Should i kick my pc to death?

J

jamie1981uk

New member
I'm not sure where to post this but I'm sure a lot of you will be using different machines (laptop, pc, mac).
I have had this problem for a long time with different equipment and I'm pretty sure it all boils down to the pc tower itself.

I'm currently using a Ibanez 555 with Evo's into a Eleven Rack into a Scarlett 6i6.
(i understand the Eleven Rack is a audio interface too but i prefer the Scarlett doing its own thing).

When everything is on i can hear a constant noise like "Shhhhhhhh" and the noise does not change in tone.
It becomes much louder when i kick the ocd pedal on.

I have turned off all my fans and any spare hdd's inside my tower and i have held my guitar infront of my monitor but,
the sound becomes much greater when i put it infront of the tower so my monitor is certainly not a problem.

I can hear the noise with the Scarlett taking priority and also when i tried using the Eleven Rack has the main interface.

With the pc turned off i can have a crystal clear sound through both devices.

I have turned off all unused audio's on my pc and turned the fan up and down on my gpu and cpu just to check but the in fairness,
The noise starts soon as i press the power button on my tower.


Do Macs have this problem?
Would a laptop purely for recording be better?

My pc spec....

Windows 7 64bit sp1
Coolermaster HAF 912 case
OCZ-ZS 750w
Gigabyte 970A-UD3P
ASUS Xonar DX (unused)
AMD FX 8350
CORSAIR DDR3 1866mhz 16gb
HIS ICEQX HD6950 2gb
Focusrite Scarlett 6i6

Thank you for any help.

Jamie.
 
Is the audio going through and coming out of (speakers connected) to the scarlet? It seems like you have too much gain on something and it is making that sound. I am pretty sure it has nothing to do with your computer as all of the sound should be going through the Scarlet.

Please tell us your routing. (What is going in where and coming out where). Example, XLR Mic->USB Scarlett->DAW->Scarlett->Monitors
 
I did mention my routing and setup to give all the I formation I could to eliminate any confusion or double posts.
I am using headphones and not speakers.

I'm am using the Eleven rack in to the scarlett has mentioned in my original post.
The sound is instant when the pc is turned on ans stays on and the sound is gone when the pc is off.

(pc just turned on means no drivers or anything are loaded).
The daw is irrelevant because it is not loaded or mentioned.
Too much gain could be a possibility but like I also said,
I have used the headphones in the scarlett and Eleven Rack direct.

If the sound is crystal clear before the pc is switched on I can safely say it's not a gain issue and it is a pc issue.
 
I think what DM was trying to say is that it could be the gain staging between the equipment - even the eleven rack and your PC if going direct. (I have zero experience with the eleven rack but plenty with the hissing...) Might start by checking output levels between 11 and scarlett first to see if that does anything to help; the only other thing that could cause the PC to introduce weird interference would be ground loops - what is your PC plugged into (what else is on the circuit with it that could be causing issues)?
 
My pc tower, pc monitor, Scarlett, Eleven Rack and T-Rex Chameleon.
These are all plugged in to a 8 way with on and off switches straight in to the mains.

I did mention I have had issues with other equipment in the same way.
Blackstar id tvp60, Blackstar Ht5, Line 6 Hd500, hd500x.

This is one reason I know it can't be a input level issue unless I have had it several times.
I even had a Focusrite Saffire connected with firewire until my motherboard broke (long story).
Just strange to have the same issue with so many different products.

Something is certainly emitting a sound.
 
To make it easy on you, try a different outlet or try to plug things into different outlets. It could be the computer, but unless you have another to test, hard to remove that part from your testing. Have you tried going straight to the Scarlett without the eleven rack?

Here is what I would try, plug the power strip into a different outlet (maybe that outlet isn't grounded correctly). If it continues, try plugging into different outlets and remove the power strip (maybe it isn't grounded correctly).

The procedure is process of elimination. If all else fails, try getting a friends laptop or something you can remove the computer out of the equation and still have the Scarlet powered up. Otherwise, if you go and buy another computer and that doesn't solve the problem, then you are hosed.

It could be the computer, but is the least likely of potential candidates. I would eliminate everything else before buying a computer.
 
Take a mic or pickup near the top section of the computer such that it is closer to the power supply. It might be that the power supplies are emitting a switch pulse that is sharp and aluminum does little to shield the interference. Just a guess as I have made so many computers and the power supplied are not the most well made items mostly all from China. You could also disconnect the the computer from audio parts and then do the same test to eliminate any ground loops. If you pick up the computer again, you can try relocating it away from your audio set up. In Radio we had all kinds of screens and keyboards and mice sent through remote boxes as some studio applications were on air. The computer was in another room.
 
It's a new day so had some time to think about things.

I was using Amplitube 3 a while ago and I remember it being pretty silent using the stealth pedal.
I know for a fact before then I used to get a sound when I moved the mouse.

This is leading me towards the psu or gpu for coil whine with the guitar obviously boosting the signal.

I might try booting the pc without the gpu and see if I get the sound or not and that is one thing eliminated.

I'll be pretty peeved if it's a psu issue with the cost of them things.

I do apologise if I seem a little edgy towards people.
I'm just sick of spending money and wasting it to find I have a new problem.

Buying cubase 8 Artist to find my old vst programs would work and suddenly lose the vst bridge tipped me over the edge but,
That's another story for another thread.
( I tried jbridge but same happened).
 
You don't say where you are monitoring via headphones from?
If you listen to music played back on the PC (from PC sound card) is it noisy?
Is it noisy if you are monitoring playback via the interface without guitar plugged in?
I had noise off mouse before, turned out that some wireless mice cause interference.
Don't turn to violence just yet :)
 
I am using headphones and not speakers.

I'm am using the Eleven rack in to scarlett.

I also mentioned that I tried the Eleven Rack has the main interface which would bypass the Scarlett.

I have not used a wireless mouse since the days of logitech G7.
(That's some years ago lol)

If the jack is unlugged from the guitar the noise is still evident.
I'm out for a meal at the moment so I will try taking out the gpu and see what that does.

I have heard about wireless mouse noise before so I just ignored that issue because it was not relevant.
If it's the coil from the psu or gpu I'm turning in to the hulk and throwing shizzle lol.
 
Do some basic trouble shooting.

Try different headphones.
Try speakers instead of headphones.
Try a different guitar or microphone.
Use the setup with a laptop or other computer.

Turn on your machine. Make sure the interface isn't set to direct monitoring. Listen for noise.
No noise?

Open your DAW.
Noise?
Arm a track with input set to your guitar DI socket or whatever you usually do.
Noise?

If so, switch the input number in your daw to another channel.
Noise?
If so, it's nothing to do with the guitar or ingoing signal path.

If not, revert to the guitar input and add your usual plugins to the path.
Noise?
Switch input to an unused input again. Noise gone?
Ok, so the noise is being generated by, or accentuated by, your plugins.

Turn the gains down and/or switch to clean amps. Remove any and all compression. Helping?


There's 101 things to try. Each will eliminate a piece of equipment.



I'm betting what you're hearing is just the usual noise that you get from amp sims set to heavy distortion patches.

Failing that, post a recording of the noise.
A buzz is very different from a 'white noise' sound, and the causes are very different too.
 
Funny you should mention that cable arcaxis,
I did have trouble when I first bought my Scarlett because the cable was very poor that came with it.

I did some testing and I can confirm that the gpu did nothing when I took it out.

Thinking back on my old motherboard and old cpu I had this issue and I'm going to stick my neck out and say it's a that bloody AMD Catalyst Control Center.

I just put CPU Overdrive on and click "Override existing CPU settings....Auto Tune"

It's going through..
Current CPU Clock
Current CPU multiplier
Current CPU voltage

It's got 8 to go through

The noise is gone ?

Well the only noise I hear now is the low hissing from the distortion/overdrive that a little noise gate can cure.

The cpu was brand new and not oc'd so I can only assume that AMD are bringing out new drivers that up the voltage or something stupid.

Lets see what happens when the testing is done and hopefully this can be a cure for something I have read about on countless forums with no real cure.
Well it's probably 1 cure for 100 different ones.

I will let you all know if it's a cure or not.
 
20150817_181354.jpg

This is what I did in the bios settings.
The one covered is....
CPU Core Control which was left on Auto.
Everything else was disabled.

The sound has vanished and the hiss from my distortion/overdrive was gone using a Compressor and turning the gate up a little.

Does any bios experts know what that page means?
 
Resurrect said:
What is that core, what is its intended purpose, and why does it cause interference? I've often wondered.
Click to expand...
You don't see them so much these days but they are intended to put a high RF impedance in the cable shield to stop the egress of digital hash.
Mapiln sell a range of clip on ferrites and they can be invaluable as an RF stop in cables, especially guitar cables.

@Jamie: Where are you in UK? I am NO computer guru so I cannot help you with the BIOS issues BUT! If you are a bit of a numpty in there, GET OUT! You can fork things pretty badly in a BIOS. Download the MOBO manual and see if you can dump the BIOS settings onto a thumb drive, most modern MOBOS can I think. At least then you have SOME chance of recovery if thing go Ts U!

And, if you don't have one FFS get a second computer (not a laptop for choice in this instance). You can probably pickup an old tower for £50 with XP on it and although XP is now pretty useless on the Net you can download W7 from Microsoft and run it for a time (30 days?) before you need to authorize it but that should be enough time to sort things out. AFAIK you can then do a hard format of the clunker's HDD and start again!

Dave.
 
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I have being building my own pc for around 20 years and fixing other peoples and dealing with a lot of bios issues in the past.

I have overclocked many cpu's for testing but in the end that 3% difference means nothing expect heat and tearing issues.

I asked because I know what a lot of them are but some of them are to help boost the pc which I don't want/need to do hench why they are disabled.
AMD are now using the cpu and gpu together for performance but with a 8 core cpu and 16gb of ddr3 do I really need to?

I have not changed my pc since my motherboard broke (I mentioned at the start) so dealing with the bios or how the new AMD works became a little unfamiliar.

Gigabyte are one of the best for fooling around with the bios because if something won't work It will revert back and that's why I got one rather than another Asus.

In the bios there is....
C1E support
Svm
Core C6 State
HPC Mode
APM

I was not 100% sure what they did but I knew they affected the cpu in one way or another.
Disabling is better than Enabling because you could be doing anything and they were all Enabled from the box.

Only a fool would change the clock speed when it's already at 4ghz.
My knowledge is based on how things used to but not how AMD like to force performance on you.
 
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