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Slight background hiss, please help!

C

Craftish

Gawd
Joined
Jul 24, 2002
Messages
675
I have sort of a weird problem: I hear a very slight background hiss. It is slight enough that I only notice it at some points on some tracks. I know it's not my headphone amp, as I still hear it when directly plugged in, and my other set of headphones also displays this hiss. Furthermore, I have swapped out my soundcard (A2ZS) for just a regular A2 and it does the same thing. I have tried both Creative and kX Project drivers, both have the same thing. I have tried playing the track directly from the CD and with different Media Players, still there on all of them. I have tried switching PCI slots, still there. What does this point to: motherboard circuit noise? The trouble started when I reinstalled Creative drivers b/c Halo wasn't playing properly with kX, but now even if I uninstall Creative, run Driver Cleaner and go back to kX it's still there. Does this mean one of my central decoders/codecs is somehow fubar'ed? How would I go about fixing this. I've been thinking about getting an AV-710 for a while now; is it possible this is just due to crappy Creative cards and this might fix it? Any help would be much appreciated. I'm using Win XP with HD-580s if that matters (but the problem exists with my other headphones and without the amp as well).

Update: it's only on certain tracks, so while it's possible it is the recording, it seems unlikely since it happens on certain songs on different albums.
 
see if you can borrow a standalone cd player (not a discman, a real CD player, one with RCA line level outs), and hook that stright up to your headphone amp, and then listen to the track.

That will do a few things, rule out your phones, amp, and recording beyond any doubt.

I have a ZS and I do hear some hiss, but only when my headphone amp is all the way up, and it's very faint, so faint that I doubt I will ever hear it.

So it very well could be motherboard induced noise....you also didnt tell us if your running watercooling or anything else in there that may generate noise. If you have a TV tuner card in there, yank it out and see how that helps....if you have open slots without covers in the back of your case, cover them.

Also keep in mind that some recordings are noisy...this is one of my largest audiophile rants...if we have this superior technology meant to reduce this noise, why the f*(& have noise deliberately injected into it?!?!

Also there may have been some other change you didn't notice.
 
I just checked, it's definitely not the cans or the amp, and my soundcard is the only thing in the PCI slots (I've tried it in different PCI slots too). I know this is a recent development because I can hear the hiss on songs I am absolutely 100% positive did not have it before (i.e. it's not a result of poor recording). The strange thing is that uninstalling/reinstalling drivers and changing soundcards didn't fix it. The troubles started when I installed Halo, but I've since uninstalled and the problem persists.
 
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