What cause buzzing DAC?

[e22big]

I have a DAC, well Xonar STX soundcard that has a bad case of buzzing recently. The song would play for some minutes and then buzz like hell then going back to normal again. It's generally not a problem as it can be fix by simply restarting the PC but is this the sign of my card's failing? or is it some thing else?

 

It seems to happen at start up, if I turn on my PC and the buzz wasn't there, it will never be there for the duration. Even when I've been using it for days without shutting down. But if it does buzz and I don't restart, it will stay buzz for days until I did as well.

 

I am not sure if it's my PC that had been causing the issue of the DAC finally shows its age (to be fair, it's a very old DAC at this point)

[Bombastinator]

Could be any number of things including some neighbor’s welding project. DAC is “Digital Analog Converter” so your signal is starting out digital but the DAC turns it analog which means it is suddenly susceptible to both EMI and RFI.  Analog has a suite of complications that can make it a PITA to deal with.  Arc welders and large old electric motors are famous for causing problems.  It’s so bad they actually zone some types of welders and if you want to use one in a residential area you need a hidden tap off the main to hide that you’re doing it. 

[e22big]

31 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Could be any number of things including some neighbor’s welding project. DAC is “Digital Analog Converter” so your signal is starting out digital but the DAC turns it analog which means it is suddenly susceptible to both EMI and RFI.  Analog has a suite of complications that can make it a PITA to deal with.  Arc welders and large old electric motors are famous for causing problems.  It’s so bad they actually zone some types of welders and if you want to use one in a residential area you need a hidden tap off the main to hide that you’re doing it. 

it's probably not external factor, as I mentioned, it can be fixed by restarting the PC - very reliably, literally works every time, which mean it has something to do with turning on and off the either the sound card or the PC itself, I am just not sure which one

[Bombastinator]

36 minutes ago, e22big said:

it's probably not external factor, as I mentioned, it can be fixed by restarting the PC - very reliably, literally works every time, which mean it has something to do with turning on and off the either the sound card or the PC itself, I am just not sure which one

More likely anyway.  If the PC is involved and it doesn’t start again immediately the timing becomes a point perhaps worth watching.  Also cable placement for everything downstream of the DAC and perhaps the DAC itself. Is the buzz by any chance 60 cycle hum? AC runs at 60 cycles

[e22big]

18 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

More likely anyway.  If the PC is involved and it doesn’t start again immediately the timing becomes a point perhaps worth watching.  Also cable placement for everything downstream of the DAC and perhaps the DAC itself. Is the buzz by any chance 60 cycle hum? AC runs at 60 cycles

hmn I have no idea, if I turned it on and it had an issue, I usually restarted righ away so don't try to observe too much

[Bombastinator]

2 hours ago, e22big said:

hmn I have no idea, if I turned it on and it had an issue, I usually restarted righ away so don't try to observe too much

The amount of time combined with what you see in task manager around that time might provide clues.  As for 60 cycle hum there should be some audio file of it on the net somewhere.  It’s more or less the sound of North American AC current.  If you don’t live in North America your AC may alternate at a different frequency.  The sound of that should be on the net too though.  It’s a handy thing to be able to recognize.  It’s the sound a wall powered tape degausser makes but I doubt that has much relevance.  I haven’t even seen one in years.  Sound is vibration, so something vibrating in air makes noise at the frequency it moves at.  a burp gun (German ww2 sub machine gun) was called a burp gun because  It had a really high rate of fire.  Close to a thousand rounds a minute, so the sound it’s shots made actually blurred together to make a low sounding vibration. The faster the vibration the higher pitched the hum.  If you hear 60 cycle hum generally North American ac power is involved somehow.  That and it’s magazine didn’t last very long. A really really loud burp. It was reportedly quite distinctive. 

Edited June 3, 2022 by Bombastinator

[e22big]

19 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

The amount of time combined with what you see in task manager around that time might provide clues.  As for 60 cycle hum there should be some audio file of it on the net somewhere.  It’s more or less the sound of North American AC current.  If you don’t live in North America your AC may alternate at a different frequency.  The sound of that should be on the net too though.  It’s a handy thing to be able to recognize.  It’s the sound a wall powered tape degausser makes but I doubt that has much relevance.  I haven’t even seen one in years.  Sound is vibration, so something vibrating in air makes noise at the frequency it moves at.  a burp gun (German ww2 sub machine gun) was called a burp gun because  It had a really high rate of fire.  Close to a thousand rounds a minute, so the sound it’s shots made actually blurred together to make a low sounding vibration. The faster the vibration the higher pitched the hum.  If you hear 60 cycle hum generally North American ac power is involved somehow.  That and it’s magazine didn’t last very long. A really really loud burp. It was reportedly quite distinctive. 

If it's like this then no - it first sound like a very high static noise, to the.. I dunno.. zzzzzzd sound is what I can best describe it. In a way a bit similar to when you have issue with your audio plug or maybe an old radio when it doesn't recieve the signal clearly.

 

A bit worse actually, it tends to last some seconds before going back to normal then happend again in 30 seconds to minute and a half (and yeah I don't live in NA)

 

 

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, e22big said:

If it's like this then no - it first sound like a very high static noise, to the.. I dunno.. zzzzzzd sound is what I can best describe it. In a way a bit similar to when you have issue with your audio plug or maybe an old radio when it doesn't recieve the signal clearly.

 

A bit worse actually, it tends to last some seconds before going back to normal then happend again in 30 seconds to minute and a half (and yeah I don't live in NA)

 

 

So not 60 cycle or something similar. This is good.  Means the AC side of the PSU and house wiring probably isn’t involved.  Could be DC something of course, but it eliminates a bunch of difficult or impossible to change things.  Chances this can be fixed without massive things are a good bit higher than they were. Sounds I suspect like white noise more or less.  One thing that sometimes helps are these ring shaped magnets you can clip over a cable.  I forget what they are called.  Effectively increases the insulation of a cable.  I don’t know if it’s RFI or EMI, but RFI you can block with musically any metal.  Tinfoil is popular because it’s cheap and comes in rolls.  Wallpaper a room in tinfoil and cellphones cease to be able to contact their towers.  Shoplifters sometimes use foil lined bags to defeat anti theft devices.  If you happen to have a not being used baking tray somewhere in your house you can use it as a radio blocker to do testing with.  There is also something called a ground loop that I don’t really understand, but I’ve heard they can be a real bugbear for analog audio stuff.  We’re way beyond my personal knowledge base by now.  There are audio people around here that know a heck of a lot more than I do about this stuff.  

[CTR640]

How old is the soundcard btw? Nowadays there are other better audio solutions like external dac/amps and they can't cause any buzzing sound and if there is buzzing sound, it's the external device itself that's malfunctioning. Had it happen to me. Got a new one and no more buzzing sound. Sound cards are not something you see every day.

 

And restarting the PC everytime when the buzzing sound occurs gets really tedious, that's a bad workaround.

[e22big]

39 minutes ago, CTR640 said:

How old is the soundcard btw? Nowadays there are other better audio solutions like external dac/amps and they can't cause any buzzing sound and if there is buzzing sound, it's the external device itself that's malfunctioning. Had it happen to me. Got a new one and no more buzzing sound. Sound cards are not something you see every day.

 

And restarting the PC everytime when the buzzing sound occurs gets really tedious, that's a bad workaround.

Well, they sound amazing for my setup (Sennheiser HD660s) and keep my desk clean. It's very well shielded, I basically never hear any static in my system (despite sitting right next to the 3080), not going to replace it just because of this issue. It's also not that big of a deal, you will know right away if it presented the moment you start a PC, restart once and it will gone forever until your next start up. 

 

Just curious the cause and whether I should spare some budget for a future DAC 

[CTR640]

52 minutes ago, e22big said:

Well, they sound amazing for my setup (Sennheiser HD660s) and keep my desk clean. It's very well shielded, I basically never hear any static in my system (despite sitting right next to the 3080), not going to replace it just because of this issue. It's also not that big of a deal, you will know right away if it presented the moment you start a PC, restart once and it will gone forever until your next start up. 

 

Just curious the cause and whether I should spare some budget for a future DAC 

Yeah, never heard about this issue before. I can totally relate regarding keeping the desk clean. I planned to do a stack but it turned out to be much better to keep it a single unit and it's a damn fine eye-catcher too.

 

Since when did this start and how long have you got it? What about the onboard audio from the mobo? Mobo onboard are usually trash and weak tho.

[rice guru]

I've had this issue very recently with my laptop's built in DAC and was fixed after a windows update. So maybe you can fix it from like a firmware or driver update?

[e22big]

1 hour ago, rice guru said:

I've had this issue very recently with my laptop's built in DAC and was fixed after a windows update. So maybe you can fix it from like a firmware or driver update?

eh in that case there's probably no fix for me, this is nearly a decade old sound card after all, there's no new firmware update whatsoever - well I guess I could try reinstall firmware 

 

*driver

[e22big]

2 hours ago, CTR640 said:

Yeah, never heard about this issue before. I can totally relate regarding keeping the desk clean. I planned to do a stack but it turned out to be much better to keep it a single unit and it's a damn fine eye-catcher too.

 

Since when did this start and how long have you got it? What about the onboard audio from the mobo? Mobo onboard are usually trash and weak tho.

Hmn, I think it started sometime last year. I thought it was buzz and prepared to buy something else for DAC and then I discover that it went back to normal as soon as I hit restart. 

 

And then it seems to went off permanently for a long time, then start happening again, and more often after I build myself a new PC and carry this card over from the previous build. The onboard audio work fine when this happened.

[ShearMe]

how old is the PC? Time to do a clean windows install!