Onboard audio - High Pitch Whine (Gigabyte GA-790XTA-UD4)

[Deville]

Hi all.
The onboard sound on my Gigabyte GA-790XTA-UD4 has a problem.
I use my PC as a DAW (digital audio workstation) from time to time, and I recently upgraded my Logitech 4.1 surround system to a set of studio quality monitor speakers. The details I was missing in the mids absolutely blew my mind.
But now when I'm not listening to audio, I can hear a low level, high pitched whine that is making me crazy. I plugged the old speakers in and it was there. It's kinda been there the whole time, but I guess the old speakers just didn't produce the sound the same way the new ones do. I wanted more detail, and I sure got it.
Anyway, the sound is probably just electrical interference of some kind, but I'd like to isolate it, and minimize it as much as possible. Has anybody else experienced this? Were you able to fix it?
I have an M-Audio Delta 1010 soundcard that I probably should be using anyway, but I just moved into a new house and I haven't been able to locate it in any of my boxes. So I was planning on using the onboard sound until it turns up.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for taking the time to read this.
Scott

 

[DesiPower]

I had some issue, could not find a fix, I had extra PCI slot so put in an old sound card. I did read somewhere that it might be a grounding issue, not sure if that even makes sense, I never tried to fix it,
My system never went on standby, always rebooted when I pressed that button and that was probably due to case's grounding issue too (from my google research) so I guessed that it only made sense that my on-board whined...

 

[Deville]

Thanx for the reply. So maybe some kind of filtered power conditioner would work?
Hell, if I'm gonna waste the money on that, I'd probably be better off just tearing my house apart and locate my M-Audio card. That thing was dead quiet. The drivers for those cards leave a lot to be desired (especially on x64 systems), but there is no denying the quality of sound.

I'll bet the noise has something to do with the sound chip having a direct link to the other electronic components on the mobo... none of which require ultra clean power to function properly. I wish they'd try a little harder in that area. Realtek has some great sounding chips, but it does no good if the rest of the mobo does little to allow them to reach their potential.

 

[Zap]

I think that is inherent in some onboard audio, and as you found out becomes more apparent as your speakers/headphones get better.

Your solutions are:
1) Find your old sound card.
2) Buy a new sound card.
3) Buy a new USB sound card (isolates it even more).
4) Use an external DAC hooked up to the onboard audio's SPDIF.

 

[birthdaymonkey]

3) Buy a new USB sound card (isolates it even more).
4) Use an external DAC hooked up to the onboard audio's SPDIF.

If you're doing any serious audio work, these are really the best choices. The M-Audio soundcard drivers are a nightmare anyway (at least they were when I was trying to get mine working 8 months ago) with Windows 7... so much so that I ended up selling my Audiophile 2496 and getting an external DAC.

 

[flybye]

Mute the PC speaker

 

[Zap]

Mute the PC speaker

Simplest solution, LOL.

These days I find myself just ignoring sounds like that, since I hear it with a lot of equipment. For instance I was using my Dell Latitude 13 with the headphone-out hooked up to a receiver with some cheap bookshelf speakers. For some reason there is an electronic buzzing the first few seconds of anything I play. Also, of course if nothing is playing and the volume is turned up, there is some buzzing.

Strangely my Sandisk Sansa E200 MP3 player with Rockbox does something similar. I don't recall it happening with stock firmware. Basically any time I manually start/skip a song, a couple seconds of some background electronic noise that goes away. It is 100% consistent. Then again, maybe it is that I'm using really sensitive earbuds, because I think when I was using stock firmware I was using the earbuds it came with.