PMJ said:
I have jus currently made the switch from hardware to pc... I upgraded my mixer and amplfier for my studio monitors, but now its seems like I am getting a grip of dirty noise in my sound..... When I turn the volume up, I can hear interferrence from the harddrive of the pc and when I move the mouse it is really noticable.. With my hardware, I never had this problem, but now it seems to be an issue.. I tried to plug the mixer in a separte power strip of what the pc is plugged into, stilll nothing changes.. and I've checked my cables for cracks and tears, but I did not notice anything with those either.. Is there something else I can try?
I am using an Audigy Sound blaster card.. I know there are not the hottest pic of home studios, but Ive used it on my older pc w/o no issues as far as interferrence with sound... etc..
Most problems like this are caused by:
A. An improperly designed computer power supply whose ground rails aren't sufficiently grounded.
B. An improperly designed sound card that doesn't have proper power filtering capacitors on the power rails.
C. An improperly designed motherboard that doesn't have proper power filtering capacitors on the PCI slots.
My advice: start with a better sound card, and if that doesn't help, replace the power supply with a better one. That way if the first thing you replace doesn't solve the problem, you won't have wasted your money, as you'll still have a better sound card....
If it's a poorly grounded power supply, you might also be able to fix the problem through ground bussing---solder a heavy (say 10 AWG stranded) wire to the shield on a plug and plug it into an unused jack on some piece of audio gear (or slip a terminal spade under an unpainted case screw if you don't have any empty jacks). Take the other end of this ground wire and hook it directly to the ground pin on a power plug and plug it into a wall socket. (WARNING: Don't attempt anything like this unless you know what you're doing.)
If it's a crappy motherboard... well... not much you can do about bad power filtering (without replacing the motherboard, of course) except to switch to an external, non-bus-powered audio interface like a FireBox or something and use a 6->4 and 4->6 adapter pair so that the power wires aren't connected across between the interface and the computer. That generally takes care of even the most extreme problems.
In fact, it might be worth considering an external interface for that very reason....
PMJ said:
I recorded a little sample and then played it on another source and I cant hear the noise.. My guess its in the monitoring system.
Depends on what you mean. In the output portion of the audio card... probably. In the amplifier... doubtful. Unless the problem continues to occur after you disconnect the computer from the outboard audio gear, there's very little chance that it is being picked up by that gear out of the air. In fact, there's very little chance of that anyway unless it's a home-built computer. The FCC would have the @$$es of any computer manufacturer that let that kind of leakage pass....
