Crackling noise from on board sound card

[digital_frog]

I recently put a new computer together with an on board sound card (Realtek AC97 Audio). Since day one I've been getting a fair amount of hissing/crackling on the line out. It's not too bad on speakers but pretty annoying on headphones. To give you an idea its sounds like an electrical whirring sound (the HDs?) coming through to the speakers / headphones when there's no music playing or playing at a low volume.

Any advice would be appreciated.

DF

[triphop]

What is connected to your computer? It sounds to me that you have a ground loop problem that is probably related to video capture. Do you have a cable or antenna connected to your PC. If you do, you will need to get some kind of isolation.

Triphop

[bugande]

It may be noise from the cpu fan. Try a different one. I had that problem before.

[digital_frog]

What is connected to your computer? It sounds to me that you have a ground loop problem that is probably related to video capture. Do you have a cable or antenna connected to your PC. If you do, you will need to get some kind of isolation.

Triphop

Just a regular PCI TV card with a coaxial antenna cable connected, but it makes the same noise regardless of whether the cable is connected or not. You think it still might be picking up signals anyway? The problem is that the sound isnt erratic, (i.e. like random tv signals) its more of a constant hum.

DF

[digital_frog]

It may be noise from the cpu fan. Try a different one.

Makes sense, i'll give it a try. Thanks to everyone for the help.

DF

[W_Eagle]

It may be a faulty chip. Is it on all inputs? Does it depends on the volume? On which input?

[digital_frog]

It may be a faulty chip. Is it on all inputs? Does it depends on the volume? On which input?

No, just on the line out as far as I can tell. The computer I built has two line outs, one from the back and one from the front of the case but you can hear it from both bc basically its the same jack.

Thing is, you can't actually hear the crackling if you have music playing, but if you mute the volume or turn it down very low (or if the song has a low volume intro) you can hear it very distinctly on the headphones. That's actually how I noticed it, by putting on the headphones for the first time.

DF