Mic picking up coil whine (I Think)

Associate
Joined
6 Jul 2009
Posts
271
My Gear:
Asus Xonar Essence STX sound card,
Beyerdynamic MMX300 Headphone,
XFX R9 Fury.

Anytime I load up a game and talk to people or do a loop back test they and I can hear a high pitch buzzing noise it varies from game to game and which voip Im using. Seeing as its only happening during games I was pretty sure it was cause by the coil whine from the GFX card which when Im sitting next to the pc isn't that bad.
I've tried the front and rear audio jacks they all sound the same. The distance to the pc case doesn't affect the sound and even if I unplug the mic cable the buzzing noise is still there which makes me think its not the actual mic picking up the buzzing but perhaps some kind of EMI but my sound card is supposed to be shielded.
Im really not sure what else to check so before I go trying to cover the GFX card chokes in more glue I thought I'd ask here.

Any help appreciated.
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2009
Posts
11,175
The shielding on these sound cards is a bit of a gimmick really. I suppose they work to an extent, but for EMI that passes through electrical circuitry, they are all but useless.

I wouldn't expect that stopping coil whine by coating the coils with glue would have any impact on what the sound card is picking up as noise. Coil whine is noise caused by vibration, which is a physical; the noise heard through headphones or speakers from the sound card is electrical noise. You can stop the vibration (physical noise), but that was just the end result if you like. Whatever is affecting the sound card (electrical noise), would still be going on.

The coil whine and the EMI being picked up by the sound card could be an issue between PSU and GPU.

I was reading on another site that someone had coil whine from his GPU and he was using a Corsair AX1200 PSU. He RMAd the GPU and then and PSU, both more than once, but still got coil whine. Tried a different make and model of PSU, problem solved.

Someone else (on these forums), I remember had sound card EMI issues when he changed GPU. With this old GPU, he had no problems with his sound card. He only started getting EMI issues when fitting the new GPU, which was the same GPU, just different manufacturer.

A ground loop isolator may help and remove the noise. They are cheap, so worth a try.

If people you're talking to are reporting noise from your microphone though, then not much can be done about that. While you can isolate noise coming out from a sound card, it's a lot harder (if not impossible) to do that internally.

If a ground loop isolator doesn't help or you've also got microphone noise problems, then you'll probably have to get an external sound card.
 
Soldato
Joined
27 Mar 2009
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3,290
I've always struggled with this problem with my Asus soundcard. This is through many system upgrades with the only common remaining parts being soundcard and case.

What reduced it the most for me was isolating my PSU from the case, tested by remove the PSU from the case and listening to the mic. I isolated it with some simple plastic/fibre washers under the screws that hold the PSU in.

I then also recently got a ground loop isolator and that has reduced it even more but every so often I get told by friends my mic is buzzing when other days it's silent
 
Associate
OP
Joined
6 Jul 2009
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Yeah from my research it seems to be a common fault with this card. I'd never heard of ground loop isolators before so thats worth a shot. I think what I'll end up doing is getting a cheap usb sound card and just run the mic through that.

Thanks for the help folks
 
Soldato
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I'd never heard of ground loop isolators before so thats worth a shot.
Microphone is separate from ground and sees only ground of mic inpout connector.
So ground loop can't be issue with it.


I bought a usb soundcard that I only use for the mic. Solved my issues.
Yeah, signal of microphone is so weak that digitizing it outside of case can help.
For example Antlion has simple USB sound card bundled in ModMic Business and available also separately.
 
Man of Honour
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13 Oct 2006
Posts
90,816
I have to do this even with the AE-5 - every single onboard or add in soundcard I've used I've had to noise gate the microphone input - a reasonable external USB microphone solution seems to solve it - some cheapy dongles though have noise all of their own.
 
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