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Why are my headphones buzzing whenever I run my game?

alexene.dev

31–40 of 153 posts

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

#31
Which is why I consistently have told people to ensure that they pick a DAC which is powered independently if they intend to connect it via USB. Schitt Audio makes great stuff (it's what I have sitting on my desk right now) which is designed in that way, but there's no magic formula to beat physics when you physically power an audio device over a connection that is vulnerable to induced noise.

If you're trying to eliminate noise in your audio setup, the first and most important thing is having audio converted from digital to analog outside of the computer chassis itself (e.g. instead of a soundcard get a DAC). The second thing is to disconnect the power flows between the two systems (e.g. get a DAC which is separately powered). The third thing is to connect the DAC via a non-electrical connection so that the signal path is not vulnerable to noise in the environment between the two systems (e.g. use Toslink/optical and not USB/copper). The fourth thing is to condition the power input to DAC to remove transients (use an audio power conditioned, which does not need to be some grandiose thing, it's a bunch of capacitors).

Beyond that, there's not much you can do, after all there's EMI/RFI all of the time in the environment. If the DAC chassis is metallic and properly grounded, it should reject most, and the same should be true for the computer chassis, but there is always going to be /some/ incidental noise. As long as the noise floor is low enough that it's well below even quiet listening with amplification, you'll never hear it. But the default state of audio on most computer systems is pretty shit and people don't realize it, because they are mostly listening to Bluetooth earbuds (which at least provide no physical path for induced noise).

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

#32
post #28
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It aligns with what appears on the screen accurately and without needing any extra work to make sure there's a representation in a tree that's pixel-accurate. It's also pretty low overhead with the way modern GPU rendering works.

What if you have a collision system where collision filters can exclude collisions based on some condition in such a way that their bounding boxes can overlap? For instance an arrow that pierces through a target to fly through it and onto another target? How do you accurately store the Entity ID information for multiple entities with a limited number of bits per pixel?

Entities that can't be picked, don't write to the texture, entities that can be picked, write to the texture their id. Whatever is closer to the camera will be the id that stays there (same as a color pixel, but instead of the object color you can think object id). So you are limited at one ID per pixel, but for me that works.

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

#33

It's funny that apparently "high performance" DAC doesn't handle the common issue every single USB audio device have to worry about - noisy power. From the vendor page (on MODI 5, no idea which one author has). > SPECS THAT MATTER > Distortion: inaudible; 100-1000x lower than any transducer (speaker or headphone) you're using > Noise: inaudible; far below a typical headphone or speaker amp

> 100-1000x lower than any transducer

This seems like a lot but it's only 20-30db lower than whatever reference they're using.

This is the spec that really matters: THD+N: 0.0003% which is roughly -110 dB. It's very good and completely inaudible but not exceptional these days.

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

#35

It's funny that apparently "high performance" DAC doesn't handle the common issue every single USB audio device have to worry about - noisy power. From the vendor page (on MODI 5, no idea which one author has). > SPECS THAT MATTER > Distortion: inaudible; 100-1000x lower than any transducer (speaker or headphone) you're using > Noise: inaudible; far below a typical headphone or speaker amp

[deleted]

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

#36
post #7

Not at all surprised to see that it's a Schiit DAC causing this problem

Schiit Audio makes great stuff, I've been using it for years and have other gear as well to compare to. I think it's good for what it is, although their pricing has gone a bit out of control lately. The problem here is not the maker of the DAC, it's that it's bus powered over USB, which is a problem regardless of who makes it.

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

#39
post #7

Not at all surprised to see that it's a Schiit DAC causing this problem

What’s with the animosity towards Schiit? They seem to make decent products. Noise from using USB power delivery for audio devices is common.. that’s why you can (and should) use the dedicated power input to you DAC/amp

>They seem to make decent products

I don't agree with that sentiment. Their designs are subpar and the quality of the soldering is (maybe was) unacceptable:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/h...

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/b...

The above review specifically goes into the problem from OP.

There's also their amplifier with a rather non-standard architecture that tries to solve a non-problem (injecting feedback in a NFB loop - I might remember wrong, if so, forgive me) which leads to it measuring double digit (!) THD if you feed it a sine wave. I'm not an experienced engineer but it is IMO a non-starter to have an amplifier try to decide what is and isn't a musical signal as part of its protection circuitry, short of detecting DC offsets or shorts (pun not intended). I'm not in the market for a 1800$ amplifier that goes bzzzt if you feed it music it disagrees with [1]

https://www.stereophile.com/content/schiit-audio-ragnarok-in...

>Noise from using USB power delivery for audio devices is common.. that’s why you can (and should) use the dedicated power input to you DAC/amp

I don't disagree with your point. However, a company designing products like these should be able to design a filter for this usecase unless you're trying to use your DAC as a a measuring device, or there is something seriously wrong with your motherboard. I honestly haven't heard of any other brand product with this problem unless it's ~20 years old and in need of repair. It doesn't cost much in the BOM, however it does cost in engineering hours/competence and QA and this is something that should have been caught by the latter.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzMbY4sZvIw

Edit: I just want to add that I don't want to hate on Schiit. Honestly I'd like new audio companies to succeed and I applaud them for rejecting MQA back in the day and for not going all-in on the audiofool bullshit one sees too much of. But seeing such poor engineering and QA leaves a sour taste in my (electronics engineering) mouth. Maybe they have improved lately, I wouldn't know. I'm not really in their market anyways.

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

#40

I have a similar issue with Genshin on PS5 when using the headphone jack in the controller with IEMs (didn't happen with a headset). It starts buzzing in my left ear when I open the game menu or open the map. On the map it only buzzes when I move the cursor, interestingly enough. I later noticed that the PSU coil whine coincided with the same events. Still no idea why it's like that Thankfully doesn't happen with an…

> On the map it only buzzes when I move the cursor, interestingly enough Sounds like the game is doing more when the cursor moves around, they're probably checking for where the cursor is, and something is making the CPU/GPU do a bunch of extra work, which finally triggers the coil whine when the PSU is more heavily used. I've basically had the same issue with Nvidia cards since the 2080ti started doing coil whine as…

They connected the headphones to a wireless controller. The wireless controller doesn't have a GPU.
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