The curse of the electric fence!

First of all, this forum is astonishing. I stumbled upon it in a blind search and it's presence is completely remarkable. Everyone that originated, maintains and contributes to this forum should be very proud ... it's a real holy grail!! Secondly, though I'm about to embark on a new studio construction (I will spend a lot of time absorbing the vast body of info here first ... I've already been disavowed of some of my beliefs about construction and am re-thinking my over-engineered plans), I have a more pressing concern with an existing recording space - one that will also affect whatever I build down the track. It's the dilemma of electric stock fences. I work in Melbourne but spend a lot of time at my property in Sth Gippsland, and like many of you, I'm surrounded by farming land - a blessing in terms of proximity to neighbours and traffic, but a curse with regard to the relentless clicking of electric fences leaking into audio circuits. I've tried sticking a Furman Power Conditioner across the AC connections, but I think the biggest problem is RF from the EMFs that the fences emanate. It's broadband and it's nasty. Someone has recommended putting ferrite beads on absolutely every cable - AC, DC, audio and digital - I was told that ABC TV studios swear by them to rid the audio circuits of interference from lighting dimmers. But I was wondering if there's also any credible strategy for the building itself? Or at least the way I wire the building? I can't imagine that building a giant Faraday Cage into the walls is very practical, but is there something that anyone else has tried that's helped with such a problem? Any thoughts would be gratefully appreciated. Cheers Michael Shirrefs

Building a faraday cage might not be that impractical if you're building the room from scratch. The idea of a faraday cage is simple - just cover the walls and ceiling of the room that you want to keep EM radiation out of with a conducting metal that is grounded. This way the external EM waves hit the metal, and are dispersed to the ground without entering the room. It's the same design that is used in your microwave window to keep the microwaves from leaving the oven. Tin foil would probably work well on your wall (copper would be better, but ridiculously expensive), or you could try chicken wire (although I'm not sure how much leakage you'ld get through this). I'd suggest you take a cardboard box and use it as your test faraday cage. Just cover it with tin foil, then put your gear in it and see if that fixes the noise problem. If it doesn't, then you have an electricity problem (which seems to me much more likely). If it turns out that you have a dirty line problem, you might need a power filter/conditioner which ensures that the power your gear recieves is at a constant level. Careful here! - Many so called power conditioners just work by lopping off the top of spikes in your voltage. These won't help you if you're getting noise because of DIPs in the voltage. Somthing like this would probably be helpful if that's what your problem is: http://www.furmansound.com/products/international/products/int_pro/pfproe.php?req=ps