[Aray]

This happens to me on Firefox when I'm watching either flash or html5 videos (not sure which). Just happened again today, actually. To stop the loud volume + ringing noise I just open Spotify and play a song and it immediately goes away.
 
Nothing fancy here, just normal gaming headphones (Siberia v2) plugged into the headphone slot.

 

[Sofacykel]

  So I just created an account here to add to the discussion.
 
I've once had a Xonar Essence STX for a full year without it happening. T'was a good sound card, alas there were some issues here and there with it stop responding and whatnot. I liked the audio quality I got, so when it came to build a new PC I went straight for the Xonar Essence STX 2 (or II).
 
I've had this card for just over a month and now, two times in two days, I've had this issue. Both were while searching through a Youtube video in the new player with HTML5 controls. Extremely loud, distorted sound that, upon ending, leaves a lasting tone just as described here. I contacted ASUS Support with the issue, this is what I got:
 
[Quote with ASUS mail reply stating they haven't heard anything of the issue]
 
That reply is extremely disheartening. I am dealing with a small case of anxiety and I definitely feel physically and mentally unwell putting my headphones on daily now. I really enjoy the sound quality it provides while staying inside the case of my PC, and I don't think any other sound card would do it for me, so there either having this, or going full, dreadful onboard sound.
 
To think nobody else has reported it "in the nordics" makes me a bit suspicious.. But people tend to go to forums for support, so I suppose they wouldn't get a lot of inquiries. I urge everyone with this issue to contact support so they can be made aware and maybe push Microsoft to look into their faulty software audio solution.
 
Sadface.

 
Happened again, luckily I was just done with a session of playing video games casually checking out some youtube clips on Reddit and had my headphones on the desk. I jumped and had a small heartattack. This is on a different driver than before (still official), another installation of Firefox (and a totally different version at that), I can't trust this device anymore and I'm putting it up for sale. I hope whoever gets it doesn't suffer from the same issues, maybe it's just my combination of hardware and software, maybe we all have something in common. All I know is that this is physically dangerous equipment capable of emitting very, very loud noises, and that it sporadically will do that and it will damage your ears.
 
Take my advice: Do not test your luck! Get rid of it ASAP and get another DAC. The sound quality simply is not worth the risk of damaging your hearing or getting tinnitus for life.
 
Jesus ******* Christ on a bicycle, the money I pay and the **** I put up with. Thoroughly disappointed with this product for this sole reason. Cannot and will never recommend.

 

[MajesticTwelve]

 
Take my advice: Do not test your luck! Get rid of it ASAP and get another DAC. The sound quality simply is not worth the risk of damaging your hearing or getting tinnitus for life.
 
Jesus ******* Christ on a bicycle, the money I pay and the **** I put up with. Thoroughly disappointed with this product for this sole reason. Cannot and will never recommend.

Yeah, it's the only solution. I sold my Asus soundcard (for the same price that I bought it 5 years earlier ) and bought an external DAC with a headphone amplifier (Aune X1S) and I'm very happy with the sound quality.

 

[Suncatcher]

  I use the Xonar Essence STX since 2013.
 
I only had this screaming noise two times because of lack of attention, when I left the card accidentally half-connected to the PCI slot—I have no computer case, motherboard is laying over a table and the cards are not secured to any structure or support—and when the noises happened, the computer would BSOD instantly. Since only the PCI slot on the motherboard is holding the cards I have, this mistake can happen fairly easy. This was in 2013 and after the fact, never happened again.
 
So, I have never had the problems you guys describe. I'm still running Windows 7 x64 since I bought my Essence STX and have used original drivers till half of 2015, then discovered UNi Xonar and I have been using it ever since. No bugs, no screaming noises. The card is always generating sound 24/7 for 3 years—even when I sleep, on rain/wind sounds I run on the KRKs—and the card just works flawlessly, nonstop, with astonishing sound quality.
 
I'm preparing backups to install Windows 10 this week and I will let you guys know if I start getting any problems, since on Windows 7 I have never had any.

So, I've installed Windows 10, running UNi Xonar Drivers. During the last 7 days I've watched many hours of YouTube Videos, used the seeking bar many times, lots of pause and resume actions, including in hour long videos. I've listened to many hours of music on Winamp, played loads of GTA Online and Rocket League using TeamSpeak. Switched many times between Headphone and Speaker outputs.
 
I had zero problems with audio so far. Consistent high-quality audio on all inputs and outputs. Everything is working fine on Windows 10. It appears you guys might be having hardware level issues with your cards. In this case, I would most definitely buy a substitute and retire your current cards.
 
If I have any problems in the future—I've never had any—I'll be reporting here in this thread.
If you don't hear from me again, I'm not having any problems.

 

[Undesirable]

  If you don't hear from me again, I'm not having any problems.

It'll happen again; mark my words. Give it a month or two. Windows 10 and Uni Xonar drivers made no difference to me.
 
Although the solution I've switched to, the Powercolor Devil HDX 7.1, has its own problems: no headphone gain control so I have to turn the volume down to 15 - 30% and sometimes usually the card doesn't start up on warm reboots.
 
My next computer audio solution will most definitely be external DAC + AMP.

 

[Sofacykel]

3rd or 4th message here, I just wanted to update you all on the fact that I've sold the card and thus will be withdrawing from the discussion.
 
The reply I got from ASUS Support was so disheartening I just gave up. I wanted to recoup some of my cost and I sincerely hope whoever I sold it to won't experience any issues.
 
I am now looking into an external DAC solution with seperate power supply for around 200$ (in Europe though) that'll satisfy my needs. Until then I stole the old and trusty Xonar U3 USB sound card I gave to my mum when I gave her my laptop, she'll have to deal with the absolutely horrid sound quality in my old Clevo P170EM for a short while now. The noise floor on the U3 is pretty high, but other than that it's... "serviceable" for the time being and hasn't given me any problems in the 2 or so years I've had it for the laptop.
 
I suggest everyone experiencing these issues to get rid of the card immediately. If it happens once it will happen again. Mine did it 2-3 days in a row and then took a 3 month break from acting up at all only to suddenly sneak attack me out of the blue again on newer drivers with newer updates, though still skipping in a Youtube video for some reason... Simply put, the gain in sound quality on your everyday computer is not worth the risk of damaging your hearing out of the blue. It's a dangerous piece of equipment unless you got some really, absurdly high resistance cans.
 
Have a good one everybody and be safe!

 

[Suncatcher]

  It'll happen again; mark my words. Give it a month or two. Windows 10 and Uni Xonar drivers made no difference to me.

 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Suncatcher /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
If I have any problems in the future—I've never had any—I'll be reporting here in this thread.

 

[bcschmerker4]

As of 15 February 2016 I'm looking at my options for the Hot Rod gPC (Advanced Micro Devices® Athlon64® X2 5600+ (Socket AM2), RS780G/SB710 chipset), which is coming due for a rebuild for Ubuntu® 16.04.0-LTS (16.01a2 is available for testing as I write this); afaik, the 6 kHz howl that has plagued the entire Asus® XONAR® series (C-Media® CMI-8788 DSP) under Microsoft® Windows® 6-up will not affect it under ALSA snd-virtuoso.  The Creative Laboratories® SB1550 (Creative Technology CA10300-IAT DSP) that I have been testing to date in the Hot Rod has a propensity for triggering hard lock-ups under all LinUX Kernels available for Ubuntu® 12.04.n-LTS in the event of any hot-plugging, a problem that I never had with the SB0350 and probably will not have with the STX; so a swap comes into the question of what to do.  (The SB1550 should be fully supported in Windows 10.0.x as of 2016.)

 

[Sofacykel]

  As of 15 February 2016 I'm looking at my options for the Hot Rod gPC (Advanced Micro Devices® Athlon64® X2 5600+ (Socket AM2), RS780G/SB710 chipset), which is coming due for a rebuild for Ubuntu® 16.04.0-LTS (16.01a2 is available for testing as I write this); afaik, the 6 kHz howl that has plagued the entire Asus® XONAR® series (C-Media® CMI-8788 DSP) under Microsoft® Windows® 6-up will not affect it under ALSA snd-virtuoso.  The Creative Laboratories® SB1550 (Creative Technology CA10300-IAT DSP) that I have been testing to date in the Hot Rod has a propensity for triggering hard lock-ups under all LinUX Kernels available for Ubuntu® 12.04.n-LTS in the event of any hot-plugging, a problem that I never had with the SB0350 and probably will not have with the STX; so a swap comes into the question of what to do.  (The SB1550 should be fully supported in Windows 10.0.x as of 2016.)

I don't think this issue will happen on Linux but who knows. I found that I missed the 3-step amplification settings from the Xonar Audio Center in Linux Mint (Or, missing the Audio Center completely as it's a Windows application). It seems all Xonar sound cards with various steps in amplification will default to the highest setting with the default driver, at least in Cinnamon Mint.
 
It raised the noise floor too much for my measly cans and I didn't enjoy using it at all in Linux. I have a dial to adjust system volume on my keyboard and I accidentally hit it when reaching over, turning the volume up beyond comfort - Something it would've been incapable of if the amplification settings were set correct.
 
It's a minor issue, but worth a mention. Switching between headphone out and speaker out works flawlessly out of the box though, absolutely no complaints.

 

[JamesMay]

I have a Xonar DX and I have a similar issue. Random, Loud... but its a White noise not Ringing or pitched.

It can go days, weeks between these überloud Whitenoise attacks, the last one was today, but before that it was in January. My ears literally hurt after.
 
I use Win10, 64 pro and Uni Xonar.
 
 
 
 
Question, does the Output db change the loudness of the screech or does the screech somehow completely ignore it?

 

[rvcjew]

I believe the screech is just line lvl volume all the time. Did you try leaving your OS in test mode to see if it changed anything.

 

[Sanctuary]

  So, I've installed Windows 10, running UNi Xonar Drivers. During the last 7 days I've watched many hours of YouTube Videos, used the seeking bar many times, lots of pause and resume actions, including in hour long videos. I've listened to many hours of music on Winamp, played loads of GTA Online and Rocket League using TeamSpeak. Switched many times between Headphone and Speaker outputs.
 
I had zero problems with audio so far. Consistent high-quality audio on all inputs and outputs. Everything is working fine on Windows 10. It appears you guys might be having hardware level issues with your cards. In this case, I would most definitely buy a substitute and retire your current cards.
 
If I have any problems in the future—I've never had any—I'll be reporting here in this thread.
If you don't hear from me again, I'm not having any problems.

I highly doubt it's just hardware releated.  I have two STX.  One from 2012 and one from 2013.  I've used both of them in a Windows 7 64-bit PC and one in a WIndows 8.1 64-bit (now Windows 10) PC.  Both of them do this high pitched screeching ******** when in the PC that's not Windows 7, and neither do it while in it.  I also recently just upgraded to Windows 10 and did a fresh install only a week ago.  This **** is worse than ever.  It used to be that it only happened after marathon video watching sessions using MPHC, and only when I would let the player continuously play the next file in a folder.  It never, ever happened any other way.  Now however, I just got it from watching Netflix.  This has never happened before, and the only difference is that I have the updated Unified drivers and am using Windows 10.

 

[bcschmerker4]

 
...I have two STX.  One from 2012 and one from 2013.  I've used both of them in a Windows 7 64-bit PC and one in a WIndows 8.1 64-bit (now Windows 10) PC.  Both of them do this high pitched screeching ******** when in the PC that's not Windows 7, and neither do it while in it.  I also recently just upgraded to Windows 10 and did a fresh install only a week ago.  This **** is worse than ever.  It used to be that it only happened after marathon video watching sessions using MPHC, and only when I would let the player continuously play the next file in a folder.  It never, ever happened any other way.  Now however, I just got it from watching Netflix.  This has never happened before, and the only difference is that I have the updated Unified drivers and am using Windows 10.

Thanks for the heads up on an obvious regression in the Microsoft® Windows® 10.0.x audio stack.  I found that any of a variety of OS events can start and stop the 6 kHz howl, thus the reconsideration of continued use of the STX in the CM1630 as upgraded.  I'll have to figure out a way to properly shield the Creative Laboratories® SB1550 PCIe 3.0 x1 audio card against the RFI from my EAH6850 DirectCU® video card; I've no satisfactory alternate slot for the SB1550, as any full-height PCI card at the base of the CM1630's case will choke the EAH6850 at the cooling-air supply.

 

[mindbomb]

I have noticed some things about this. First, I think this only happens with applications that use wasapi. I don't believe it happens with directsound (without GX enabled). Wasapi doesn't exist on windows xp, so perhaps one solution is to run your applications in windows xp compatibility mode or see if you can force it to use directsound some other way.
 
The other thing I noticed is that it seems to have a ~1% chance to happen. So I was able to reproduce it somewhat by just continuously opening and closing my media player, which was mpc-hc using the internal audio renderer, which uses wasapi, and eventually it would surface. The interesting thing is that even while the noise was playing on the analog out, I had spdif out enabled as well, and that one was playing fine. So if you use an external dac with your xonar, I think you are immune.
 
Drivers didn't seem to make any difference. I tried some uni drivers, some official asus drivers, and I think it's present in all drivers. I just used windows 7, so I don't know about newer OS.
 
I also noticed that this doesn't happen on the xonar dg and xonar dgx, which use different processors. So I think this bug is specific to the asus av100 processor on the xonar d1, xonar dx, xonar st, and xonar stx. Possibly on some more cards I have missed.

 

[bcschmerker4]

Update:  The ASUS® XONAR® Essence™ STX™ is up and running in the Hot Rod gPC™ under Ubuntu® 16.03b2 Xenial Xerus™ as of 11 April 2016 and actually has more switchability than in either ASUS or MaxedTech® software under Microsoft® Windows® 6.n.xxxx.  No threat of howl at all - the 6 kHz scream is apparently unique to Windows 6-up and does not occur in ALSA.
 
And to update @Sofacykel, the ALSA Mixer ncurses app can be accessed via GNOME® Terminal™, KDE® Konsole™, or equivalent; the latest revision of ALSA snd-virtuoso has four gain settings for the internal Texas Instruments® TPA6120A2 headphone amplifier, a gain adjustment for the Aux In four-pin header, S/P-DIF Output/Loopback/ValidityCheck switches, DAC Filter curve switch, Analog Output selector (Speakers, Headphones, or FP Headphones), and both Analog and Digital Input gains and mutes.