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Topic: Sounds of hard disk in speakers (Read 13023 times) previous topic - next topic
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Sounds of hard disk in speakers

Reply #25 –
I had similar problems with noise being picked up somewhere in the signal chain,  but  it was due to video card activity. 3D gaming would make quite a buzz and ticking sound in the front panel headphone jack.

In my case, it seemed that the noise was from improper shielding in either the wire going to the front headphone jack,  or  another component. I was able to resolve it by physically moving the headphone jack wire as far away from the video card as possible. After moving the wire away from other components in the case, the noise was gone.

Of course, if you are using a laptop, you won't be able to move around any components inside of the case.  If you've followed the other advice here about checking for ground loops and disconnecting as many things as possible, there may be no way around the problem, except to use an external sound card.

It may be possible to use a digital interconnect like S/PDIF or HDMI instead of the analog line-out on the computer. Digital interconnects aren't vulnerable to noise in the same way. Both the computer and the amplifier/receiver you use would need to support it, of course.

Sounds of hard disk in speakers

Reply #26 –
Quote from: slks on
I had similar problems with noise being picked up somewhere in the signal chain,  but  it was due to video card activity. 3D gaming would make quite a buzz and ticking sound in the front panel headphone jack.

In my case, it seemed that the noise was from improper shielding in either the wire going to the front headphone jack,  or  another component. I was able to resolve it by physically moving the headphone jack wire as far away from the video card as possible. After moving the wire away from other components in the case, the noise was gone.

Of course, if you are using a laptop, you won't be able to move around any components inside of the case.  If you've followed the other advice here about checking for ground loops and disconnecting as many things as possible, there may be no way around the problem, except to use an external sound card.

It may be possible to use a digital interconnect like S/PDIF or HDMI instead of the analog line-out on the computer. Digital interconnects aren't vulnerable to noise in the same way. Both the computer and the amplifier/receiver you use would need to support it, of course.

If it has an optical output, that might be worth trying, into an external DAC/Soundcard, to break the electrical pathway.

Sounds of hard disk in speakers

Reply #27 –
I bought a StarTech USB Soundcard just to have around for troubleshooting purposes.  With headphones, it's dead-quiet when no audio playing (on my computers). 

It's handy to have an extra soundcard around to swap-in to help determine if a problem is related to hardware & drivers, or if it's something in Windows or the application.

You can find USB soundcards online for very low prices (less than $5 USD).    Even with a cheap one, should get better noise isolation and it may have acceptable audio quality.*  If you want to keep the "experimental costs" to a minimum, you want to  experiment with the cheapest one you can find.  Then, if the noise is gone (or just better) you can buy a better one if you want.

In theory, the digital connection should isolate you from any analog noise, and it usually does.  But, sometimes there is noise on USB power supply line and some people do report noise getting into into the USB soundcard's audio.   




* Noise would be my main concern.  You could have some slight noise generated in the soundcard itself and/or the hard-drive & other noise coming-in over the power supply. 

If you are not hearing noise wioth a cheap USB soundcard, a better soundcard is probably not going to sound any better.  (The cheapest soundcard should have perfectly adequate distortion & frequency response specs and it might have acceptable noise specs.) 

Also, some USB soundcards may have difficulty "properly" driving headphones.    If that's a concern, you may want to pay a bit more to get one from a reputable manufacturer with good "headphone specs".

Sounds of hard disk in speakers

Reply #28 –
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If there are no conflicts (msinfo32.exe) you can't do much tweaking other but disabling those devices/controllers/drivers you don't necessarily need (I would maybe try by disabling TurboBoost, Realtek WLAN (or Atheros LAN) and nVIDIA (if not a needed component)).

So doing it just by disabling their drivers or remove them? And uninstall the nVIDIA program...or is the program the driver...?

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Anyway, maybe a SSD drive could improve (or worse) the situation?

Yes, would be great, but expensive. I now have an internal 1 TB hdd and I very often have to move the data to an external one when the internal is full. It might become worse with such a drive?

I have any idea whether these noises have an analog or digital source.

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sometimes it seems according to how hard the CPU is working. The harder it's working, the less noise in the audio....

The harder the hdd works the more noises I have.

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In my case it's noticeable if the room is quiet and the PC speakers are turned up a fair bit, but if I keep the PC speaker volume as low as possible and the audio output from the PC as high as possible (Windows and media player volumes at maximum, or close to it), it keeps it under control enough that I've not fussed about trying to fix it.

May be I should find a way with those volumes either...but I already have the problem to keep the system / Notebook sounds and music in a good / proper ratio. The loudnesses of the different sounds change all the time, I do not have any idea, why. Sometimes one sound is extremly loud, sometimes the same sound is very low.

Quote
It may be possible to use a digital interconnect like S/PDIF or HDMI instead of the analog line-out on the computer. Digital interconnects aren't vulnerable to noise in the same way. Both the computer and the amplifier/receiver you use would need to support it, of course.

Yes, but they don't unfortunately (80ies, I assume, a Harman-Kardon AVR21 and Onkyo).

Yes, trying such an external soundcard appears to be worth it. Thanks for the link, yes very cheap...but it might get a bit inconvenient, one USB connection for keyboard / mouse, one for the soundcard, so you have to plug off and in when connecting drives.

What about something like that, could it help:
http://www.amazon.de/FGA-35-Massetrennfilt.../ref=pd_cp_ce_1
http://www.amazon.de/High-End-Massetrennfi...6/ref=sr_1_cc_3

Sounds of hard disk in speakers

Reply #29 –
Quote from: JabbaThePrawn on
Quote from: slks on
I had similar problems with noise being picked up somewhere in the signal chain,  but  it was due to video card activity. 3D gaming would make quite a buzz and ticking sound in the front panel headphone jack.

In my case, it seemed that the noise was from improper shielding in either the wire going to the front headphone jack,  or  another component. I was able to resolve it by physically moving the headphone jack wire as far away from the video card as possible. After moving the wire away from other components in the case, the noise was gone.

Of course, if you are using a laptop, you won't be able to move around any components inside of the case.  If you've followed the other advice here about checking for ground loops and disconnecting as many things as possible, there may be no way around the problem, except to use an external sound card.

It may be possible to use a digital interconnect like S/PDIF or HDMI instead of the analog line-out on the computer. Digital interconnects aren't vulnerable to noise in the same way. Both the computer and the amplifier/receiver you use would need to support it, of course.

If it has an optical output, that might be worth trying, into an external DAC/Soundcard, to break the electrical pathway.



SPDIF doesn't provide electrical isolation, but TOSLink does.

IME most so-called interference in PC sound relates to Bus contention. This occurs when the audio interface and some other high-activity path in the PC are shared. Video and mouse usage (which implies video usage) are common activators  of this problem.

Zillions of noise-free PCs have been built using ordinary means over the decades. Only a lack of skilled and perceptive attention empowered to make detailed changes can explain their existence today.

I'm dubious about the pick up of electrical noise because all of the circuit speeds in a PC are incredibly high, and the pulses typically have exceedingly fast rise times. Most ordinary analog circuits should low pass them out of perceptibility.

Sounds of hard disk in speakers

Reply #30 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
SPDIF doesn't provide electrical isolation, but TOSLink does.


Decent soundcards have an SPDIF output isolation transformer. Unfortunately often the output cinch touches the soundcard bracket (i.e. the ground) on the inside of the larger hole for the cinch.

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IME most so-called interference in PC sound relates to Bus contention. This occurs when the audio interface and some other high-activity path in the PC are shared. Video and mouse usage (which implies video usage) are common activators  of this problem.


My cause was classical ground loop - the increased power consumption of the mother board caused voltage potential between the PCI slot ground connection and the large junction of all ground wires in the PSU. This junction is directly attached to the ground power lead, perfect opportunity for ground loop. The voltage difference was clearly audible as an annoying noise when any PC activity occured. It is dead-silent since I fitted the amp with an independent dual-lead (no ground connection, galvanically isolated) power supply.

Sounds of hard disk in speakers

Reply #31 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
IME most so-called interference in PC sound relates to Bus contention.


I don't think this is true.  I've never heard anything that sounded like a dropped sample or repeated buffer on a noisy sound card.  Usually its just analog pick up.  Bus contention should basically never happen anyway given that modern sound cards aren't even on buses, but instead use point to point interfaces like PCIe. 

Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
I'm dubious about the pick up of electrical noise because all of the circuit speeds in a PC are incredibly high, and the pulses typically have exceedingly fast rise times. Most ordinary analog circuits should low pass them out of perceptibility.


Assuming suitable analog filtering is included.  This is a pretty big assumption.  Capacitors are extraordinarily expensive to include on chip (a good filtering cap would take more die area than the average DAC), so they must be provided by the main board.  My impression is that manufacturers seldom pay attention to these things on low cost electronics. 

Sounds of hard disk in speakers

Reply #33 –
Audio ground often isn't at system ground (since these systems usually don't have a bipolar power supply).

Sounds of hard disk in speakers

Reply #34 –
Quote from: saratoga on
Audio ground often isn't at system ground (since these systems usually don't have a bipolar power supply).

That being said, even then it's usually referred to system ground. Inputs and outputs tend to be AC-coupled in such cases, though there's the occasional headphone output connecting to buffered virtual ground. (A virtual ground output has one major disadvantage in that it can be shorted out in some scenerios - it requires either the source or the load to be floating.)

IMO the most common scenarios of noisy PC output involve ground loops, either external or internal.
1. You run an unbalanced connection to studio gear, which has a habit of connecting circuit ground to safety earth (as does the PC). (This may also occur with regular hi-fi systems if they've got another ground connecting coming in somewhere, like via an antenna.) For example, active nearfields are very common these days, most of them from the home studio realm. Studio gear rarely takes the peculiarities of unbalanced connections into account. To make matters worse, the kind of cabling you typically buy is 100% unbalanced, wasting any and all CMRR that the balanced inputs may have.
2. The front panel audio jacks connect audio ground to case ground, and there is another ground connection coming from the motherboard via the cable. Bam, ground loop. Usually treatment of the front panel PCB with sharp cutters is required to fix this. Seems to affect bang/buck cases in particular, which means you can probably chalk up the problem to either cost (a hardwired PCB connection is free, extra caps aren't) or cluelessness.
3. And then there's fun stuff such as ground loops running over slot brackets or case standoffs. The components do fine on the test bench, but all hell breaks loose if you put them in a real-life system.