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Why are my headphones buzzing whenever I run my game?

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Re: Why are my headphones buzzing whenever I run my game?

#141

Post by raxxorraxor »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #42

I run into a similar problem. I have a power-hungry GPU (3080) and CPU (9800X3D). All my audio equipment was on the same UPS (and therefore outlet) as my gaming PC. The result is that any time a particularly stressful game would be open, I'd get buzzing in the speakers. (Especially if the framerate was at 360) If you ask audiophiles online they will swear up and down that a cheater plug, balanced cables, or optical i…

It depends some setups generate noise when you move a cabled mouse with a high resolution. I never measured it, but I would assume it is because of the high frequency signals of the mouse generates if it is actively used.

In that case more isolated cables and connections would probably help.

Re: Why are my headphones buzzing whenever I run my game?

#142

Post by rcxdude »

madaxe_again wrote: post #139
bjoli wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of my friend who has bought a shit load of 1.5v AA lithium batteries. The buck converters in those little bastards wreak havoc with every speaker around. His TV remote disconnects my Bluetooth headphones every time.

Weird. Wonder if they chose 2.4ghz as their time division for the switching, because it’s a cheap and common frequency to source for.

They won't be switching at that frequency, but they're probably putting off harmonics up to very high frequencies due to very sharp switching.

Re: Why are my headphones buzzing whenever I run my game?

#144

Post by amlib »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #119
amlib wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that you can have cheap and great DACs nowadays that far exceeds what a consumer needs but some manufacturers still insists in putting less than ideal ones, or fumbling their implementation, in all sorts of device. I've got a computer with a fairly recent motherboard that I'm using for an htpc and the audio output is much noisier and produced a less punchy bass than the now 20 year old (!) X-fi sound card I'v…

Most of your noise floor is not going to be coming from the DAC, and your frequency response difference is probably caused by a difference in impedance, which is a fun topic because it's not like there's a “correct” impedance and you may just be more fond of the effect a particular impedance pairing gets you.

AFAIK impedance mismatch should only matter in relation to speakers and amps or headphones and dacs/pre-amps. It shouldn't matter when doing line level output to an amp or even a line level loopback (dac to adc). The fact it has such behavior in a consistent manner leads me to believe it is just out of spec or badly implemented, even if it is impedance matching after all.

Regarding noise floor, the "DAC" (really, the audio source as a whole) did matter in this case. The volume is being set at the amp to as loud as I need because the volume is being controlled at the source. In the xfi setup I couldn't hear any hiss, noise or EMI from the pc itself, while on the onboard audio it bothered me pretty much instantly with a constant hiss and EMI buzzing even from moving the mouse. I do want to note again that it's likely the manufacturer implementation at fault rather than purely the DAC fault, regardless, the user is the one being harmed with a subpar product.

I do my setup this way because I have a pile of DSPs running in that PC, including an equal loudness contour compensated volume "dial" (bass/treble gets boosted as volume goes down essentially), so controlling the volume at the source is a must.

Re: Why are my headphones buzzing whenever I run my game?

#145

Post by crote »

typewithrhythm wrote: post #130
hunter2_ wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many analog pro audio applications, it's actually recommended that a shield be connected at one side only, for this reason. By convention but not necessarily necessity, the bond is typically kept at the receiving end, as that's almost always a device with a grounded power cord (such as a mixer). Many DI boxes feature a ground lift switch as a convenient way to achieve this. But you wouldn't want to disconnect it a…

Huh, I had no idea that cables would have their shield grounded at both ends... Single point ground is such a standard in electrical design that the guidance is generally "do otherwise only if you have the ability to make many prototypes to nail RFI issues".

It's a high-speed vs low-speed thing.

If you're building an audio cable your signal will peak out at a few kHz, so the cable acting as an antenna and picking up a signal in the MHz range isn't an issue. Similarly, you're not transmitting anything significant either. But a ground loop can easily ruin your day.

If you're building a cable for multi-gbps data transmission, that ground loop noise might as well not exist - it's basically DC. But ground your shielding at only one end, and suddenly you're ruining everyone's wifi!

Building a device which needs high-speed data on one side, and analog audio on the other side? Good luck...

Re: Why are my headphones buzzing whenever I run my game?

#146

Post by crote »

ck2 wrote: post #95
Night_Thastus wrote: post #42

I run into a similar problem. I have a power-hungry GPU (3080) and CPU (9800X3D). All my audio equipment was on the same UPS (and therefore outlet) as my gaming PC. The result is that any time a particularly stressful game would be open, I'd get buzzing in the speakers. (Especially if the framerate was at 360) If you ask audiophiles online they will swear up and down that a cheater plug, balanced cables, or optical i…

isolation transformers are way cheaper than double conversion and should work as well? well they used to be cheaper, not sure what is going with prices these day, I remember this being around $100 a decade ago https://www.officedepot.com/a/products/146730/Tripp-Lite-500... https://www.officedepot.com/a/products/493958/Tripp-Lite-100...

It's not about isolation though - it's about line noise. An isolation transformer will let that pass straight through (minus the usual filtering due to any transformer being an inductor), whereas the AC->DC->AC conversion gets rid of all of it by effectively acting as a perfect low-pass filter.

Re: Why are my headphones buzzing whenever I run my game?

#147

Post by crote »

ZeWaka wrote: post #109
pacificat0r wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's significantly easier to implement than a octree. Game is actually 3D under the hood, projected at a careful angle to look isometric 2D. The reason the game is 3D has to do with partially visible things being way easier than with isometric textures layered in the right order. Also, now that i just grab a pixel back from the GPU, it's no overhead at all (to construct or get the data for it).

I assume for the picking system you're rendering each entity/block as a different color (internally) and getting the pixel color under the mouse cursor?

"Color" is pretty much just "integer" to the GPU. It doesn't care if the 32-bit value a shader is writing to its output buffer is representing RGBA or a memory pointer.

Re: Why are my headphones buzzing whenever I run my game?

#148

Post by monster_truck »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #51
monster_truck wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pure sine wave UPSs are not that expensive anymore man. I think the biggest "desktop" pure sine wave cyberpower sells (1500VA/1000W, CP1500PFCLCD) is <$300 now. I have a couple of them, they are great.

It's not about pure sine wave - it's double conversion. Only double-conversion would actually isolate the equipment from EMI on the line. Without that pure sine wave won't do squat for EMI. And one of those, even the cheapest ones, run for about ~$900. And they are LOUD.

In my testing combining this UPS with a cheap power conditioner, the noise floor is more than sufficient.

Sure, it isn't the -80db noise floor of a P-2400, but I'm not running a broadcast studio

Re: Why are my headphones buzzing whenever I run my game?

#149

Post by jasomill »

throwaway290 wrote: post #132
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact audiophiles talk about “DAC”s is really telling. Transparent digital-to-analogue conversion is a solved problem. Any computer or smartphone worth a damn has a DAC whose output is indistinguishable to the human ear from anything “better”. The truth is that DAC is not the problem… everything else in the analogue audio chain is. Amplifiers are messy analogue devices. Speakers and headphones are incredibly messy…

this is because nobody who talks of DACS means just the DAC circuit, it means the whole unit. like where you talk about your phone you actually mean pocket computer, but it's too long to say.

True, but plenty chase specs like sample rate (beyond 96 kHz) and bit depth (beyond 24) that have no practical benefit beyond the DAC circuit.
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