QC Mini noise issues?

Community
1

QC mini arrived and I was super stoked to get going with it!

But I’m really, really, really struggling with noise issues. Are a lot of people complaining about this? Found any remedies? Better power supplies? Possible I have a faulty unit?

This is what my clean and overdriven sounds sound like. The tones are just stupendous, but with the noise, nothing is very usable…

Neural support hasn’t been very accommodating, basically saying my only option is that I have to connect it to something via the XLR out or it wont get rid of noise (which defeats the whole “desktop unit” marketing pitch imho), and I dont own an interface or amp with FRFR to connect it to via XLR. I fell for the “it can do everything” pitch and this was going to be my all-in-one solution for my little corner desk – just guitar, QC mini, headphones and USB out right into my laptop – while we clear out my studio to make room for a baby on the way.

Anyway, praying that there’s some solution here that doesn’t involve a lot more money… i feel like this is way too popular of a unit used by so many pros to have a noise issue affecting 100 percent of users that renders the unit as noisy as a digitech from the 1990s unless everyone plugs into an XLR exclusively. just seems hard to believe… but if that’s it, i’ll hunt for a cheap as hell option somewhere!

2

Are you connecting to a laptop that’s definitely grounded with a 3-prong cord?

Have you tried toggling the Ground Lift in the swipe-down UI menu?

3

A different power supply isn’t going to remedy this because it’s just a barrel plug.

There must be a grounding issue in your setup or possibly even your guitar. If your laptop doesn’t have a ground on its power supply that may be the source of the noise as well. It’s a very common thing with interfaces like this (yes the QC is an interface).

The XLR would be to ground the QC mini. Also have you tried to use the ground lift on the QC itself?

4

thanks all! So input 1 on the QC mini doesn’t have a ground lift option. When I try it through input 2, the ground lift doesn’t do anything.

I’ve tried all the different rooms in my house and three different guitars (a traditional tele, a thinline tele with widerange HBs and a frank bros with low wind HBs), with the laptop and without the laptop, and the noise is always present at both clean and gainy tones (obviously worse on the gainer side).

So switching to a 3rd party powersupply with a grounded plug wouldn’t help bc of the barrel plug?

5

No. The QC can only be grounded by connecting one of the outputs to a grounded device.

Your laptop needs to be connected to a power supply to be grounded. Was that the case?

6

Is this just the noise floor from a guitar that may be noisy? I would suggest trying a gate with side chain to your guitar input. Hard to tell if you mean it’s noise from just adding gain to the amp or actually a grounding noise

7

Laptop is probably charged by an ungrounded charger. There are usb isolators for doing this

Some buildings just have dirty power. Worst case you could EQ notch filter the noise.