Hissing and Whining coming from speakers

[Fike]

I am finally fed up with the various pitches of hissing and whining that come through my speakers. I have convinced myself that it is related to all the fans that are clustered near the audio circuits on my mboard. Directly above the mini-plugs (within 1.5 inches) is one of my secondary cooling fans (I think it is a 60 or 80mm fan). Then just beyond that is the power supply. Four inches into the center of the mboard is the processor cooling fan. I just installed a new exhaust fan and the pitch of the whining has changed to an even more annoying level.

I even get noise through the speakers when I use the scroll wheel on my mouse. This must all be related to the proximity of the connectors and poor grounding and inductive noise getting into the line.

Do you think this will solve my problem and give me silence?


Creative External USB Sound Card

 

[Rubycon]

Check your grounding.

Most noise in audio systems is introduced through differential currents due to poor grounding between components. Ideally, everything should be normalized to a single plane with lowest resistance possible. Elimination of ground loops is the best way to prevent noise in audio systems.

 

[Fike]

how do I improve grounding on a pc where the sound card is on the motherboard. I am using a 3-prong plug, so that should be a non-issue. The only possible weak link is that the PC is plugged into a UPC battery backup which might impact the problem a little bit. Otherwise, the case is the ground plane and the mboard is fixed to it with metal screws that contact the ground plane of the board. I am pretty limited about my options, unless I want to get rid of all the EMF noise coming from the fans cooling my system.

 

[Oyeve]

Mute the line-in in the sound card control panel.

 

[Fike]

Originally posted by: Oyeve
Mute the line-in in the sound card control panel.

Interesting idea. I will have to give it a try, but I am not sure why the line-in would be causing so much blead-over into the line-out.

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: Fike

Originally posted by: Oyeve
Mute the line-in in the sound card control panel.

Interesting idea. I will have to give it a try, but I am not sure why the line-in would be causing so much blead-over into the line-out.

Yes if you have inputs that are un-used - particularly mic inputs, these will allow spurious noises to leak in.

Onboard audio generally has a higher noise floor than a dedicated solution.

 

[Fike]

Originally posted by: MS Dawn

Originally posted by: Fike

Originally posted by: Oyeve
Mute the line-in in the sound card control panel.

Interesting idea. I will have to give it a try, but I am not sure why the line-in would be causing so much blead-over into the line-out.

Yes if you have inputs that are un-used - particularly mic inputs, these will allow spurious noises to leak in.

Onboard audio generally has a higher noise floor than a dedicated solution.

Hmm...that's interesting. does that mean plugging in a mic may help the problem too? I would assume muting it would be the best idea, but that depends on whether mute is a purely software function, otherwise, I would think it would have just the same impact. There is no actual sound. All of this is inductive noise, I would assume, because the path from the mic to the speakers is not direct--if indeed the mic or line-in are responsible.

 

[BOLt]

Originally posted by: MS Dawn

Originally posted by: Fike

Originally posted by: Oyeve
Mute the line-in in the sound card control panel.

Interesting idea. I will have to give it a try, but I am not sure why the line-in would be causing so much blead-over into the line-out.

Yes if you have inputs that are un-used - particularly mic inputs, these will allow spurious noises to leak in.

Onboard audio generally has a higher noise floor than a dedicated solution.

OMG THANKS YOU ARE MY SAVIOR. Bah, I've been dealing with that damn noise forever. Now... GONE! ALL GONE! YIPPEE!

 

[So]

Originally posted by: MS Dawn

Originally posted by: Fike

Originally posted by: Oyeve
Mute the line-in in the sound card control panel.

Interesting idea. I will have to give it a try, but I am not sure why the line-in would be causing so much blead-over into the line-out.

Yes if you have inputs that are un-used - particularly mic inputs, these will allow spurious noises to leak in.

Onboard audio generally has a higher noise floor than a dedicated solution.

MS Dawn is correct in both this respect and in her comment about ground loops.

 

[Fike]

muting the mic and line in makes no difference. The only thing that works is turning the speakers way down so that I can barely hear the whining or the sounds from the speakers.

Back to my original question. Is there any reason why an external USB sound card wouldn't work to fix this problem?

 

[myocardia]

How sure are you that it isn't just the speakers? I've seen people's computer speakers that made noise like you describe, and it went away when they used a different set of speakers.

 

[bobsmith1492]

Unplug your speakers from the computer and see if they still hiss - if they do, it's a problem with the speakers. If they don't, it's a problem with the computer. That's be where I'd start.

 

[Fike]

They stop hissing when I unplug them.

I also know that is correlated with noise inside the system because the freqeuncy and level of the hissing corresponds to various system related events like an HD spinning up or the mouse wheel being spun.

 

[Oyeve]

Originally posted by: BOLt

Originally posted by: MS Dawn

Originally posted by: Fike

Originally posted by: Oyeve
Mute the line-in in the sound card control panel.

Interesting idea. I will have to give it a try, but I am not sure why the line-in would be causing so much blead-over into the line-out.

Yes if you have inputs that are un-used - particularly mic inputs, these will allow spurious noises to leak in.

Onboard audio generally has a higher noise floor than a dedicated solution.

OMG THANKS YOU ARE MY SAVIOR. Bah, I've been dealing with that damn noise forever. Now... GONE! ALL GONE! YIPPEE!

Well, at least I helped someone, if not the OP!

 

[bobsmith1492]

I'm sure a USB sound card would fix the problem, since it seems to be, as you said, on the motherboard. I've never heard any great praises for onboard sound, anyway, and your noise issue is probably due to the onboard. If you notice, the "good" onboard solutions have a separated audio riser card, anyway.

Maybe you could try to move around some stuff in your computer - cards, wiring, and whatnot. I doubt it would do much, but you might as well since it's cheaper than a new card. After that, go for a separate sound card if it really bugs you. Even an internal card should be a lot better than onboard.

By the way, what motherboard do you have? Was it a fairly cheap one? That would probably make a difference.

 

[Fike]

Originally posted by: bobsmith1492
I'm sure a USB sound card would fix the problem, since it seems to be, as you said, on the motherboard. I've never heard any great praises for onboard sound, anyway, and your noise issue is probably due to the onboard. If you notice, the "good" onboard solutions have a separated audio riser card, anyway.

Maybe you could try to move around some stuff in your computer - cards, wiring, and whatnot. I doubt it would do much, but you might as well since it's cheaper than a new card. After that, go for a separate sound card if it really bugs you. Even an internal card should be a lot better than onboard.

By the way, what motherboard do you have? Was it a fairly cheap one? That would probably make a difference.

I wouldn't call my mboard cheap, but it ins't fancy either. It is an epox 8kda3i if I recall correctly. It's a socket 754 board with serial ata and 10/100 ethernet with nforce 3 250. I recall that there were warnings by other people who have had the card saying that soundcards frequently conflicted with onboard sound. That is why I thought of getting USB sound. It also seems like you could get better sound overall with an external usb sound system. I know people who have done this when their laptop sound went bad.

I am pretty sure that the biggest contributor is the fan that is sitting immediately adjacent to the audio input/outputs. I don't really want to move that since I am overclocking a little bit and I want to have good airfolw around the processor that is 5" away.

There were lots of good suggestions here, but I think an external sound setup may be my next best bet. yippee....more usb devices. ugh.

 

[Rubycon]

A USB soundcard can actually have more noise IF the source of the noise is a ground loop between your active speakers' power supply and your computer. The wall wart powering the external sound card is just another fulcrum on the differential tree.

 

[Fike]

Problem solved. It wasn't the mic or line-in that needed to be muted. It was the CD player. That makes a bit more sense based upon the routing of the CD audio wires to the mboard. They pass near to several fans.

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: Fike
Problem solved. It wasn't the mic or line-in that needed to be muted. It was the CD player. That makes a bit more sense based upon the routing of the CD audio wires to the mboard. They pass near to several fans.

Why even use this?

For the past 5 years most pc's haven't even used this cable. As long as the drive supports DAE (which nearly all do now) you're golden. (and quiet!)

 

[Fike]

Originally posted by: MS Dawn

Originally posted by: Fike
Problem solved. It wasn't the mic or line-in that needed to be muted. It was the CD player. That makes a bit more sense based upon the routing of the CD audio wires to the mboard. They pass near to several fans.

Why even use this?

For the past 5 years most pc's haven't even used this cable. As long as the drive supports DAE (which nearly all do now) you're golden. (and quiet!)

I didn't know that. This CDR could be five years old. I will need to check. How do I enable DAE?

thanks

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: Fike

I didn't know that. This CDR could be five years old. I will need to check. How do I enable DAE?

thanks

To enable digital CD playback in Windows XP, please do the following:

- Right click on the "My Computer" icon - select properties.
- Click the "Hardware" tab.
- Click the "Device Manager" button.
- Click the + next to "DVD/CD-ROM drives".
- Double-click your CD-ROM drive.
- Click on the "Properties" tab.
- Under "Digital CD Playback", place a check in the box next to "Enable digital CD audio for this CD-ROM device".
- Click "OK" to save your changes.

If digital CD playback is supported by your CD-ROM drive, you should now be able to hear audio CDs played from this drive. If you are not able to hear standard audio CDs, then it is likely that your CD-ROM drive does not support this feature. In this case, you will need to keep your analog audio cable connected to to the CD-ROM input on your sound card.

 

[Fike]

Originally posted by: MS Dawn

Originally posted by: Fike

I didn't know that. This CDR could be five years old. I will need to check. How do I enable DAE?

thanks

To enable digital CD playback in Windows XP, please do the following:

- Right click on the "My Computer" icon - select properties.
- Click the "Hardware" tab.
- Click the "Device Manager" button.
- Click the + next to "DVD/CD-ROM drives".
- Double-click your CD-ROM drive.
- Click on the "Properties" tab.
- Under "Digital CD Playback", place a check in the box next to "Enable digital CD audio for this CD-ROM device".
- Click "OK" to save your changes.

If digital CD playback is supported by your CD-ROM drive, you should now be able to hear audio CDs played from this drive. If you are not able to hear standard audio CDs, then it is likely that your CD-ROM drive does not support this feature. In this case, you will need to keep your analog audio cable connected to to the CD-ROM input on your sound card.

Thanks. That is very helpful.