of them regardless of the chip or circuit design. I see it described as "lo-fi" and "tape-like" in marketing hype, but it is unbearable digital hash to me.

I don't mind the sound of it when it works! The frustrating thing about this issue is that it didn't used to be there, I must have knocked something or caused some problems when I was housing the guts. Well... now I'm second guessing myself that there was distortion on the repeats before but I didn't notice it! Did you listen to the clip I posted? Would be interested to know if that is the typical sort of noise you'd expect from a pt2399 delay?

 

[Betty Wont]

I don't mind the sound of it when it works! The frustrating thing about this issue is that it didn't used to be there, I must have knocked something or caused some problems when I was housing the guts. Well... now I'm second guessing myself that there was distortion on the repeats before but I didn't notice it! Did you listen to the clip I posted? Would be interested to know if that is the typical sort of noise you'd expect from a pt2399 delay?

I did listen to the clip and that is exactly the noise I hear on these type of delays. A bright white noise that rides the top of the repeats. In my experience it is typical, and the people that ask me to build them never complain, but I simply can't stand it.

 

[RowanB]

I did listen to the clip and that is exactly the noise I hear on these type of delays. A bright white noise that rides the top of the repeats. In my experience it is typical, and the people that ask me to build them never complain, but I simply can't stand it.

Funny, after I rehoused it and wrote this post I was playing on a much brighter amp so out of interest I tried a different setup and on the different amp it sounds much less noticeable. I must have just missed it before, but now I can't unhear it! Luckily this will be used mostly for ambient pad stuff with loads of reverb after, which makes it even less noticeable.

 

[zgrav]

That sounds pretty normal for a PT2399 chip to me as well. That probably gets masked in a lot of guitar amps.

 

[RowanB]

Well I guess I'll have to learn to live with it!

Well to celebrate the fact that it's not broken I put it all back in the enclose I had engraved and it looks great.

 

[zgrav]

Very nice job with the enclosure! The details in the aluminum really look great in the background. Now I have the Jeff Wayne's War of World theme running in my mind.... May need to give that a listen later.