Sound card interference with GPU

Marsman said:
DGX I could understand, as it's only a £20 card. Yes it's great for what it is really little money, but I would expect a more expensive card to have better shielding, even cards without a EMI cover. One would expect a card with a EMI cover such as the Z to fare considerably better, especially given that there is no EMI affecting the audio output. If there were too much EMI, the whole card would be affected.

Sound cards are a lottery to a point. The DGX and SB Z, could be placed in a different system and work perfectly well. I guess for audio purposes that's what makes PC's not ideal machines. There are a raft of different brands and combinations of components that make testing whether a sound card works within any given system, nigh on impossible. If you buy an audio product, every component is selected so it runs as well as it can do. A PC on the other hand is a mish mash of varying components that someone hopes is going to work, at least on an audio level.

I wonder if a USB microphone would fare any better.
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The recording quality of the DGX was vastly superior apart from the EMI issue. I just don't know what to do now lol, I want a sound card with EMI shielding and good recording quality I guess. The Z hasn't provided that for me.
 
I am surprised that the Z isn't as good when it comes to recording as the DGX. That is one area where I would expect Creative cards to reign supreme over Asus. All the positive comments I have seen of the Z has been about the output sound quality. Very little has been said about the recording quality. Although thinking about it, I'm sure I saw someone comment that he found it fairly lacklustre.

Other than returning the card and trying yet another one, I don't think there are many more options, bar trying a USB microphone, even if it's just to see if that also suffers the same issue.
 
It's such a shame because I'm immensely happy with the sound, it's literally brought my headphones to life.

I've got about a week to ponder before I make a decision on DSR I suppose.
 
I was the same with the STX. The output and the mic when it worked sounded amazing and my friends agreed. Then I went to the onboard on my mobo which was supposed to be quite good and they complained. I miss the STX sooo much lol.
 
Tobes said:
I was the same with the STX. The output and the mic when it worked sounded amazing and my friends agreed. Then I went to the onboard on my mobo which was supposed to be quite good and they complained. I miss the STX sooo much lol.
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What made you go back to onboard? EMI problems?
 
Yup. However since then I have changed my mobo and cpu. So I'm really tempted to but a new one. But part of me wonders if it's a PSU problem as well. It's a shame I couldn't try it in another system or have spare parts to swap. I might buy one in a couple of weeks and take my chances.
 
Tobes said:
Yup. However since then I have changed my mobo and cpu. So I'm really tempted to but a new one. But part of me wonders if it's a PSU problem as well. It's a shame I couldn't try it in another system or have spare parts to swap. I might buy one in a couple of weeks and take my chances.
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Can always just DSR it if it has the same problem. I just wish I knew what I could do to get rid of the problem, it astounds me that no one has found out a fix.
 
I wonder if it is the PSU. You have a 650 Corsair and I have a 620 Corsair.

I'm also using xfire with 7950d. Maybe we are putting too much strain on it?
 
Masterdeadly said:
Thanks for the reply Marsman.

Here is the Control Panel:> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejPwXh23zW0

As you can see you rely on the noise reduction being selected to make the mic bearable, but even when it's on you don't get that modmic clarity.

I've tried it with my old Plantronic 780 headset and the same applies. The AntLion Modmic sounded crystal clear on my ASUS card but obviously had some EMI issues. Now my mic just sounds average from start to finish.

If Melmac could give me any suggestions that would be great. If I can't work out a solution soon I think I'll DSR it and opt for something else.

*edit*

Then again saying that, I'd rather it be like this than have EMI issues again so I'd have to weigh up my options before DSR'ing it.
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Hi, I am only after reading through this thread now. So sorry if this reply is too later!!

I wonder have you tried the Mic that came with the Z? Sorry if you have and posted it later in this thread, I am just answering the posts as I meet them, lazy I know :D

*Edit*

I should add that I went from a Asus xonar DG to the creative Z for the exact same reason EMI shielding. In my case it worked perfectly. But my situation was a little different, what was happening with me was buzzing noise everytime I moved my mouse while wearing headphones.
 
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melmac said:
Hi, I am only after reading through this thread now. So sorry if this reply is too later!!

I wonder have you tried the Mic that came with the Z? Sorry if you have and posted it later in this thread, I am just answering the posts as I meet them, lazy I know :D

*Edit*

I should add that I went from a Asus xonar DG to the creative Z for the exact same reason EMI shielding. In my case it worked perfectly. But my situation was a little different, what was happening with me was buzzing noise everytime I moved my mouse while wearing headphones.
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Hi,

No I haven't tried that mic as I just assumed it would be bad :L but now that you mention it I'll give it a go and see what happens. Yeah I'd get the same problem with the Asus xonar DGX, when I scrolled the mouse wheel there was a fuzzy noise coming through the speakers.
 
I have a similiar problem with my DX, when I'm on Skype and load up a game they all complain of bad inteference noises. I tried various things such as moving the sound card further away from my GPU, a poor man's version of an EMI shield and even taking the GPU out, but the problem still persisted. I then decided to try the front panel microphone port and it became crystal clear... so I guess there's something wrong with the back port. Sound wise though it's still fantastic and a massive improvement over the onboard.

You could give the front panel port a go if your DGX has a front panel header.
 
I've seen someone else say the same thing as above. That really is very strange; the front audio is fine yet the main socket on the card isn't. It's supposed to be the other way round!
 
Mine was the same at least to my friend on Skype. Mind posting your specs with make and model when you had that card? I really want to order another one to drive my pc350s and if I need to order a new psu I will. I have been looking into wattage and I bought a plug meter however my rig doesn't even draw 500 so now I'm wondering if it was that. Gah it's doing my head in. If I knew what it was I could accept it.
 
Tobes said:
Mine was the same at least to my friend on Skype. Mind posting your specs with make and model when you had that card? I really want to order another one to drive my pc350s and if I need to order a new psu I will. I have been looking into wattage and I bought a plug meter however my rig doesn't even draw 500 so now I'm wondering if it was that. Gah it's doing my head in. If I knew what it was I could accept it.
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Are you talking to me? You want the specs of my PC?
 
It's a good thing to have a sig ;).

It seems quite unlikely that my Corsair HX 1000 is under powering everything, it's actually been pretty overkill for all my builds in the past 4 years of usage (being young with impulse buying habits is a bad thing :().

It will be fine for sound but for the mic I suppose you could always re-enable the onboard if you really want to keep all the cables at the back, which I did do for a while until my headset died. Moved back to the standard headphone + clip on mic which works much better in terms of quality.
 
Hi I'm back, I tried my microphone and ASUS Xonar DGX on my brothers computer which didn't suffer from any EMI issues at all.

Mic that came with the Sound Blaster Z was exactly the same as the modmic, needed noise reduction on sound blaster control panel to make the static vanish but then the mic quality drops off a cliff.

I tried putting my modmic into the onboard sound (Back of the case) but the background static/muffle is ridiculously loud.

Just tried the mic port on the top of my NZXT and that is the same, lot of background static sound.

Just to summarize what's going on then:

With the ASUS Xonar DGX I'm experiencing a crystal clear microphone out of games however EMI issues through the mic when playing games.
With the Creative Sound Blaster Z the EMI problems have gone, however there is a lot of background static/muffle which can be removed by using the noise reduction feature on the SB control panel but that decreases mic quality.

Not sure what to do :L
 
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Without trying different PC parts to see what is causing the EMI issue, I don't think there is a lot else you can do. Only other thing you could try is a USB microphone. Messing around with yet another sound card is a waste of time in my opinion. Better to replace whatever is the cause, although that is easier said than done.
 
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