​​Radio Signals Picked Up On Recording Device w/ Shotgun Mic

​​Causes

  • ​​Damaged cables can act like a radio antenna.
  • ​​Unbalanced cables can pick up radio frequencies when combined with an audio recorder.
  • ​​The length of the cable can often affect the pick up of Radio Frequencies (RF) too long or too short depending or radio frequency.
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​​Solutions

  • ​​Always go into a shoot with more than one XLR cable, preferably of two different lengths. 
  • ​​I always go into the field with three XLR cables, two are 10 feet, and one is 5 feet. 
  • ​​If you want to be extra precautions, you can always have an unopened backup XLR cable at a different length from your usual XLR cable. 
  • ​​ALWAYS use high quality balanced cables - buy the best quality XLR cables money can buy and then take excellent care of them, so they don’t get damaged. 
  • ​​Make sure it says BALANCED on the package when purchasing. Balanced cables were designed specifically to prevent RF from affecting audio recordings.
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​​Extra Troubleshooting 

​​If experiencing RF issues and you’ve already tried switching out the cables, try these options:
  • ​​Uncoil the extra cable length and lay it out in a cross pattern, like an X rather than a coil.
  • ​​Try recording in stereo and playing back in mono to see if the RF gets cancelled out.
  • ​​Do a test recording and bring it into your audio editor (or just play it back on your computer) to see how prominent the sound actually is - often it can sound much more dramatic when you’re monitoring compared to how it sounds when you play it back the recording.
  • ​​If you’re using the Zoom H6, as a last ditch effort you can set the Pad to -20 and then turn up your Gain knob substantially. This might help.
  • ​​If you happen to have another sound recorder or mixer with you, sometimes running the sound from one device into the other can mitigate the RF. 
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​​Finally, if nothing you’re doing is giving you good results, it’s time to change locations. This location won’t work. It can be as simple as changing rooms. 
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​​So bring your audio gear into various rooms and see how the interference changes. Then make your location choice based on noise rather than beauty of location. 
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