Rode Wireless Go 2 Buzzing Noise

If you’re like me and you bought the Røde wireless go 2 (affiliate link) to pair with a Sony a7S III, Sony A1 (affiliate link), or Sony FX3, then you might have been disappointed after your first sit down in the studio to find a weird buzzing noise accompanying all of your audio.

The Rode wireless go 2 buzzing noise doesn’t affect every individual Sony a7S III, Sony A1, or Sony FX3, but it is enough of an issue that people have been writing in forums looking for those with similar issues in a hope to fix the Rode wireless go 2 buzzing noise.

In this post, I want to go over what my findings were in fixing the Rode wireless go 2 buzzing noise, the fixes and the things that just don’t work.

I will summarise my findings at the start of the post, with more detailed explanations further down. Use the table of contents to best navigate around and find a solution that fixes your Rode wireless go 2 buzzing noise.

*Affiliates Disclosure

Affiliate links are present on this page. Through partnerships with, but not limited to: Amazon, eBay and Commission Factory, I will make a small commission through qualifying purchases. This comes at no extra cost to you and is just a way for me to try and support myself and the blog.  Thank you.

What Does The Rode Wireless Go 2 Buzzing Noise Sound Like?

Here is an example of the Rode wireless go 2 buzzing noise that might be accompanying, or ruining your footage.

Can the Rode Wireless Go 2 Buzzing Noise be Fixed?

The good news is that it can be fixed.

Results may vary from camera to camera and even between different Rode wireless go 2 units, but the main variance appears to be from the cameras themselves. Not all a7S III or A1 users experience these issues.

So let’s dive into how we fix the Rode wireless go 2 buzzing noise. But before we do, here is a video on the issue if you would prefer to watch and hear the comparisons than to read on.

Brief List: Fixing The Buzz

First we will look at what did and didn’t work in short form before moderately expanding on the details further down in the summary. For the most detailed analysis I recommend watching the video to hear the side by side comparisons.

The list of things that doesn’t work is quite extensive.

What stops the Rode wireless go 2 buzzing noise?

The following things are the most effective ways to prevent the rode wireless go 2 buzzing noise from interfering with your footage:

• Changing the 3.5mm jack cable from the Rode supplied cable to another cable, any other cable!
• Setting the cameras gain as low as possible, between 1-3 gave me decent results.
• Changing camera (but this is not a viable solution).
• Low levels of noise removal in Final Cut Pro.
• Turning off channels in Final Cut Pro dual mono.

What does not stop the Rode wireless go 2 buzzing noise?

The following things were tried with little to no success:

• Turning off nearby 2.4ghz wifi signals.
• Changing the camera’s wifi output to 5ghz.
• Putting every surrounding object in flight mode and turning off all wifi.
• Wrapping the cable in alfoil.
• Dangling the wireless go 2 receiver by the cable to try and get it away from the body of the camera.
• Turning off nearby power sources such as chargers, lights, powerpoints etc.
• Changing receiver from merged mode to split mode.
• Switching internal recording on and off in the wireless go 2 receiver.
• Turning on and off the ‘pad’ on the receiver.
• Increasing camera gain (obviously).

Those are the basics, now let’s dive a little deeper!

Exploring what stops the Rode wireless go 2 buzzing noise

Firstly let’s look at what effectively stops the Rode wireless go 2 buzzing noise (links are affiliates).

1. Changing cables

Changing the cables was the most effective thing you could do. I had cables from my Sony WH1000XM3 (affiliate link) completely removed the issue, while changing to another Rode cable, the coiled cable I got with the Rode Videomicro (Amazon), made the issue less noticeable but still present.

The below cable that comes with the Rode wireless go 2 is the worst cable you could possibly use.

Its flat memory holding form looks good, but might contribute to the poor performance of the cable. This is just my guess though as all the traditionally shaped coiled cables performed much better.

My final solution after all the testing was to use the cable from the Rode Videomicro, thanks to its short design. The cable from my Sony headphones performed better but was too long for my liking.

2. Lowering Camera Gain

Lowering the camera gain diminishes the noise, but the issue is still present. This is seemingly an obvious thing to do but you shouldn’t have to lower the camera gain as low as 1-3 on most cameras to get a good result, so it’s a poor work around.

It means you have next to zero wiggle room as the Rode wireless go 2 receiver gain has to be raised to -3dB or even 0dB which is its loudest setting.

My Sony a7R III (affiliate link) had no issues at all even when set to higher levels of gain. This is majorly disappointing to see from Sony that their top of the line cameras are performing so poorly in the audio department.

3. Final Cut Pro Fixes

Using your editing software is also a viable way to eliminate the Rode wireless go 2 buzzing noise. I can’t speak for all editing platforms but in final cut the noise reduction worked well.

I also found that one of the channels in the recording could be disabled and it carried a larger portion of the problematic noise, so disabling it made a noticeable difference.

Conclusion

There were some things that didn’t work and some things that couldn’t be tested, but we won’t dwell on them because that’s not what anyone is here for. I only list them so that it may help you in knowing not to waste time testing for it.

I could not verify that the distance from the camera would fix the Rode wireless go 2 buzzing noise because every cable I had that allowed me to move the receiver far enough away actually removed the issue entirely. So moving it away was a moot action to take.

Hopefully this has cleared this up for some. I think the results are good enough that I will be keeping the Rode wireless go 2, I am happy with them mostly, but the issue is frustrating.

My solution to removing the Rode wireless go 2 buzzing noise

I am going to use the coiled cable from another shotgun microphone, lower the camera gain, boost the receiver gain, and then if necessary I will tweak the results in Final Cut Pro.

From my testing though most of the time the noise removal in Final Cut Pro is not required.

I hope this has helped you in some small way.

Forever yours (yes you),

Stephen Browne.