Hardware·19,035 discussions

HELP! How do I get rid of this speaker noise???

Tags: Windows

I have a problem! I got some brand new G4 Rokit 5 speakers for christmas, and when they are connected to the PC, it produces a crackling white noise, almost sounding like rubbing two balloons together.
These are the details:

I am using a custom-built computer, which has a bluetooth mouse and keyboard, ethernet cable to a wifi hotspot and an external hard-drive.

There is NO NOISE when I connect the same speakers to my Windows Surface Laptop.

All the drivers are updated.

I have tried only plugging in one speaker and the power for the pc into the same pair of sockets (two sockets as a pair which connect to the mains). This does NOT get rid of the noise.

The noise only starts once the computer has gotten just over halfway through starting up.

There is NO NOISE through headphones, or through my old speakers which I used to use. This suggests that the jack ports are fine.

The noise seems to change slightly when I use more of the computer’s processing power.

When I place my finger on the 3.5mm jack, there is a low humming sound, suggesting it’s very sensitive.

I have purchased a ground loop, but if that doesn’t work, what should I do??? The speakers are fine, but my computer is obviously causing the noise problem. Any replies would be GREATLY appreciated!

Topic

Sounds like a Earth/Ground Loop

In reply to HELP! How do I get rid of this speaker noise???

This used to be really hard to deal with in the days when HiFi actually meant High Fidelity and you had real HiFi equipment. Earth Loops occur when different pieces of equipment are on different earth circuits or the incurable ones happen when you have Double Insulated equipment without an earth.

As most computer hardware is Double Insulated I would not fancy your chances of curing this type of issue but you can try the more obvious things.

Plug the computer and speakers into a Power Board beside each other not onto different power boards or power points.

DO NOT use any extension leads and try to keep any Speaker leads away from RF. Today that means any Wireless Connections at all including Blue Tooth not to mention things like Fluro Batten Fittings and Microwave ovens. I’ve seen cases of fitting Capacitors to Fluro Batten Fittings cure the issue but that was fairly extreme.

If you can keep all devices on the same power board from the same Power Point it should lessen any issues but with so much Double Insulated Unearthed equipment it gets very hard to deal with and try to keep all wire runs as short as possible so things like Power Leads should be shortened to as short as is possible to make them as well as speaker leads and if you can fit shielded Speaker leads so much the better but without any Earth’s being used all the shield will manage to do is shield the internal leads but not sdump any crap that the shield catches to earth.

If the speakers Power Source has an Earth you can fix the Shield on all speaker leads to that and at the very least it will dump any High Frequency crap to earth and take it away from the actual leads.

Solved

In reply to Sounds like a Earth/Ground Loop

Thank you for your incredible help, I did manage to get it working flawlessly with a ground loop.

Good to hear

In reply to Solved

Those can be hard to deal with.

[Author]

Replies