I'm having this buzzing (whining, humming) sound coming from my speakers. It happens when I for example drag a window across the screen, or do some scrolling. I haven't noticed it before because it's barely audible even on maximum volume. I've noticed it today only when I put headphones on, because with headphones it's much more audible. And annoying.
I've had this problem before in my prevous computers, usually being able to solve by muting TV tuner, or PC speaker or something else.
I don't have those in volume control now (I checked Options->Properties) it's not there. Tried muting everything there is with no avail.

Any suggestions?

EDIT: forgot to add, I'm using an asus M2N motherboard built in soundcard

EDIT2: happens also when I disconnect speakers and connect headphones directly

[ 10-22-2006, 07:36 PM: Message edited by: ZFR ]

OK, I checked it's not the speakers fault. I tried different speakers and different headphones, always same problem. Any ideas as to how to solve this are welcome.

Is buying a soundcard and using it instead of the one built in mobo a good idea? and if so what would you recommend. I use it only for games... not music recording or anything of that type.

TIA

Hmm, the options for the tuners, line-in etc. should be accesible from the properties>recording & playback menus. Usually they have boxes to tick. If all the boxes are ticked then for some reason you don't have them which I think most do though..Your problem is I think in one of these volumes, I vaguely recall having the same one a few years ago and adjusting something in the sound menu. Sorry, I know it's not very specific : /

The non-onboard is always good but not a huge thing. Like, I have a nice system but sometimes my onboard sound will act up in games. I can't have the sound quality medium or higher in Guild Wars or I get fps stutters. In Oblivion the sound of character footsteps wreak havoc. I have a dual core too and it doesn't alleviate this. Note that all these things I fixed with tweaks or tuning to the game so it never really held me back. First card that comes to mind is an Soundblaster card but I have heard they have problems and can be buggy. They seem to dominate the audio market though so maybe someone knows a good model. I haven't bought a soundcard since my SBLive (it was okay but the SBlive were a buggy batch) so don't really know what's new and runs well.

[ 10-22-2006, 05:09 PM: Message edited by: SpiritWarrior ]

I'm not 100% clear on this, but I think I know why it does this. Onboard sound is connected to the PCI Bus controller or something, and so when data is sent over the PCI bus, it causes interference with the onboard sound that is right nearby or something like that. So when data is being sent over the PCI bus, you can hear it on the speakers.

Or something. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

But yes, a dedicated soundcard should stop this, and will also probably give you better performance in games, if that's your thing.

After maxing up the volume I observed the noise is heard whenever I do any action like scrolling, maximising or minimizing windows, even just moving the mouse cursor.. but it is not a problem with the mouse because even when I unplug it and use keyboard to do these it is still heard. And I don't have access to tv tuner, AUX, PC-speaker and other options in volume control. I have only those:

http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/6853/soundgp6.jpg

On a side notice, when I play those really old DOS games that used PC-speaker the pc speaker sound is heard through the speakers (and is treated like other sound)... first time am seeing something like this...

..havn't read all the posts, but make sure the volume on the speakers is not too high. Even though the volume may be low, they will hummmmmm.

And make sure they're not too close together and too close to the monitor. They say this can cause interferance (not sure why since some speakers are mounted). Soundmax is good, I have it on my old system and I have had more problems with Sigmatel intergrated than I did with SM.

It's nothing to do with speakers. I unplugged those completely, used headphones (tried different ones) and problem was still there.

Have you tried it with everything muted? If it goes away, then unmute one by one to ascertain where it's coming from.

yup I tried.

It's still there even if I mute evrything. It goes away if I mute master volume (which disables sound altogether)