[indy5]

I'm using a pair of Sennheiser HD202's, plugged into a Realtek HD soundcard, and I'm hearing a weird kind of static in my headphones whenever I do certain things on my computer, like scrolling down a page in the browser, or selecting text anywhere. That alone wouldn't annoy me so much, except that the static gets particularly intense whenever I play videogames.
Now for the really weird part. The problem occurred one day when I had to use a different pair of headphones, so I unplugged the Sennheiser's, and later when I plugged them back in, that's when I've first started hearing the static.
 
If anyone has even the slightest idea of what caused this, please leave a post. Thanks.

 

[TMRaven]

Your computer is causing it.  Audio is analogue, which are electrical signals, so electrical processes in the  computer can interfere with that.  Get an external dac if you want a completely quiet experience.

 

[HaBBarN]

or a good soundcard

 

[indy5]

Quote:

Your computer is causing it.  Audio is analogue, which are electrical signals, so electrical processes in the  computer can interfere with that.  Get an external dac if you want a completely quiet experience.

I know that my computer is causing it, but why now? Why wasn't there any static before?
 
As for an external DAC, is there anything I could find at around 17€/25$?
 
Quote:

or a good soundcard

Again, anything I could find in that price range?
 

 

[Roseval]

If you hear "static" the moment you do something like scrolling,
Your system might be very high on latency.
You can check this by running a tool like DPC Latency checker
http://www.thesycon.com/deu/latency_check.shtml
 

 

[TMRaven]

Quote:

I know that my computer is causing it, but why now? Why wasn't there any static before?
 
As for an external DAC, is there anything I could find at around 17€/25$?
 

Again, anything I could find in that price range?
 

You mention now, as in you've had headphones plugged in to the computer before?  I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say, but I assume that's it.  The better quality the headphone, the more it will reveal in the signal.  Something like skullcandy buds or apple buds have such a high noise floor that I never heard those computer processes going on.  When I first got a pair of AD700, I could hear all the little computer noises made when scrolling on safari windows etc.
 
Pretty much the default go-to external dac/amp that gets recommended around here is the Fiio E7, and it runs at around 100usd.  Other soundcards that are commonly recommended are those Asus ones, and their run around 100usd as well.  I'm not sure about only 25usd, I think you might be setting the bar a bit low there, but at the same time it makes little sense to be buying a 100usd source for 25usd headphones in the first place I guess.

 

[indy5]

Quote:

If you hear "static" the moment you do something like scrolling,
Your system might be very high on latency.
You can check this by running a tool like DPC Latency checker
http://www.thesycon.com/deu/latency_check.shtml
 

Thanks for the reply, but unfortunately, that didn't do it. The app tells me "This machine should be able to handle real-time streaming of audio and/or video data without drop-outs.".
 
 

 

[indy5]

Quote:

You mention now, as in you've had headphones plugged in to the computer before?  I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say, but I assume that's it.

 
Quote:

The problem occurred one day when I had to use a different pair of headphones, so I unplugged the Sennheiser's, and later when I plugged them back in, that's when I've first started hearing the static.

As for the 100$ DAC for my 40$ headphones, yeah, you can see now why I'd rather find other ways to fix this.

 

[TMRaven]

There are a couple 25 dollar usb dongles around the market that are geared to be cheap external dacs.  Turtle Beach has a couple called the Amigo and Micro, but I havn't heard much about their audio quality.  I've experienced multiple turtle beach headsets, and all of them have hiss from their own implementation of amplifiers, so there might be a hiss issue with the Amigo and Micro as well.
 

 

[aleki]

you can also use some line attenuators to help control the noise. daisy-chained two TF10 "airplane" chokes to control my very noisy PC and it made the noise nearly inaudible. since then, I have upgraded to a sweet soundcard and havent looked back

 

[holden4th]

Before you buy anything try out all the possible steps in this manual. Look especially at the PC power management section.
 
http://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/downloads/Windows_7_Optimization_Guide.pdf

 

[indy5]

Quote:

you can also use some line attenuators to help control the noise. daisy-chained two TF10 "airplane" chokes to control my very noisy PC and it made the noise nearly inaudible. since then, I have upgraded to a sweet soundcard and havent looked back

 
Line attenuators? I have to admit that I have no idea what those are. How much do they usually cost? Are there any brands in particular that I should look for?
 
Quote:

Before you buy anything try out all the possible steps in this manual. Look especially at the PC power management section.
 
http://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/downloads/Windows_7_Optimization_Guide.pdf

 
Lots of useful info there. I followed every step, but none of them fixed my problem. Thanks anyway.

 

[olander08]

Quote:

If you hear "static" the moment you do something like scrolling,
Your system might be very high on latency.
You can check this by running a tool like DPC Latency checker
http://www.thesycon.com/deu/latency_check.shtml
 

Seeing this thread after experiencing something similar as the original poster, I downloaded this program and ran it with the following results:
 

 
How do I go about fixing this?

 

[nagual]

Suposing you are using windows, go to Control Panel/ Sound&Audio/ Advanced/ Opitions, select all playback and reccord, than, in playback/reccord control,  disable all imputs/outputs, except what you are using, and save.
Some times it works

 

[fufula]

olander08, when I was getting some DPC latency spikes (nothing as drastic though) I started diagnosing the cause by killing processes, then going into Device Manager and disabling hardware one by one (don't disable your disk, video card or anything like that obviously; only things like LAN card etc.) You can also try updating the drivers for everything you have in your computer and see if you notice any difference.
 
In my case, what was causing the biggest spikes were the High Definition Audio Devices (HDMI Audio Drivers for nVIDIA.) I then experimented with a few different versions of video card drivers, which also made a bit of a difference and finally stuck with the ones that managed to bring the average latency a little lower. Good luck.