OT: Noise out of speakers during idle/moving windows.

Hey people. This one is and isn't related to Sonar in some ways. But i thought i would ask anyways.
On my PC, i get noise coming out of my monitors, like a static, swooshy kind of sound. It happens when for example i grab a window and drag it around the screen. In sonar for example if i grab the synth rack and move it around, i get this noise. Hard to explain how it sounds like. It also happens when the screen saver kicks in on the system. Occasionally it happens when i simply move the mouse pointer around the screen.
However, this also happens in other DAW's as well. 
Due to the fact that its happening only during something graphically happening on screen, could this have something to do with the graphics card perhaps?  Using the same setup, with same FW interface, i don't get any noise at all on my mac. Only the PC.
Anybody else noticed this ??

Is Aero on? If not be sure it is.

Is the noise coming through your PreSonus Firebox or the built-in sound chip on the motherboard? 

I used to get zipper noise when I used my mouse scroll wheel.  But, like Kriz, that was a long time ago.  Doesn't seem to crop up anymore.

I had the zipper noise as recently as a month or so ago. I got rid of it by switching from an AMD video card to an nVidia one. 

Hey peoples. Thanks for your replies and suggestions.
Last night i completely ripped the PC apart and rebuilt it, in order to attempt and isolate this noise. And... it came back. It isnt the mouse, since it mostly happens when some video rendering happens, such as moving stuff around screen, screen saver kicks in. I also loaded up a game (WoW), and the noise increased tenfold. Which makes me believe, strongly it is the video card. 
I messed around with settings etc, but with no changes. I have no other video card to try, and my motherboard does not have onboard video so, can't try that. 
I'm overdue for a new i5/i7 system fairly soon, so, hopefully a new video card will fix the issue.

To Daveny: Yes it comes only through the firebox FW interface and i can hear it through my KRK monitors and/or the headphones connected to it.

rbowser, your constant "whine" issue isn't the same as what's being described in the OP, I don't think.  Sounds like yours is an always-on thing while Sonar is running, where what we're talking about only happens in quick-moving soft "pops" as you scroll in a webapge or something like that, and for me at least they were omnipresent (i.e. with and without Sonar running).  Somwhere on this forum I read that the solution was getting an nVidia card.  And sure enough that issue went away.  Not sure if I can come up with anything to help you though.  :-/

Check out this thread...see if it helps in any way...

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=1698762&mpage=1&key=?
 
or
 
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?high=&m=1751941&mpage=1#1752276

Grem


 Randy, are you sure you don't have a ground loop problem? 2Yrs? Man, that would have drove me nuts!!!

I know, it was a problem from day one with the laptop.  Using the built in card the day I got the computer, I had digital whine on my speakers, didn't worry about it because my new interface was already ordered and on its way.

Then the huge disappointment when I set up the Alesis, and the same sound was happening.

I wrote to them, they said "That shouldn't happen blah dee blah"--once in awhile I attempt a solution, like buying some of those little frequency traps to strap at the beginning and the end of the USB cord - someone Swore that would fix it.  But nothing's ever helped.

This whine, like low level Fax signal computer sound, Only happens when I'm in Sonar.  When that program's closed, sound is fine. --- An incompatibility between the Alesis and Sonar - of some sort.

Randy B.

rbowser

Grem


Randy, are you sure you don't have a ground loop problem? 2Yrs? Man, that would have drove me nuts!!!

I know, it was a problem from day one with the laptop.  Using the built in card the day I got the computer, I had digital whine on my speakers, didn't worry about it because my new interface was already ordered and on its way.

Then the huge disappointment when I set up the Alesis, and the same sound was happening.

I wrote to them, they said "That shouldn't happen blah dee blah"--once in awhile I attempt a solution, like buying some of those little frequency traps to strap at the beginning and the end of the USB cord - someone Swore that would fix it.  But nothing's ever helped.

This whine, like low level Fax signal computer sound, Only happens when I'm in Sonar.  When that program's closed, sound is fine. --- An incompatibility between the Alesis and Sonar - of some sort.

Randy B.

Been there, done that with this, back when I used to DJ, used my laptop along with my rig. The way I got around the noise you experience is by putting the laptop on it's own circuit. Used to run a cord to the other side of the room if I had to but it worked. Whenever I was on the same circuit the same "fax" noise would start.

See if your graphics card is sharing an IRQ with anything else. It should be on an IRQ alone, as well as your audio interface. If your graphics card is sharing an IRQ assignment with anything else, disable in the BIOS any thing you don't use such as serial ports, onboard sound, etc. This will free up IRQ assignments, and when you re-boot to windows, windows will re-allocate devices to IRQ assignments, and you may find your graphics card placed on an IRQ alone after that.

Other things to try:

Yep, as already said, try a graphics card driver update or go back to an older driver, try different USB slots for the mouse (regardless of you thinking it's not a mouse related issue. Just because it involves graphic related activity doesn't mean it's not related to your mouse, especially if the mouse is a usb mouse). Is your graphics card a PCI express card? If you have more than one PCIe slot, try swapping to another.

rbowser


Thanks for the suggestions, Middleman and Koikane - I'm afraid this sort of noise problem is one of the drawbacks of using a laptop.

I live in an apartment, and all the outlets for this and the next room are all on one breaker - not sure if that means they're on the same circuit-?  But I'm going to unplug and see about stringing the power cord to a different outlet at least.

Trying different USB ports on this has never yielded an improvement, alas.

Randy B.

You may want to look into a power conditioner or similar. They can work wonders.
http://www.furmansound.co...v=01&id=PL-PLUSDMC

Well, this has been a rather Hellish evening.

Updating the Nividia driver - that sounded like something I could do easily enough. --NOT!--omg.

I look at their website and see that the most recent driver is one version newer than what I have, but it still from back in Feb. 2009--AND it's labeled as a Beta--.  Nevertheless, I wanted to try the advice of updating it.  I've already investigated updating the driver for my interface - I have the one and only driver ever made for it, so, nothing to do there.

Now, a full three hours later, discovering in horror that the updated driver completely screwed up my dual monitor set up to a degree that I couldn't figure out how to fix it, I had to use a restore point to go back to before installing this new driver.  Then it took another hour to unravel the muck it'd made of my displays.

Meanwhile - The sound is exactly the same.  The Fax machine-like digital whine has nothing to do with my video card.

OK, well at least now I know.  I always like to investigate possible solutions when I can - but geez, this was as much fun as watching the grass grow all night.

On to other fix attempts tomorrow--if I'm up to it.--(it's always been like this every time I try to fix this sound issue with this Alesis interface).

Randy B.

I remember reading, quite a while ago, that disabling all "Turbo's" and accelerators of the video card can help to reduce video-card related noises.

I had the exact same "zipper" noise particularly in console view when sliding across the buss tracks. I updated my video card drivers (nVidia) and also played around with the hardware acceleration as already mentioned. I no longer have the problem.