[linux-audio-user] The famous "Jack Hum" (Can't record and desparate)

[Carlo Capocasa]

There are a lot of hums that are very friendly and encouraging, but the
hum that comes out of my speaker when I start up Jack is way more than
that. It's sharp pitched and I believe it penetrates deep into the soul
and causes unrest there.

It comes about when I use jack at low latencies. I experimented with
ground loops and found it is the same hum (or a similar hum) and simply
gets softer when I use my homebrew ground prong removal cable (it's just
a small extension cord with a three prong socket and a two prong plug. I
must be violating every safety standard in the Universe, and I probably
wouldn't be the first desperate musician to die in an unfortunate
accident caused by valuing artistic purity higher than corporal safety.)

It actually also comes about when I use a pure Alsa program realtime and
at low latencies, but I'm still calling the thing 'Jack Hum' because I
like you jack people so much. That's what you get for being so friendly!
I also don't know any good low latency alsa programs any more.

So... I wonder if someone's looking into this. It's preventing me from
recording stuff. And I've got some insanely good music coming up and
people are actually responding well to my newsletter, which is quite
flabbergasting to me. I'm not used to people responding well to what I do.

I should also mention that I have a firewire audio interface with
included microphone pre-amp, and that the hum gets REALLY lound on the
Mic channels when phantom power is turned on.

So please, please, please help me! I'm desparate. I've been working on
linux audio for over four years and my music's starting to get good
enough to be published and I can't record because of some dumb analogue
engineering problem. Are any smart analogue engineers reading this?
Heck, i'll go for the dumb ones too if it will make my problem go away.
Help!

Carlo