noise from graphics card?

[the19thbear]

Hi. I have 2 pci slots in my pc. I have scope cards in both. The top slot drives me nuts! i can only use the inputs on the top slot card, because if i use the outputs, i can hear noise from the motherboard "radiating" onto the card. I can hear litle bleeps and noises when i move my mouse around!
can this be caused by components on the MB touching the scope card? One of the cooling thingys on the MB might be touch the edge of the scope card... i dont know.
grounding problem?
-remember this only happens in on slot!

thanks!

[braincell]

Did you try using digital out?

[Cochise]

I solved that problem since I'm using the DP35DP (same graphic card).

The closest slot to the graphic card is still free however.

[the19thbear]

any solutions other than not using the slot??

[the19thbear]

wil putting a new graphics card in the free pcie slot help?

[Immanuel]

Where does the noise come from? The speakers or the tower? I've had that with an old PC. But the sound came from the PC.

[the19thbear]

the noise comes ( i think) from the onboard graphics card.
it "radiates" electrical noise down on my soundcard.
so it doesnt come from tower or speakers! but i can hear it on the speakers..

[Immanuel]

Ah yes, I had that once too, if I remember right. I think it disappeared when I switched to another motherboard/cpu combo in 2002.

[the19thbear]

so.... what if i switch to a non-onboard graphics card and disable the onboard gcard? will that help?

[Immanuel]

I don't know. I switched between motherboards with AGP cards in them. Now, I use a Gigabyte motherboard with onboard graphics and no problems.

[Cochise]

I'm not sure the distance between graphic and audio card is strictly involved, though. GPU works at frequencies that easily irradiates, so audio freq amps in the close neighbourhood can pick some noise up, but it might also propagates through the ground planes or through any different way...

I had a single Luna installed in the more distant slot times ago, and that kind of glitch was here.

If you don't have already tried, disabling some XP visual Fx can reduce it a bit .

[JoeKa]

I have that experienced that issue, too, and solved it with a galvanic decoupler, like this:
http://www.hama.de/portal/articleId*26459/action*2563

The noise is transported thru the common ground inside the pc system. that in itself is not the problem, but it becomes one when the audio line connects that "dirty" ground to a "clean" ground from the outside, e.g. some other gear, active speakers/amp or such that does not have a ground lift, and thus the difference of "dirt" to "clean" becomes an audible potential. so, either you connect to an external device using a ground lift as very first device, or you get such a decoupling transformer.
btw, do not worry about audio quality loss, these things are almost perfectly linear within the audible frequency range. I measured one of these at the speaker company I work at, using an industrial grade audio measuring system.

for the worrywards, there are higher end solutions from Oehlbach, too, that might feel better in a studio environment.

[the19thbear]

thanks!
so what is the actual name of such a device?? i will try and find it here in denmark.
thanks alot!

[the19thbear]

this i driving me crazy!
i bought a ada8000 to use with my lunabox, and even over adat, i get the noise( on the ada800)... ARGH!!!!!!!!!
What i did do though, was grounding my whole rack. that helped a bit.
what else can i do? i found out that using the nf filters will distort the sound, so i wont do that.
I also have some grounding problems in my studio apperantly.. sometimes when i switch everything on, the HFI relæ ( i have no idea what it is called in english.. the main box with all the fuses in..) swithces off.
-so that could be the source of all my problems..
how do i find the problem?
thanks alot!
and have a happy new year!

[valis]

RF noise inside the machine is a more difficult issue, grounding issues that have noise from mouse movement etc can actually often be traced back to the switching PSU or transformer/power brick in the case of laptops. My experience with grounding issues with gear have been reduced by paying attention to a few careful considerations:

- Have your gear all from the same power circuit, and preferably the same common socket in the wall. Using more than 1 outlet can give a difference in the grounding potential.

- Use a 'star' pattern to distribute power, don't serialize it more than you have to.

- If that doesn't work then break the ground on the audio cabling but NOT the gear's mains connection (ie, not the power supplies).

----
Anecdotally:

Personally I'm lucky enough to have the breaker box in this room, so I moved one of the upper 30 amp breakers that was in-place for the house to a lower slot, put in a fresh breaker on that slot and ran my own 10 gauge wiring to my own outlet (screw-down wiring not push-pin). I have more power dedicated here than I'll need, and I know it sits before the other circuits in this house that cause issues (kitchen fridge/stove, washer/dryer etc). I also wound up running a new ground line outside the house because I was showing a ground fault on my UPS's. Those 2 things cleaned up the power in here a lot (which affects gear's longevity, especially my computers).

After that I have 2 relatively beefy UPS units that do 'Line conditioning' as the first hop off the wall-outlet. Second hop is the power distributor or power strip, each off its own outlet on one of the 2 UPS/Line filters: 2 power distributors, 5 power strips, 2 computers & a laptop, 3 lcd monitors and 2 studio monitor speakers, plus my mixing board. Each UPS connects directly to one of the 2 outlets on the power outlet I installed.

The only source of noise I have here on my board comes from the laptop's inexpensive firewire audio box, probably due to the firewire connection picking up noise from the laptop's power brick/transformer (common issue with laptops). To fix it I 'broke the ground' on my audio cables using inexpensive Ebtech/Morley Hum Eliminator boxes, rather than modifying the cables themselves. I don't really care that much about the laptop's audio quality (which is why it has an m-audio firewire 410), I use it largely for video playback (non-musical) and dj'ing. It does some Ableton/editing duties in studio work, but mostly runs a spectrum analyzer & various metering.

If it was a synth injecting the noise I'd probably use one of the better active DI boxes on the market to convert from line to balanced, and break the ground with the DI's 'ground lift' button, and get the benefit of the harmonics of the active DI & balanced cable run to boot.