Aerothorn on 20/8/2009 at 16:59
So I'm using a pair of headphones plugged into a Soundblaster X-Fi on Windows 7. A few days ago, I started getting a buzzing in the left ear of the headphone. At first I thought it was an issue with the game, but it happens in every single game I run. Then I thought it was a problem with the headphones, but the same thing happened in another pair of headphones.
I e-mailed Creative and they claim it has nothing to do with driver issues or whatnot, but is "electromagnetic interference." What could suddenly start creating such interference? I didn't modify my system or (AFAIK) introduce any changes to its environment in the last few days - and if it was interference, wouldn't it happen outside of applications? Any advice on this would be appreciated.
bikerdude on 20/8/2009 at 20:13
this is sometimes caused by the headphone socket - if the plug isnt in all the way. Or it could be a loose wire in the headphone jack, or the socket on the sound card..
Aerothorn on 20/8/2009 at 22:01
Bummer - guessing the headphone socket somehow got jolted a little, maybe when I moved the computer around in the process of repairing. Any way to fix that?
bikerdude on 20/8/2009 at 23:19
Quote Posted by Aerothorn
Bummer - guessing the headphone socket somehow got jolted a little, maybe when I moved the computer around in the process of repairing. Any way to fix that?
Assuming its the socket and not the plug on the headphone, then yeah. If the ckect hasent been damaged too much, then its asimple job of re-soldering the joints where the socket is mounted on the sound card.
Aerothorn on 21/8/2009 at 01:59
I have neither the tools nor the capability to do re-soldering of any kind, but I probably no someone who does, so that's good to know. It's definitely not the headphone plug, since it shows up on different pairs of headphones.
bikerdude on 21/8/2009 at 08:56
Quote Posted by Aerothorn
It's definitely not the headphone plug, since it shows up on different pairs of headphones.
you might have what is know as a "dry solder joint" and a 5 second applivation of a soldering iron will fix that! But if the socket is very loose you may need to re-enforce the socket with some araldite after soldering, or worse it maybe too damaged to fix.
Whats bthe exact make and model of the sound card..?
37637598 on 28/8/2009 at 04:32
I have a Sound Blaster X-FI card and I've noticed it's extremely sensitive to outside interference from things like my cell phone, and external hard drive. It starts out as a buzz, then goes into complete chaos, but it's always pretty quiet, though always noticable. It can be caused by ANY electronic device that has electromechanical parts, or transmits electromagnetic waves. You can literally hear shift registers being fed data. It's pretty cool sometimes, only for the first 5 minutes of listening to the sounds of your mouse pulsing signal the the PC as you move it around the mouse pad, or the sound of clicking the "Start" button triggering hundreds of different read commands.
Aerothorn on 5/1/2010 at 17:36
So I got a brand new sound card and while it's totally awesome it's experiencing the same issues - meaning it is almost certainly EMI. The buzzing happens in direct proportion to what is happening on my monitor (i.e., if I scroll through a webpage faster the buzzing gets louder) which, I think, means it's either interference from the graphics card or the monitor (presumably the former).
Can anything be done about this?
Briareos H on 5/1/2010 at 22:48
The interference might be due to a bad VGA/DVI cable shielding, which sounds particularly plausible as the video cable is usually sitting pretty close to the audio cables. Can you try another cable?
Gigaquad on 6/1/2010 at 16:38
Buy a snap-on ferrite core for the headphone cable.
