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Squeaky sound from headphone/speakers when scrolling page with mouse?

I

Ionizer86

Diamond Member
I've seen (heard) this weird phenomenon with many sound cards. When I scroll the page by clicking on the center button/wheel then scroll down the page, I sometimes get a squeaky sound coming through the speakers/headphone.

I'm using IE6 (I haven't been able to do that center click scroll on Mozilla or Netscrape), and I have a Santa Cruz card with the latest drivers. I've had this happen to me when I used an old SB128 as well.
 
Like this? (this was amplified quite a bit)
I turned down the volume in Windows, and turned up the speakers. That's all that I could seem to do.😕
 
I mean, really, it comes through the headphones/speakers when I scroll. It's really weird. When you use the center button scroll, your mouse doesn't even have to move, so the mouse squeak is definitely discounted 🙂
 
Mute your line-in and microphone inputs, maybe even CD. I had this problem once, and that solved it.
 
Interesting, thanks Cat! There's a lot less after muting some inputs, though for some reason, there's still a tad bit. Least it's not so obvious now 🙂
 
It's called blitter. Blitter is noise generated by your GPU accelerating certain 2d windows actions such as scrolling and moving around windows. Poorly designed sound circuits fall victim to it frequently. You can minimize it by muting all analogue inputs and turning your windows volume to max. Using the volume on your speakers exclusively while having the windows volume maxed will reduce the problem since blitter volume remains the same regardless of windows volume so your speakers will have a cleaner signal to amplify.
Of course, if you want to eliminate this problem completely, get a better soundcard.
Edit: I see that you're using a TBSC. Yes, that's a bad soundcard. I know that popular opinion is the opposite but what's popular isn't always right 🙂
The TBSC doesn't have the ability to hard mute inputs which is why you still hear the interferance when inputs are muted. Also, there's nothing you can do in this case because the components and layout of that board make it particularly susceptable to this phenomenon.
I would recommend an Audigy 2 ZS. It is not affected.
More affordably, an audigy 1 is still affected but it does support hard muting so when analogue inputs are muted, the problem goes away.
 
AIWGuru, that's really a very insightful post. From what you've said, I suppose the SB128 isn't a very great card either.

Does this have anything to do with EMF or PCI slot placement? Like if I physically position my TBSC in PCI6, far away from my vid card, will I get less blitter?
 
AIW:

Are there any other soundcards that normally cause this type of sound, and what are some cards you'd recommend personally (soundcards).
 
Originally posted by: Geekish Thoughts
AIW:

Are there any other soundcards that normally cause this type of sound, and what are some cards you'd recommend personally (soundcards).
Click to expand...

Soundcards don't cause this sound. The sound is caused by the blitter on your graphics card. Hence the term "blitter noise."

Amazingly, C-media's 8738 Codec is very well designed. It doesn't suffer from this phenomenon.
Nforce 2 does.
Audigy 1 does but has hard muting and so can be solved.
Audigy 2 does not
Live! does.
TBSC does.
AD SoundMAX does not.
Via Envy24-HT has a small amount.
AOpen Tube/Realtek suffers horribly from it

Of course, fot the integrated solutions such as the C-media CODEC it depends on its implementation on that board. It still may suffer. Same for discrete boards using that CODEC.

You might be interested to know that ATI's RS300 does not suffer from blitter noise 😉
 
I just want to say great posts as well! Never knew what that sound was from. I have an Audigy that I have already complained about a few weeks ago.
 
Originally posted by: Ionizer86
AIWGuru, that's really a very insightful post. From what you've said, I suppose the SB128 isn't a very great card either.

Does this have anything to do with EMF or PCI slot placement? Like if I physically position my TBSC in PCI6, far away from my vid card, will I get less blitter?
Click to expand...

Actually, I have a TBSC card that had the same problem.
The problem disappeared when i moved my sound card to the PCI slot furthest from my video card.
 
Originally posted by: Danny
Originally posted by: Ionizer86
AIWGuru, that's really a very insightful post. From what you've said, I suppose the SB128 isn't a very great card either.

Does this have anything to do with EMF or PCI slot placement? Like if I physically position my TBSC in PCI6, far away from my vid card, will I get less blitter?
Click to expand...

Actually, I have a TBSC card that had the same problem.
The problem disappeared when i moved my sound card to the PCI slot furthest from my video card.
Click to expand...

I have no explanation for that. that doesn't really make sense except that PCI can only have 5 slots. I know that your board might have 6. that's because 5 and 6 are the same slot and the board maker is pulling a trick at the bios level.
That's the only explanation I can think of for that.

 
Originally posted by: shuttleteam
You might be interested to know that ATI's RS300 does not suffer from blitter noise
Click to expand...

The GF 5900U FX has got to be the loudest damn card in this regard. The card itself physically oscillates!

Cheers!
Click to expand...

I don't think you understand. ATI's RS300 is an integrated R9100 (8500) chipset for the pentium 4. It has integrated sound. The sound is what I was referring to.

The GF 5900U has the same blitter as any other graphics card...but I wasn't talking about graphics cards anyway so I'm not sure why you quoted that line.
 
This topic is really interesting. Great responses, thanks!

Actually, I have a TBSC card that had the same problem.
The problem disappeared when i moved my sound card to the PCI slot furthest from my video card.
Click to expand...
Sounds like when I have time, I'm moving my TBSC to PCI6 🙂

I have no explanation for that. that doesn't really make sense except that PCI can only have 5 slots. I know that your board might have 6. that's because 5 and 6 are the same slot and the board maker is pulling a trick at the bios level.
That's the only explanation I can think of for that.
Click to expand...

I think the number of PCI slots maybe partially chipset based. USB, I know is chipset based, so some boards can have up to 8 ports. In any case, EPoX has made boards with 6 PCI's for a good amount of time, and I'm sure there's many other boards that have 6 as well 🙂
 
Originally posted by: Ionizer86
I think the number of PCI slots maybe partially chipset based. USB, I know is chipset based, so some boards can have up to 8 ports. In any case, EPoX has made boards with 6 PCI's for a good amount of time, and I'm sure there's many other boards that have 6 as well 🙂
Click to expand...

Yeah, like I said, the PCI spec only allows for 5 slots. Anything greater than that uses a trick at the bios level to achieve more slots. Any slot above 5 has to be shared with another slot and will only work with a "plug and play" OS.

 
I don't think you understand. ATI's RS300 is an integrated R9100 (8500) chipset for the pentium 4. It has integrated sound. The sound is what I was referring to.

The GF 5900U has the same blitter as any other graphics card...but I wasn't talking about graphics cards anyway so I'm not sure why you quoted that line.
Click to expand...

I understand perfectly.



text

Relation: dib blit acceleration causes this. The FX series actually produce audible noise themselves so this output can be realised even if the computer has no audio interface or speakers!

Cheers!
 
I don't hear this sound coming out of my speakers/headphones, but I definately hear it from my system case when i move windows/scroll. Do all video cards make this sound?
 
Originally posted by: shuttleteam
I don't think you understand. ATI's RS300 is an integrated R9100 (8500) chipset for the pentium 4. It has integrated sound. The sound is what I was referring to.

The GF 5900U has the same blitter as any other graphics card...but I wasn't talking about graphics cards anyway so I'm not sure why you quoted that line.
Click to expand...

I understand perfectly.



text

Relation: dib blit acceleration causes this. The FX series actually produce audible noise themselves so this output can be realised even if the computer has no audio interface or speakers!

Cheers!
Click to expand...

I didn't know that since I'm obviously and ATI guy. That is seriously sad for Nvidia though.
 
Originally posted by: Sureshot324
I don't hear this sound coming out of my speakers/headphones, but I definately hear it from my system case when i move windows/scroll. Do all video cards make this sound?
Click to expand...

Do you have your PC speaker connected? I have actually heard of blitter noise appearing on a PC speaker.
All videocards have a blitter, yes.
Apparently, the GFFX actually make a sound.
ATI cards don't.
 
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