POP/SNAP NOSIE

Tony,

In general, light and sound equipment should never be used on the same circuit for this exact reason. There are drastic differences in the types of circuitry found in lighting equipment versus sound equipment and when used together on the same circuit can lead to humming, popping, clicking, etc. propagating through your speakers. In truth, the problem doesn't discriminate to any specific manufacturer of equipment despite that seeming to be the case in your situation.

While I've seen a few products on the market that claim to silence electrical noise for these types of applications, your best bet is to just keep your sound and light systems on separate circuits. This is a free (and safe) solution and is what nearly all professionals do, and for good reason. Hope this helps!

I do have the sound on one separate line and lighting on the other.

Are you sure they're two separate circuits and not just two separate sockets? How are your lights being controlled? Are you using DMX or just a switch panel? If these are in fact on two separate circuits, electrical noise is jumping from one to the other somewhere, so you need to find out where it's crossing over. Have you checked your circuits for things like open grounds and proper polarity/voltage?

I'm in different buildings every week and I always try all the outlets that's available. The lights are on American DJ SC-8FC, Ive checked all the cables and tried others in place of them. The lights that are doing it are the American DJ Sparkle LED, Dual Gem LED and American DJ HAZER. The lights that dont make noises are the Chauvet Spot Duo and the Kinta X. I'm not discriminating Ive used American DJ Products since 1997. I was told added aCapacitor would cure this. Do you know what Capacitor I could use?

Unfortunately, different outlets don't necessarily mean different circuits but I would think if you're playing in different venues every week, sooner or later later you'll run into a building where that's the case and your problem would go away. Do you check your outlets in these venues? I'm not sure what part of Ohio you're from, but I can say from experience that a lot of buildings in downtown Cleveland have really sketchy wiring. I've learned the hard way to check for open grounds, reversed polarity, and in-range voltages before plugging any gear in.

Is either the relay pack or the control panel of your SC-8FC plugged into anything that's also connected to sound equipment? This includes your mixer, power amp, etc. Have you tried moving the lights around on the relay pack channels to see if it's actually the light or just the channel that's causing the problem? Have you just tried plugging the light into the wall and seeing if that causes the pop as well?

I can see in theory how a capacitor or flyback diode could terminate electrical noise heard through a speaker, but I would be super hesitant to try this myself, at least with parts from my local RadioShack. The type you would need would be very specific to the noise characteristic you're experiencing. I'm not aware of any off the shelf solution beyond ground loop destroyers if that's what you're asking. The funny thing is that LED units hardly have a surge when they turn on, and certainly nothing compared to halogen and discharge units! This sounds to me like there's some kind of filtering problem somewhere. If I may ask, what are you using for sound equipment?

*** PLX 3602, American Audio Q-spand Pro Mixer with NEW Balanced XLR PROCO Lifelines cables between the two. I have sound and lighting Completely separated.

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you Tony. I shoot pyro too and am naturally very busy during the Fourth of July! Your amp is a solid performer so I can't see any problems with that. I've never used that particular mixer but doubt that's causing any problems either. At this point I'm not sure what to tell you. Are you using any wireless mics? All I can really suggest is to take your system out at home when you have some time and go piece by piece swapping things in and out until you find the winning combination that fixes (or at least isolates) the problem. I've never had a problem like this myself that I wasn't able to explain, and I would think that if this was the case with these particular units more people would be complaining. That makes me think it has to be something local in your system, but beyond that I'm out of suggestions! Best of luck trying to fix this!