Poor quality audio with electrical 'buzz' on IP AV on IP-over-mains?

[Dom518R]

Looking for some advice on a problem:

I have an IP camera (with audio) operating on an IP-over-mains adaptor. This is for a training environment where customer service role-plays are assessed by trainers live.

The cameras work great and feed into DVR software on a laptop. However the audio is poor and speech is largely unintelligible; not good enough quality to meet the customer requirement. I'm assuming the issue is something to do with the power adaptor from the camera going into the IP over mains adaptor.

I've tried putting in a ground-loop eliminator coming out of the laptop into a speaker/headphones. It's better but still not great. I'm extremely limited on budget and can't add extra kit into the classrooms. Nor can I use wifi or hard-wired network cable.

Looking for audio solutions, hardware or software that will clean up the sound and improve the intelligibility of speech.

Help me AV jedis.

Dom

 

[Phil]

Good audio is really hard to achieve.
The microphones built into the cameras may not be adequate.

I guess Step ONE is to throw in a long network cable as just a test, to remove the Powerline adapters from the system, and see if the audio is then good enough.


We once installed CCTV at Police Station front counters, where recording good clear audio along with the video at the desk was vital.
We resorted to three microphones and an audio mixer to get the necessary balance to achieve the customer's requirement.

The audio kit and advice was sourced from Canford Audio.

 

[Dom518R]

Good audio is really hard to achieve.
The microphones built into the cameras may not be adequate.

I guess Step ONE is to throw in a long network cable as just a test, to remove the Powerline adapters from the system, and see if the audio is then good enough.


We once installed CCTV at Police Station front counters, where recording good clear audio along with the video at the desk was vital.
We resorted to three microphones and an audio mixer to get the necessary balance to achieve the customer's requirement.

The audio kit and advice was sourced from Canford Audio.

Hi Phil,

Thank you for the response. I will test with a cable as you’ve suggested. Also found some freeware graphic equaliser that has several tools to clean up speech. Gonna try that.

I’ve been using a second dedicated mic to get the audio until now.

Thanks again,

Dom