Remove the static from front audio port?

Hey all,
I've never had a case that hasn't had awful interference with the front headphone jacks and so I generally don't bother messing with it, but I'd like to get this working if I can. I've always had awful interference to the point where just moving the mouse causes high pitch sounds to come through the headphone jack.
Are there better shielded cables I should look at? My current case is an old coolermaster centurion 590 that i snagged for 10 bucks (awesome case btw), but even my newer rosewill ranger had the same issue.

OEM PCs that I've used never have this problem, so what gives? How do I fix this?

1st double check that the headphones arent the problem

After that I cant see that the problem could be anywhere other than the wires from the jack to the mobo or on the mobo header. Ive never experienced similar troubles but I dont think you need shielded cables for that small amount of power that travels over those wires. Definately test with another set of headphones first, just to be sure

I've got about a half dozen headphones, all with the same issue.

I've read from other people with the same issue that the front USB grounding might be to blame. But I don't know enough about wiring to really begin to fix it outside of disconnecting them.

I've got an old x-fi xtreme music, which I actually would love to keep using but back then creative used a stupid proprietory pin system so you couldn't hook up the front audio ports without their add-on. I'd prefer not to invest in another sound card unless I knew that it would fix it.

This might just be throwin out spit balls, is it possible your statically charged and somehow discharging the static electricity through the mouse or headphones somehow? Might be just a shot in the dark, but you said it didn't happen with a add-in sound card, I'd guess those are shielded better from static electricity than your average MB. Try putting on a grounding strap connecting it to the computer and see what happens.

I'm not saying that it didn't happen with the sound card - there isn't a way to hook up the front heaphone jack without creative's add-on hardware, I was just saying I don't want to invest in a new sound card unless I knew that for sure would fix the issue.

From what I've been reading it boils down to a few things - poorly shielded cable (which I don't know where to find a better one), the usb ports sharing a ground with the audio jack (I'm not convinced this is the issue since I would think the interference would only show up when actually using the front USB ports), or EMI from the powersupply, video card, or just powerphase in the motherboard.

ok, so the problem is they cheap out on the tiny circuit board that handles the front i/o stuff and everything shares a single ground on the board, you need to separate the audio's ground from the usb's shared ground.
http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=208880 one example
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/article-fix-front-panel-audio-emi-noise.187276/

i just read your last post lol i didnt realize you already found this possibility.
but all usb ports share the same 5v supply so if the noise is coming from the rear usb ports it would naturally be transferred through shared ground on the front panel.

From the OPs description of the symptoms, a shared ground is not really the problem. It's more of poor isolation of the audio circuit, which is picking up other frequencies along the path before it heads out to the headphones. Since this appears to be something that is onboard the motherboard, there really is no fix, other then trying to isolate the entire audio circuit, which unless your a EE, won't be feasible. Your only other options are a dedicated sound card of some kind, either USB or your X-Fi.

Mpegger said:

From the OPs description of the symptoms, a shared ground is not really the problem. It's more of poor isolation of the audio circuit, which is picking up other frequencies along the path before it heads out to the headphones. Since this appears to be something that is onboard the motherboard, there really is no fix, other then trying to isolate the entire audio circuit, which unless your a EE, won't be feasible. Your only other options are a dedicated sound card of some kind, either USB or your X-Fi.

Click to expand...

from the description of the symptoms, its exactly what seems is the problem, at least that is the issues i had when i had the same problem. its a very common problem in a plethora of cases.

I just reread the title and realize you are running a wire internally to the front jack. Do you have the same interference if you plug your headphone directly into the jack at the rear of the motherboard? Try that, but make sure you don't have the front jack wires hooked up when you try. It could just be the wire running from the motherboard to the front panel is acting like an antenna (though it's something of a long shot).

Negative, no interference when just using the jacks on the back of the mobo. It sounds exactly as you describe with the poor isolation of the audio, and would explain why the screeching changes depending on whether or not a harddrive is being accessed, or what sort of scenes the video card is rendering. Seemingly everything that the computer is doing affects what screech is played through the headphone jack.
I haven't even thought about sound cards in years, I've always used my x-fi. I'd be totally cool with keeping it, but as I said, there is no way to hook up standard front audio ports to it. Can anyone recommend a decent sound and cheap soundcard? What I would like to do is just to have it automatically recognize my headphones are plugged in and disable output to the speakers when I do that, which of course the onboard will do - but also provides me with ear shattering screeching along with my sound.

Try getting a headphone jack filter...like $10 on Amazon

like I said my idea was just a spit ball, sometimes the answers that make the least sense are the right ones, this wasn't one of them though, lol.

If you are not getting any interference from the back panel (motherboard) jacks, then it's more then likely just the front panel wire that is picking up interference. I'm not sure why you can't use the back panel jack instead, but if you must have something up front, you could just buy a headphone extension cable to route the rear jack to where ever you please.

My current case is an old coolermaster centurion 590 that i snagged for 10 bucks (awesome case btw), but even my newer rosewill ranger had the same issue.

Click to expand...

I am not clear if these cases were running the same mobo, but I am assuming that they are. That would point to it being the header leading to the jack being the problem. if different mobo, then the cords should be able to be swapped with the help of a soldering iron and some elbow grease. I pulled the cords to the led on my power button a few months ago and had to pull out the iron to fix it. It wasnt fun to work with such small wires in a semi enclosed area, but it wasn't the worst ever work. My motto with this stuff tends to be: "If I can do it, then everyone with oposable thumbs has a decent chance"