Interference with headphones

[rescuetoaster]

Howdy folks,

So, here is my issue. I acquired some sweet Klipsch 4.1 promedias about a year ago, and they sound fantastic (now). I was getting some awful popping and other weird issues a while ago, and discovered that my router was evidently too close to...everything. It has since been moved to underneath my desk, and the issues with the speakers have stopped.

However, when the router was super close to everything, the feedback through headphones was unbearable. I couldn't stand it. Constant popping, whining, and static. It isn't so bad now, but I do notice a whining sound when there is harddrive activity. This occurs both through using onboard, as well as using my X-Fi.

Is there a shielding issue going on or something? I never had this issue with my last rig - and the setup was more or less the same (sound card, speakers, router proximity).

 

[Pinky]

I sometimes notice a very low level whine when scrolling with my USB mouse. Figure it's just a chipset issue. It's so low level I have to listen intently at loud volumes to notice it. Could be a shileding issue, it's one of the cons for using PCI/PCIe based sound cards. If you change the slot the sound card is using it might move it further away from the internal (motherboard) source of the intereference... ?

I don't think what you're describing this time is caused by your router. One way to know for sure is to power off the router and see if the noise goes away.

 

[rescuetoaster]

Yeah, I did that prior to moving the router a while back to see if the noises stopped, and they did.

I don't use headphones a lot, but I was playing GTA IV the other day with them on and every time the harddrives would spin up to load something that whining noise would act up until the harddrive stopped doing its thing. It's a minor annoyance I guess, but I don't remember ever having issues with my old rig.

 

[TollhouseFrank]

about the only way to solve this is to get a secondary internal usb header that goes into a pci or pcie slot. they have better shielding from EM interference and being separated from the internal header, does not get the same intereference sharing issues.