Should you turn off your wireless adapter while recording?

kylejun06 · Post by **kylejun06** » Sun Jun 01, 2008 6:43 am

I never heard of this before, but I just read on the internet that you should turn off your wireless adapter when recording into your computer.

Is this true? Does it have any effect?

Analog Freak · Post by **Analog Freak** » Sun Jun 01, 2008 7:03 am

I shouldn't think it would cause any problems because the operating frequencies are so different. Even with 192 kHz recording, most wireless cards work at 2.4 GHz or a similarly high frequency and they should not interfere with each other. Cell phones work on around 900 MHz, and those haven't caused too many recording problems that I'm aware of. On top of that most consumer products are designed, at least in part, to reject external noise and interference. The really cheap equipment tends to cut corners on the RFI / EMI shielding, and consequently has less noise immunity. That said, I have seen cases where CB radios with 'kickers' (linear amplifiers) were able to broadcast over a restaurant's PA system. This however is more a factor of RF energy than anything. The CBs in question were pushing 500 watts, while your wireless card is capped in most countries at .2 watts (200 mW) which really is not very much power at all. I suppose it's remotely possible that a wireless card could cause interference, but unless you have cheap equipment and your wireless card is pumping out a lot of RF energy, I seriously doubt that this would be anything to worry about.

EDIT: It occurred to me that the wireless card might cause problems with interrupting the CPU for other tasks besides recording, and that could cause problems. I would think though that the designers of the recording software and hardware have considered and developed ways to deal with that problem though.

Post by **Stab Frenzy** » Sun Jun 01, 2008 10:42 am

I usually do anyway, just cause I don't want my system checking for OS updates or anything while I'm recording. I don't always remember to switch it off though and I've never had anything detrimental happen because of it.

So I guess in theory you should turn it off but in practice it probably won't make a great deal of difference. Then again if you're running windows it might be more important, you can get all sorts of incompatibilities on a windows machine that can be hard to track down, it's often good to try to minimise the variables.

Post by **madtheory** » Sun Jun 01, 2008 11:03 am

Analog Freak wrote:I shouldn't think it would cause any problems because the operating frequencies are so different.

Hold your horses there cowboy! Just because both systems "run at some frequency", it doesn't mean they'll interfere with each other. There are lots of "frequencies" in your studio. What about the processor, the data bus, the computer in your synth, and the converters in your DA, to name several? They're all digital systems which sample a certain number of times a second.

In a properly wired setup, all the various digital systems are correctly grounded electronically screened. There should not normally be any need to disconnect one of them when recording. My Mac is always online, even during recording. No problems.

Synthaholic · Post by **Synthaholic** » Sun Jun 01, 2008 1:34 pm

I've never turned off my wireless adapter while recording, no problems so far.

In fact, one time I accidentally created my project on a shared drive, resulting in actually streaming the recording OVER the wireless adapter. It actually worked, believe it or not, as long as I didn't try to record more than one track at a time. Blond moment.

desdinova · Post by **desdinova** » Mon Jun 02, 2008 2:45 am

It's mostly a problem with windows zeroconf and some cards. If you have a glitch sound or regular interruptions in the audio, shut off the zeroconf service. I don't bother shutting off wireless.

Post by **novielo** » Tue Jun 03, 2008 5:03 pm

Stab Frenzy wrote:I usually do anyway, just cause I don't want my system checking for OS updates or anything while I'm recording. I don't always remember to switch it off though and I've never had anything detrimental happen because of it.

So I guess in theory you should turn it off but in practice it probably won't make a great deal of difference. Then again if you're running windows it might be more important, you can get all sorts of incompatibilities on a windows machine that can be hard to track down, it's often good to try to minimise the variables.

+1 here, i<ve had problemswhile recording recently. i had glitches coming randomly on my track that make then unusable, i<m usualy jaming when recording so it was realy an issue for me. after some answeres from poeples here i found out that it seems to be the my wireless connection and/or/with my anti-virus that were producing them by randomly going for updates, file scanning (probably due to the new material (recording) that is added when recording). since then it<s dead quite.

midiCHICK6 · Post by **midiCHICK6** » Tue Jun 03, 2008 8:08 pm

I have an Intel Mac and when I'm recording on the windows side, and the wireless internet is activated, I have had a LOT of recording problems. Make sure it's turned off and disabled. It will fix everything.

Post by **Stab Frenzy** » Wed Jun 04, 2008 3:13 am

midiCHICK6 wrote:I have an Intel Mac and when I'm recording on the windows side, and the wireless internet is activated, I have had a LOT of recording problems. Make sure it's turned off and disabled. It will fix everything.

Why on earth would you record on the windows side? That's just dumb.

OSX is nice and stable and works great for audio, that's why people buy macs for audio. Windows can work smoothly if you know what you're doing and put the time in to optimise the system, but if you've got a mac then there isn't any need to bother.

Post by **Zamise** » Wed Jun 04, 2008 4:14 am

Network Interface Cards, wireless or not can cause issues, but if your doing well with it running then don't bother changing anything.

If your noticing lag, or periodic drop outs while recording, and its not your virus scanner or windows update, then it may be one of the things you should check out by turning it off/disabling it. Sometimes removal is the only way to get it to stop causing a problem. Which, removal can be hard to do if its a built in one, but there are ways around that too if disabling it don't work. No need to go into that now.

Anyhow, the NIC being wireless instead of not is something that, normally, shouldn't make one bit of any difrence while you are recording.

I wonder if your talking about some other kind of wireless adapter tho, because I don't often hear of NICs being called adapters...

Zam