PC Audio - Clicking noise

[z1ggy]

Have a Schitt stack and it's had some issues for a while. Anytime the PC would be powered off, I would get this clicking sound in my headphones once I turned things back on. Old solve was to unplug the USB cable from PC and one way or another after reconnecting it, clicking would stop and normal sound would come back.

Well, not any more. My Mobo is around 7 or 8rs old now and only has USB or regular 3.5mm jack as output, so I can't test an optical cable to see if something else is going on. Despite trying a few different USB cables, the PC is not currently recognizing the DAC and keeps defaulting to my Yeti microphone as the audio output.

Pretty sure all my audio drivers are up to date. I don't have another DAC to test. When I plug other USB devices into the port my DAC is plugged into, they work fine (mic, mouse, kb, etc).

 

[igor_kavinski]

Google says: Simple solution - Use an earphone which doesn't have a in built microphone in it.

 

[z1ggy]

Google says: Simple solution - Use an earphone which doesn't have a in built microphone in it.

This makes no sense to me. Has nothing to do with my microphone, my audio is not working. Got clicking to go away with a new USB 2.0 cable but still no sound, and my default audio output is wrong.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Well then the only possibility seems to be that the little crab chip (Realtek) on the mobo is failing. You could try cleaning the dust around it while taking care not to give it a jolt of static electricity.

 

[mindless1]

Other USB devices work in the same port, so it seems likely the USB chip is fine.

Is it possible the PSU has the 5VSB rail powering the USB ports and that circuit is getting weak? It is common as PSU get past a certain age, often you can open them and see the 5VSB filter cap is bulging/vented. If it is just too unstable or too much voltage droop it may not matter but another thing to try is unplug all other USB devices and then try plugging the DAC in. If the motherboard has a jumper(s) to select between 5VSB rail and main 5V rail for USB, it's yet another thing to try.

Otherwise, I'd try the DAC on another system.

Is it possible that your OS is windows and it has applied some update(s) that broke the DAC functionality? Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling software/driver for it? Does it show in Device Mgr.?


If nothing else seems wrong then I would suspect the DAC itself is/has failed, possibly you had a static charge from the winter /low-humidity and an ESD event through it? That can cause invisible damage, but it might not hurt to pop it open and see if it has a fuse (surface mount type, probably) that is now blown. You might need a multimeter to figure that out.