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Setup considerations for a great audio recording experience on a MacBook Pro 16'' with AKG C 520 + Rode AI-1 and OBS

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Setup considerations for a great audio recording experience on a MacBook Pro 16'' with AKG C 520 + Rode AI-1

I "only" wanted to record some podcast and online courses - and thus bought a AKG C 520 Vocal Microphone and Rode AI-1 Audiointerface, connected them to my MacBook Pro 16'' (2020) and installed OBS to record my screen and voice...

First issue: chirping on the recording

But - as always - it wasn't that easy. I got a chirp on the recordings, which was quite nasty since my voice - together with my screencast - is the only thing people get when the listen to my recordings.

As a long year reader of the great c't Magazin I removed the power supply of my mac to see what happens. I didn't use the standard power supply, but in my setup I used the 349€ Belkin Thunderbold 3 Pro dock, which I really loved since the old dream of using only one cable to connect my laptop to any device (USBs, Ethernet, power supply, external displays...) came true with it.

Second issue: power supply humming

Now having disconnected the Belkin doc, my recording got rid of the chirping - but now there was a humming. After googling around I soon found a seamingly well known issue: the magic hand issue. Because simply touching my MacBook the humming was gone. I could "see" that in OBS:

obs-with-humming

and touching my MacBook:

obs-after-touching-macbook

This leads us to the root cause of the humming: no proper grounding! After a while of googling and thinkering it became clear to me. Current MacBooks don't ship with a grounded! TODAY! Having a look at the power supply this becomes obvious:

macbookpro-powersupply-2020

In the detail view you see the 2 power supply conductors. And the bigger round grounding plug:

macbookpro-powersupply-2020-detail-grounding

But looking a the plug there's only plastic inside!!

macbookpro-powersupply-2020-plug-without-grounding

So our MacBook Pro does not get grounded with the 2020/21 power supply setup.

But there's help! Many people suggest to build your own cable which is definitely possible, but not without risks for the non-electrically trained (like me). But I'm working with MacBooks since 2015 and luckily I have every cable right in my cellar - even the old extension cable from my MacBook Pro 2015! Let's have a detailled look onto it:

macbookpro-powersupply-extension-cable-2015

and especially the plugs:

macbookpro-powersupply-extension-cable-2015-plug

There's metal inside the power supply plug - and it's grounded into the socket! Using this cable together with my MacBook Pro 16'' power supply I got rid of the humming!

Third issue: a sublte humming

After getting rid of the chirping and humming I started to get my first usable audio recordings. But there was a subtle humming left - not noticable on screen looking at OBS, but I heard it when using headphones and turining up the volume a bit more. But I also got rid of this last audio recording issue: I simply used OBS' noice suppression option. Therefore right click onto your microphone in OBS and click on Filter. There create a new filter from the + menu using noise suppression (or Rauschunterdrückung in german).

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Setup considerations for a great audio recording experience on a MacBook Pro 16'' with AKG C 520 + Rode AI-1 and OBS

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