Whine / squeal in palette 104

Hey folks! New here but I’ve had this 104HP palette case for about a year. It’s got some whine / squeal which is driving me nuts to the point of not using the case. I’m thinking of selling and coming up with a different one but I do like the form factor so I wonder whether anyone here has encountered something similar and has any tricks up their sleeves for mitigating it.

The wine seems to be coming from near the power switch & jack and is quite high – higher with fewer modules (or current draw I guess), and with my current configuration it’s at a lovely ~12kHz. (I guess I didn’t notice earlier in my ownership of the case because I was still adding modules and the whine was above hearing range.) It manifests both in the audio out (via the 1U Audio Out through the case jacks) as well as mechanically / physically from the case itself.

I’ve been back and forth with IJ support about it and tried some of the things they’ve suggested (mainly tightening the jacks) to no avail. I’ve tried auditing all my modules individually without luck. I’ve tried different outlets at home and in another building, and am now using a power bar with an RF filter, still no luck. I’m well within current limits and the only digital module I’m using is monome crow.

Would love to hear any comments or suggestions – thanks!

My brand new IJ 104 HP 7U Performance case does this. Don’t know what the cause is but I had to use a ground lift to get it sorted out. I have loads of gear setup here and I’ve never experienced this issue. Is it the case? Who knows. Ground lift fixed it though.

This is what I used: Globe Electric 3-Prong Grounded Adapter - Indoor - 15-amp - 125-volt 58746 | RONA

Yikes! Glad you got it sorted. Not sure I’m comfortable using a ground lift in the long term but for $5 I might pick one up just to see if it does the trick. If that is it I’ll be doubly confused since the noise happens even when my case isn’t plugged into anything else…

I’m in an older apartment building. It happens anywhere I plug it in here so it could very well be bad wiring in this building. I’ll have my case offsite soon so I’m going to test it in a totally different environment. I’m not super comfortable using the ground lift either but the whine is…not great.

I just tried the same ground lift and the whine still happened, must be a different cause. Thanks for the suggestion though.

Update: IJ took the case in for repair and now the squeal is somehow worse. Here’s a video. Through some discussion with their support I learned they couldn’t replicate my issue and so they replaced the whole PSU board and Meanwell brick and sent it back. I would have expected that to mean that one of my modules is causing the noise, except that I can replicate the issue with completely non-overlapping groups of modules, which means it’s not…

If anyone has any ideas about how to track down the cause of this whine, I would love to hear them. I have no clue how to proceed and I don’t expect to hear anything more from Intellijel.

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