Speaker Buzzing Question

[goob2k]

I'm the PA announcer for my high school's baseball team and I've decided to use the power of Winamp and MP3 to play music at the games (between innings and such). I tried it out today, and it works fine, except that when there is no music playing, there's an audible buzzing sound coming from the speakers. I have narrowed it down to the computer, since unplugging the audio connecting the computer to the PA amplifier eliminates the buzzing sound. Here's the setup:

Computer -> Mini Plug to RCA Cable -> PA Amp -> Speakers.

Turning down the volume at the amp does kill the buzzing but I don't want to be constantly turning the volume up and down. The cable connecting the computer to the amp is some cheap unshielded cable I picked up at Radio Shack. Would using a nicer shielded cable solve my problem?

 

[HomeBrewerDude]

i bet it is here:



<< Mini Plug to RCA Cable >>



try a better quality miniplug/cable.

 

[goob2k]

That was what I was hoping. I have a nicer shielded mini-RCA cable with gold contacts that I picked up a while back for my Divx machine. Hopefully it will solve the problem.

 

[nightowl]

It may be the sound chip in your laptop. Most of the sound chips in laptops do not have the best analog outputs. Meaning that when you turn up the master volume in Windows it is likely to distort. My laptop is like that with speakers when I turn the master volume all the way up. The only solution is to turn the master volume down so that there is no distortion and turn up the volume on the PA system.

 

[goob2k]

I'm actually using a geniune desktop system (but I used a laptop last year and had the buzzing sound, but it was not nearly as loud).

 

[Moonbeam]

Maybe if you stopped asking the speakers the speaker buzzing question they would stop buzzing.

 

[d33pt]

sounds like a ground loop.. try grounding the computer to the amp..