PAC SNI-1/3.5 3.5-mm Ground Loop Noise Isolator Works with iPod/Zune/iRiver and Others , Black

I am a professional DJ, and I frequently visit my clients before an event to preview a sample of the music I have lined up. I usually bring my Macbook Pro and a small Bluetooth speaker during face to face meetings with the customer to help me produce a playlist that they will approve of. I recently decided to replace my smaller Bluetooth speaker with just one of my QSC K8 speakers to bring to all of my meetings because the QSC K8 is a Phenomenal speaker (@ 1000 watts!) packed into a small package. This simple setup allows me to show the client how the music will SOUND... but more importantly, how the music will FEEL as I'm spinnin it. With that said, I would always get an annoying buzz through the speaker that would not go away even when I was playing music. To put it in perspective, just imagine that irritating Buzzing noise you hear in a speaker... and amplify it by 1,000 Watts!!! It got to the point where most people noticed it, so it quickly became an issue that I had to resolve... but after some research on the internet, I came across this little gadget called a Ground Loop Isolator/Eliminator. I was very hesitant about this little black box solving my buzzing issue... but I went my gut instinct and bought it through Amazon... Got to me super quick (Amazon Prime rules!!!), and long behold... the buzz was gone!!! This little thing works beautifully. Hard to believe that my $2,500.00 Macbook Pro combined with my $800.00 high end QSC K8 powered speaker just needed a simple $12.16 little black box to solve my buzzing problem. I don't write many reviews... but I had to stick my chest out for this PAC SNI 1/3.5 to 3.5-mm Ground Loop Isolator... This thing really works. So if you have an annoying buzz in your sound setup... try one of these! Great score to achieve Great sounding Music...

I have a Dodge Durango and installed an aftermarket radio with an auxiliary input on the front face of the unit. I am a car audio fan so I installed a full system with aftermarket speakers, amplifiers and subwoofers. I only mention that because I am very picky about my music and have a real hard time with any kind of noise in the system. I loved plugging in my iPhone or Android device and listening to Pandora or Spotify. However, as we all know, you can only listen so long before you want to plug your phone in for power or to charge. As soon as I attached power to my phone through either a USB plug in the console or through the cigarette lighter connection there would be horrible alternator whine in the system. I love music and this of course drove me completely crazy. I tried everything including buying a mini blue tooth receiver so I wouldn't have to plug my phone directly into the radio. However, the Bluetooth needed power so as soon as I plugged the Bluetooth receiver in for power, the alternator noise was right back. For any of you that have experienced alternator noise in your car radio, it is a horrible whine that increases or decreases in pitch related roughly to the speed you are going. The louder you turn up the radio, the louder the noise. It's bad. I had finally had it and tried to search online for some kind of isolator and found this little gem. It arrived today and literally just plugs in between your phone and your radio. It took seconds to install and bingo, no more alternator whine. The sound is crystal clear, even when I plug my phone into power. At the highest volumes, even with no music playing there is no background whine or even any hiss or white noise that sometimes comes in from other places in the system. The sounds was just perfect. Some people may have some issue with the size, but it tucks neatly next to my seat and you can't even tell it is there. The total length of the cable is a little short if you are plugging it in to the front of the receiver as it may hang down next to the radio. I would recommend either getting a short mini-phono extension cable (good quality) or simply affixing it to the side of the center console with some double sided tape. It is really fairly small and can be hidden out of the way pretty easily. So far it seems to be of very good quality, not fragile and looks like it could stand up to repeated plugging and unplugging as the connectors are very good. However, once you install it, you really never need to take it out. I will be getting one for each vehicle. We will see how it lasts, but for the price, it is a fantastic solution. I highly recommend this to anyone who has any kind of induced noise coming into their auxiliary plug in their radio. You won't be sorry! Good luck and good listening!

I have a 2006 Acura with a GTA car kit and the alternator whine while charging was bugging me to the extreme. After reading the reviews, I still had concerns about this device. 1) Will it work "backwards"? 2) Will it attenuate sound? So here's what I discovered: 1) It most definitely works "backwards". Since the car kit necessitates me placing the output from my phone into the "input" side of the device, I really had no choice on how to "route" the signal. Immediately I noticed a tremendous improvement. The whine is still there, but I need to turn the volume up to 30 to hear it at all during a pause in playback. Since I normally listen at 10-15 which is plenty loud for me, this was a non-issue. It did what I needed it to do perfectly, the whine is not audible at idle during silence between tracks, the whine is not audible at 60+ MPH during silence between tracks. 2) This was the big concern for me as several reviews mentioned this cut audio and killed frequency response. The music was just as loud, and using the "8 Mile" soundtrack as my testing album, bass response was just the same, deep and powerful. Highs were crisp and clear. This device did not attenuate sound at all. The only thing is that the jack sleeve is a bit thick to ensure a solid insertion into my phone's headphone jack with the case on. So I need to remove the case in order to ensure a good connection. I almost docked a star because of this, but that is not really a flaw with the device. If you have a loud whine while charging your phone and listening via Aux-In and are on the fence about this device, don't be. It works, and works great.

I purchased this product for my 2006 Toyota Tacoma, with the factory JBL head unit that I modified to accept an AUX Input by hijacking the CD player signal to the DSP. This involved soldering onto 2 pins (left and right channel), and grounding a wire to the chassis of the head unit. I created a CD with blank sound, and connected my Sansa Clip MP3 player to it. It worked great and sounded amazing, until I plugged the MP3 player into the car charger, and the music went completely silent, with only a slight clicking noise, even when the engine is off. Now, my Galaxy S4 works fine with this setup, even when it is plugged in and charging, but there is some buzzing noise in the background, especially when the screen is on. Onto this product - I connected it between my Sansa Clip while it was charging, it played music back just as it would if it wasn't charging! No distortion, no noise, no reduction in sound quality at all, and even when I paused the music, and revved the engine, there was no alternator whine at all. I originally plugged it in backwards, which pretty much made no sound come out, so aware that this operates in 1 direction only! Edit: After about 3 weeks, the male plug somehow became so loose that it would only work if I pushed down sideways on it. It's the weirdest thing, but I had to order another one.

My car (2008 Mazda MX5 GT) came with factory-installed "premium audio" by Bose; but it didn't include an auxiliary input for a phone. I tried using one of the FM transmitters, but it was unreliable and poor quality -- and if you were driving any kind of distance, you'd encounter a new radio station on the previously-open FM channel that you were using, so you had to re-tune the FM transmitter. So last weekend I pulled out the audio unit, and installed a cable with a 3.5mm audio plug, which I can plug into my phone's headset, allowing me to listen to my phone using the car's speakers. Works beautifully. HOWEVER, if I tried to charge my phone at the same time (via the "cigar lighter outlet"; with a USB cable) there was a very loud whine / buzz when the engine is running. It's bad enough that I would not want to have the speakers on while charging the phone. This is a real problem for, say, using the phone to provide voice-based navigation; you need to have the audio on to hear the directions, but you also need the phone to be on charge because the GPS etc. burns through the battery pretty quickly. Result - directions, overlaid by a constant whine. So, I bought this PAC ground loop isolator. It's terrific. Now I have no whine/buzz at all. And - unlike the experience of a few unfortunate reviewers of this product - the volume of the audio output remains pretty much unaltered, so far as I can tell. If there is any downside at all, it is that I have my phone on a dashboard mount, but the cables of this isolator are quite short, so the "box" part of it would be easily visible. So I plan to install the isolator under my steering column semi-permanently (using tape), and buy a short 3.5mm male to female extension cable to run up to my phone.

I use my iPhone 5s to stream music into my car stereo. When I connected the phone with an Aux cable and ran off the phone battery, everything was fine. If I plugged the phone into a car charger or used my hands free blue tooth kit though, I would get engine noise and alternator 'whir' through the speakers. It wasn't horribly loud, I couldn't hear it over the music, but it was enough to be annoying. I went to 2 car stereo places and the first place (Best Buy) told me that a device like this does not exist. The guy at Frys Electronics told me that these devices simply 'did not work.' They both advised letting them rip into my dash and perform a costly repair to fix the issue. I decided to give this device a try due to the fact that this was a cheap and easy option, and I am very happy I did. I plug this device into my cars Aux Port and then plug the Aux cable into the filter and it has completely eliminated all sign of engine noise. It didn't just quiet it, it completely removed it. Audio quality is unaffected, there was no loss in audio quality. The only thing I lost was the annoying noise I would hear between tracks. It's an inexpensive device that takes 30 seconds to install and fixes the problem. Hard to be upset with that result, this is a great product.

Hey ya'll! I hope you are hanging in there with the search for the perfect solution for your ground loop noise. After months of experimentation in a 2007 RAV4 with stock JBL system, my work is complete. I ordered ground loop noise isolators from 8 different companies and tested them all with a spectrum analyzer. Four of them caused significant distortion in the bass range and elsewhere. Those were the CableMatters, Besign, Ziocom, Rngeo, and Bysimilai. In the RAV4, these all significantly degraded the audio quality, boosting bass super high and peaky and/or hollowing out mids and vocals, etc. No chance on those. The 3 that had the least distortion are Wiswinda, DigitalLife and this PAC. The PAC came in third with raising the sub-bass a narrower/peaky 10db, with the other levels decent. The DigitalLife came in second with raising the sub-bass 10db yet still warm/full, yet slightly lowering the high-end bass. The Wiswinda had the least distortion of all only lowering the upper mid-range (at around 1.6K) about 4db, with the rest of the spectrum nearly unchanged. Conclusion: The Wiswinda wins (on the 2007 RAV4 JBL system), with by far the least distortion. The upper mid-range being lowered slightly has no noticeable compromise. Apparently in music production, it is known that lowering this range (3-4db) can pleasantly remove harshness, yet if lowered too much (5-10db) can make audio sound hollow. Fortunately, this isolator seems to lower it minimally right in the sweet spot, which may even be improving audio quality. It sounds great! Good luck!

I have a Sound Blaster Z SE running to a pair of M-Audio AV40s. I was getting a constant "heart beat" in the audio that I couldn't isolate or get rid of. This device removed it.

This filter appears to totally fix the annoying static I get when connecting my phone to the Aux port in my Mazda 3 and charging the phone at the same time. Great product and plugs in super simply.

good product

It help to reduce some hum but sometime it also muted some sound

Original

Fantastic product that eliminates those weird humming sounds from ground loop problems. I also did not notice any difference in sound quality when using it (I use it in-between a computer and mixer) even when I swapped it in and out quickly to try and see if I could catch any changes in the sound. I am not an audiophile but it seems to me that there is no degradation in quality at all. I originally wanted to mix the audio of my desktop and laptop to the one set of speakers I have so I wouldn't have to keep swapping cables. I bought a Rolls Mx41b passive mixer for this (my speakers are Logitech Z2300's and have a very powerful amp so passive is fine for me). To my dismay there was a weird buzzing sound if I turned the volume up at all, although it only happened when I had both computers plugged in. I thought it was the mixers fault so I bought an ARTcessories SplitMix4; but the problem was still there! Googled a bit and found this gem, put it in-between the laptop and mixer and viola! Buzzing was completely gone and no difference in sound quality! Just a note that the cover for the box is not very secure and popped off very easily, but it was easy to put back on and didn't seem to affect performance at all so no big deal.