[Shark50521]

I have a Constantine USB plus and a pair of M-Audio Av40 speakers and an AV-123 x-head. Here is my problem. Whenever I have the dac running straight to the speakers I get a weird kind of noise/distortion when music is not playing. When I run the dac running to the x-head I get no distortion. I was using a RCA splitter so I could run the out of the dac to both my speakers and the xhead. With this setup, I now hear the same noise/distortion through my x-head even if the speaker is not on.This problem happens through usb/coax/optical so the initial connection is NOT the problem. Any thoughts on a different way to do things or the root of my problem would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Mad Max]

What is the distortion like? Lots more detail please. Is it intermittent, random, high-pitched, and so on. What media player are you using for playback?

 

[Shark50521]

I use foobar, but foorbar doesn't even need to be on for the distortion to happen it sounds like alien noises, like weewoooowwwhhheweee some high pitched just mostly random

 

[Currawong]

I've noticed some cheap USB DACs are like this, bringing a heap of noise from the computer. Getting a better DAC is the only solution.

 

[Shark50521]

Turns out it was a ground loop, and I don't exactly consider a 300 dollar DAC "cheap", now I just have to figure out what to do about the ground loop.