Hard drive noise heard through speakers

F

Face

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I'm hearing a low level noise through my speakers when my computer is doing any processing or I move the mouse. It is definitely not a ground loop as this was heard using the optical out and HDMI((audio) out. My OS is on a SS drive, since there's no moving parts I'm surprised that this could cause an issue.

Are all SATA cables generally shielded?

What about building a little cage/shield out of copper foil left over from another project?

Any other ideas?

Here's some info on my rig:
PC Power and Cooling Silencer MkII 950
ASUS EAH6870
OCZ Vertex Series 60 gig
ASUS P6T mobo
Logitech G9X
Logitech G19

TIA!
 
Yah, I've witnessed that phenomenon since I started using computers 12 years ago. I think it has something to do with the speaker shielding as well. Even light switches around the house will pop my speakers.
 
I use separate amps for my mains and surrounds. I also get a small "pop" through my surrounds only when my circulator clicks on. I know I should have a dedicated circuit for all my audio/video equipment, but I don't believe that would help the issue in my first post.

FYI, the noise goes away when I lock onto a signal such as a video game, etc...
 
I read that whenever I turn on the light switch the tiny arc of electricity emits an electromagnetic through the air and the speakers intercept that signal and is heard as pops.
 
Anyone?

To reiterate, whenever I move my mouse or do any processing on my C: drive, I hear this noise through my speakers when connected via HDMI, optical, or analog out. ASUS's overclocking program affects this, on high the noise is very loud, but on low, the noise is much lower and bearable. The noise can even be heard through my receiver when listening to another source(cable), but it is lower.

The only connection not affected is my asynchronous DAC.

Any ideas other than replacing the C: drive?
 
pinoy said:
I read that whenever I turn on the light switch the tiny arc of electricity emits an electromagnetic through the air and the speakers intercept that signal and is heard as pops.
Click to expand...

That might actually be more of a current/power supply kind of thing. I'll notice a hum in the office computer's speakers that varies with the ceiling fan. Then "pops" and goes away when I turn it off.

I don't notice it in the living room HTPC which has a UPS. Who knows...:confused:
 
Face said:
To reiterate, whenever I move my mouse or do any processing on my C: drive, I hear this noise through my speakers when connected via HDMI, optical, or analog out.
Click to expand...

Well, usually that happens when your power supply is not adequate. The voltage variations is what causes the buzz on the analog channels. It should not happen with optical outputs, unless your PSU is really bad so it affects the receiver connected to the same power strip.
 
Switching from a PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750 to PC Power and Cooling Silencer MkII 950 didn't make a difference at all. I don't believe either would be considered inadequate in my application.

FYI, the problem still exists when both the receiver and PC are on different strips/lines, but when separated it's compounded by a ground loop.
 
Wait, you're getting this on a digital out? Weird.

I'm guessing you're using the onboard sound chip, have you thought about trying one of the cheap Xonars?

I've only heard the hard drive or mouse noise when I'm using onboard sound connected to some high sensitivity speakers/headphones.

Try lowering the noise floor on the various amps... IE, lower the Windows system volume and raise the volume on your amp, if that doesn't clean it up try going the other way, lower on your amp and higher in Windows.
 
I have all kinds f weird things that I can hear from my speakers when the volume is cranked up. I think the weirdest is a short hiss every time a new notch click on my mouse wheel. I think its just part of owning a computer lol.
 
It might be as simple as disabling all recording devices, a mic for one thing would be the main reason. If the sound hangs around even with volume on lowest setting using the optical or s/pdif then it would be caused by a bad driver and not your c: hard drive.
 
I bought speakers Genius USB SP-U110
That gets its power from USB.
I heard two different noises:
First, I discovered that it was generated from USB laser mouse movement,
and I overcame this by plug that mouse to the next side USB slot of my laptop.
Second, it is generated from hard disk noise and it is synchronized with HD LED flasher.
In fact, I did not get any solution for the second problem.
Can this problem be solved by Ground loop isolator?
Or What do you think the solution of this problem?

Thank you.
 
Kind of a necro but yeah that's a big one, very common, difficult to diagnose, super frustrating and might end up as unsolvable.

If you're not serious about audio quality I'd go as far as to ignore it - if it's bearable. Because it will eat up your time.

I've come up with a basic check-list in this case:
- can you hear the noise in CMOS setup? Does it ever disappear? when?
- unplug all external devices except maybe the monitor, power and a pair of headphones. Is it still there?
- in CMOS setup, try disabling all power saving features that modulate clocks and voltages, like C1E, Cool and Quiet (AMD), HPET, drop your overclocks, underclock.
Try dialing in everything by hand, no AUTOs. Fool around with spread-spectrum settings.
- how is your stuff connected? Did you follow the rule about going for a 'star' grounding topology?
By that I mean - is all your gear powered from the same outlet? Is there a power strip in the way? line conditioners? UPS? ideally you want everything having a separate low-impedance path to the same ground.
- change all your power cords to different ones, preferably thicker - did it help?
- reseat all PSU-motherboard connectors, slightly push the individual wires in as well as the plastic connector. Same for PCIe cards and other devices.
- for a very quick test - just remove the motherboard, place it on a non-conductive surface and test barebones, no case, with as few devices as possible.
- mute all inputs
- mute the soundcards output - is the noise still there?
- disconnect the front panel jacks
- try a discrete soundcard
- try disabling the onboard audio in CMOS but keep the headphones in. Noisy?
- make sure power and signal wires don't run in parallel. Separate them for testing.
 
Discrete card usually fixed my issue.

I used to have a A8N32-SLI that had hiss. IIRC pulling the internal PC speaker from the mobo removed the hiss for me.
 
Face said:
New rig, same old problem is back. Must be my house grounding. :(
Click to expand...

Have you tried hooking your computer up to a different circuit in the house? Not just a different outlet, an outlet that goes to a different circuit breaker?

Have you checked your wiring with a simple plug in wiring checker. They usually have 3 lights on them and a diagram of what the lights mean.

If the ground is set up wrong in the house, it can be way more dangerous than no ground at all.

Is everything running from a main breaker box, or do you have one or more sub-boxes as well?

How old is the house?
 
RogueTrip said:
Discrete card usually fixed my issue.

I used to have a A8N32-SLI that had hiss. IIRC pulling the internal PC speaker from the mobo removed the hiss for me.
Click to expand...

Yes, possibly because any speaker is also a microphone. It could have fed vibrations and/or other noises back to the board.

dragonageinquisition said:
Hell of a necro but...lol. If you have noise through digital outs it means you have an IRQ conflict somewhere.
Click to expand...

Or that he has not muted his inputs and it's simply feedback mixing with his regular playback.

cyclone3d said:
Have you tried hooking your computer up to a different circuit in the house? Not just a different outlet, an outlet that goes to a different circuit breaker?

Have you checked your wiring with a simple plug in wiring checker. They usually have 3 lights on them and a diagram of what the lights mean.

If the ground is set up wrong in the house, it can be way more dangerous than no ground at all.

Is everything running from a main breaker box, or do you have one or more sub-boxes as well?

How old is the house?
Click to expand...

This, I mentioned some of this above. It's vital to have one common ground. Otherwise you have a current passing between the PC and receiver chassis, for example.
 
Face said:
New rig, same old problem is back. Must be my house grounding. :(
Click to expand...

I had a similar issue with my analog speakers and onboard audio, but I had a constant static sound as well as the hard drive and mouse making noise through the speakers.

built a new machine with a SoundBlaster ZX card, and as soon as I powered everything up, had the exact same noise.

After a day of thinking about it, I decided to pull the ground from the speakers using a 3 prong to 2 prong adapter, the kind you use to plug in a grounded plug into a non grounded 2 prong outlet.

plugged in the speakers and turned them on and no noise at all. I was relieved as the noise was really starting to annoy me.

I guess you can try an adapter to see if you can isolate what component is causing the strange ground issue.

EDIT:
I just had a new circuit installed for the PC last week and just now tested without the ground adapter and I still have the noise.
So I am not sure what is causing my issue. I know it's not the speakers as I had Sam Ash send me another set so I had 4 speakers and 4 different cable setups to test with and every combo had noise.
 
Last edited:
I'm not trying to be mean to any of you guys or a smart ass, but:
- I assumed you have powered speakers, hence the 3->2 adapter?
now, what if your speakers failed and a short happened between speaker power Line and the speaker's chassis? Your residual-current device wouldn't even trip and you'd be the one to connect Line and earth ground with your body.

- Your computer is 3 prong, right? correct me if I'm wrong, but if you had a 2 prong speaker connected to a 3 prong computer, you had sort of an antenna setup happening. The speaker's chassis would be floating and possibly introducing EMI to audio signal.

- if I had to fool around with removing grounds, I'd try the trick where you place insulation between card and chassis, so that the soundcard does not touch your computer's chassis anywhere. Connected to PCI and nothing else. I've heard it work. "Sounds" safer.

Do you know what happens when two guitarists are playing with their marshalls connected to different circuits? nothing. But when they'd touch, they'd equalize the two circuit's grounds. Painful and/or deadly.

Start with my list a few posts above, seriously. It could help. Helped some of my friends.
 
michalrz said:
I'm not trying to be mean to any of you guys or a smart ass, but:
- I assumed you have powered speakers, hence the 3->2 adapter?
now, what if your speakers failed and a short happened between speaker power Line and the speaker's chassis? Your residual-current device wouldn't even trip and you'd be the one to connect Line and earth ground with your body.

- Your computer is 3 prong, right? correct me if I'm wrong, but if you had a 2 prong speaker connected to a 3 prong computer, you had sort of an antenna setup happening. The speaker's chassis would be floating and possibly introducing EMI to audio signal.

- if I had to fool around with removing grounds, I'd try the trick where you place insulation between card and chassis, so that the soundcard does not touch your computer's chassis anywhere. Connected to PCI and nothing else. I've heard it work. "Sounds" safer.

Do you know what happens when two guitarists are playing with their marshalls connected to different circuits? nothing. But when they'd touch, they'd equalize the two circuit's grounds. Painful and/or deadly.

Start with my list a few posts above, seriously. It could help. Helped some of my friends.
Click to expand...

Catastrophic failure like that is extremely unlikely to happen for any commercial product. Also if this would happen you would only be exposed to danger if you held the audio connector with one hand and touched earth with the other (or jam your toe to a metal part of the computer).

Most computers that I've tested leak voltage to the chassis (60-120 volts) and you can experience that briefly if you hold the audio jack in your fingers and touch the audio connector with your skin. Gives you that unpleasant tingling electric shock feeling. The current is however low enough not to cause damage to your body - your audio gear may be a different story though.
 
B00nie said:
Catastrophic failure like that is extremely unlikely to happen for any commercial product. Also if this would happen you would only be exposed to danger if you held the audio connector with one hand and touched earth with the other (or jam your toe to a metal part of the computer).

Most computers that I've tested leak voltage to the chassis (60-120 volts) and you can experience that briefly if you hold the audio jack in your fingers and touch the audio connector with your skin. Gives you that unpleasant tingling electric shock feeling. The current is however low enough not to cause damage to your body - your audio gear may be a different story though.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the correction. It's just I have felt unpleasant ac leakage while holding my hand with one hand and disconnecting something else - for example. I figured where there's current, there's at least EMI inducing somewhere in the audio part.
 
michalrz said:
Thanks for the correction. It's just I have felt unpleasant ac leakage while holding my hand with one hand and disconnecting something else - for example. I figured where there's current, there's at least EMI inducing somewhere in the audio part.
Click to expand...

A galvanic isolator or full digital connection is recommended. I'm not saying a direct connection can't work - I've done it many times successfully.

AV19957-40.jpg
 
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