Skip to main content

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: Built-In Soundcard, Threat or Menace? (Fran Guidry) (Read 6574 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Built-In Soundcard, Threat or Menace? (Fran Guidry)

Reply #1
File v.wav has a constant whining noise throughout, file w does not, As such I would guess v recording as the onboard souncard and the noise to be from the PC supply. There is no point to abx, since the whining is clearly audible at the end (I have heard it in the foobar abx plugin).

Built-In Soundcard, Threat or Menace? (Fran Guidry)

Reply #2
The age when onboard or cheap removable soundcards had bad reproduction quality are long past. As the article correctly pointed to, it's because of features and workflow.

I can connect other devices to a soundcard with the existing stock of cables and don't have to search for adapters. RCA and big TRS connections can take signficantly more abuse. A real soundcard can be direcltly told to run at the sampling rate I want or what an external device is supplying.

While integrated soundcards come with huge software that does nothing, at least not when I want it to. Last time I used an onboard soundcard, its output changed to a microphone and back as I moved the cable, with a loud click, which I found rather disturbing. Bitperfect copies over S/PDIF were impossible, and even they were, the function would probably be burrowed under icons describing "enhanced multimedia experience".


Built-In Soundcard, Threat or Menace? (Fran Guidry)

Reply #4
Ok, there are two tones in both files, at 10.7KHz and 15.9KHz, with some slight harmonics above and below.
In v, both are more than 72dB down.
In w, both tones are all but gone.

v also has a slew of other tones and their harmonics at various frequencies. In w these are completely missing.

All four tones are clearly visible in foobar2k's spectrogram after boosting the gain to +45dB (and lowering the output volume to 0, of course  ).

Built-In Soundcard, Threat or Menace? (Fran Guidry)

Reply #5
Indeed, "v" has a very clear, immediately obvious high-pitched tone.
Infrasonic Quartet + Sennheiser HD650 + Microlab Solo 2 mk3. 

Built-In Soundcard, Threat or Menace? (Fran Guidry)

Reply #6
Indeed, "v" has a very clear, immediately obvious high-pitched tone.


My FFT analysis says that they both have tones at about 7880 and 15950 Hz, but in V they are about -80 and -78 dB down while in w they are -98 and -96 dB down.  The noise floor of V is abut 6 dB higher above 5 KHz.  The two noise floors are similar enough to raise some questions in my mind.

The fact that both noise floors are dominated by 120 Hz hum s at similar levels suggests to me that the source of the noise may be other parts of the test environment, perhaps even acoustical noise that is picked up by the mics.

Built-In Soundcard, Threat or Menace? (Fran Guidry)

Reply #7
Couple o' spectrograms here, of the tracks, boosted by 45dB.