Buzzing while playing games

Keith_Tuttle · February 19, 2018

Posting here because I’m not sure where else to ask…

Whenever running a game, particularly one that’s more graphically demanding, I get an annoying buzzing coming from my speakers (I’ve attached a 10 second audio file of the sound if it helps).

I have a pair of KRK Rockit 5 powered speakers, going into a Focusrite Scarlett 18i8 with quarter inch cables, and the audio interface into my PC via USB. My motherboard is an MSI X370 Gaming Plus and GPU is a Geforce GTX 1070.

I’m fairly certain that the problem is either the GPU or the Motherboard and not the speakers or audio interface, seeing as I can play games on a laptop with this speaker setup without any buzzing. I’ve also tried different cables with no success. The noise stays at the same volume if I turn up the sound (so often I try to drown it out), or switch playback devices, again, making me think it’s some sort of EMI. I’ve read that perhaps the problem is a grounding issue so I made sure everything is plugged into the same power strip, but admittedly I don’t know very much about grounding issues.

I could probably plug the speakers into my Xonar Sound card's AUX input with some RCA cables, but then every time I go to play a game I'd have to make sure my USB for the interface is unplugged (to stop the buzzing) and switch playback devices. Same kinda thing if I wanted to record. It would only be a minor inconvenience however, I really just want to make sure none of my parts are faulty.

My best guess is that the speakers / audio interface are pickup up some sort of very faint coil whine from the GPU and then amplifying it, especially given that I only get this sound while playing games. I’m wondering if this is possible, has anyone else experienced this, and what would be the next best course of action? This is my first PC build so I’m hoping it can be fixed!

Thanks!

Buzz.m4a

unknownmiscreant · February 19, 2018

I have the exact same issue, except there is a noise all the time, it gets worse when I load up a game. The noise is present on both the onboard audio and my asus strix soar soundcard. I remove most of it with a differential amplifer, this gets it back to being silent while idle, but noise is present in games (well whenever the GPU is under heavy load. I solve that by turning the amplifier gain down so it is barely audible. not a great solution.

Here is a thread where I described the differential amplifier solution in a little more detail:

http://www.overclock.net/forum/11-amd-motherboards/1634977-high-pitched-whine-motherboard-audio-codec-outputs.html

I messed around with an oscilloscope and what not last weekend and found it was basically VRM noise and well above audible range, however it may be aliasing through the rest of the audio circuitry. Running a 12db per octave active low pass filter with -3db point at 35khz did nothing to stop it, although the frequencies might have been out of the working range of the opa2134 opamps i was using. I will likely try isolating the supply for the sound card by running it off a linear regulator, torroid etc like I do all my other audio equipment to get quieter power delivery to mitigate the noise.

I would probably look at input filtering on the amplifier, a premade solution may exist, but I have always built my audio gear from scratch.