Hey y'all.

Problem: When I play a video-game, my speakers make a low buzzing noise. I'm convinced this is due to electrical noise from my videocard (a Nvidia gtx 1070 Ti) but haven't been able to eliminate it.

First of all, if you google this topic, you'll find there are a ton of forum threads like this all over creation and they all have different answers. I'm making this thread because I've already eliminated many of those solutions! Here's my audio setup:

My new speakers: Fluance Ai40

My soundcard: HT Omega Claro Halo

The speakers have RCA connections which I plug directly into the RCA outputs on my soundcard. I also have a pair of Beyerdynamic DT990 600Omh headphones plugged into the built-in headphone amp on the soundcard. Although the speakers are new, the soundcard and headphones have been in use and working fine for years. I've previously never used speakers with this soundcard.

I don't think the speakers are broken because they sound fine when I'm just watching videos or playing music. They also take Bluetooth connections as an input, playing music from my phone using bluetooth also doesn't present any weird static or buzzing. I've even tried using a bluetooth dongle to connect my PC to my speakers. When I play games using the bluetooth connection to the speakers, they sound fine!... but then the sound is delayed half a second and I'm not going to put up with that.

I have tried:

• Changing the RCA cable
• Plugging the power cord for my PC and speakers into different outlets
• Reducing my sound quality settings from 24-bit, 192 kHz to 16-bit, 44.1 kHz
• enabling v-sync in my games (tbh, this is a dumb suggestion)
• reconnecting the speaker wire that goes between the two speakers
• disabling all other audio devices in the Playback tab under the Sound menu.

I've also seen the 'Update your ethernet adapter drivers' suggestion and I'm not sure where to find those. My motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H and I'm using Windows 10. I have gone to the device manager and tried to update the network adapter by right clicking on it and using Update Driver but Windows told me it was up to date. Not sure if I can trust that though.

Please help, sending these speakers back through the mail would be such a pain and I'd like to avoid that.

have you tried a/b testing the speakers with an alternative dac? maybe pick up or borrow a cheap one to see if you can reproduce the problem over the RCA.

Have you opened your case and reinserted the 2 cards?

@yesiamaduck: @mellotronrules: I don't have a DAC on-hand to try this with but now I have one arriving on July 9th. Thanks.

I haven't tried reinserting the cards yet. I got some errands to run, I'll give that a shot when I get back.

Does the audio comes from the sound card or video card ?

If you have a USB to 3.5 mm jack then try it on your speakers and see what happens.

Also see if you have installed Nvidia's audio driver then banish it from your PC.

As people said above try different connectors. Yet, be sure you know WHERE the noise is coming from, it is just as likely if coil whine from you graphics card under stress. Or, you card could be make inaudible coil while but still throwing a RFI that is making your sound system pick up the interference.

I'm pretty sure that the fix could be easy, but I don't know what it is for you.

Depending on the cause they fix could vary from better grounding, thicker better shielded wires, USB wire that has a Ferrite Core choke , or even wrapping case wires in separate bundles that don't mix power transmission wires in the same bundle as data transmission wires. But don't buy anything until you test a bit....the solution could be cheap but if you buy all the solutions you will buy stuff you don't need and spend a lot of money!

If ist the graphic card I have heard of people attempting to reduce whine themselves with DIY solutions...but I have NO CLUE if that ever works or if they just kill their cards.

I tried reinserting the video and sound cards, that didn't have any effect. I also updated my soundcard driver but that didn't affect anything either.

@giant_gamer

I don't have a USB to 3.5mm converter but I am waiting on a DAC now. I think USB to 3.5mm converters act as their own soundcard and I'd much rather get the expensive one already in my PC to put out the signal. I've tried to get rid of the Nvidia audio drivers and THEY KEEP COMING BACK! AUGH! I'll keep trying. Also, screw these "Via HD Audio" drivers windows 10 automatically installs now. I never wanted these.

This is only semi related, my 980ti causes a loud buzzing in my guitar amp via the pickups, and the nearby cheap 2nd computer monitor goes a little crazy when running resource intensive games.
I'm no electical engineer, but computers these days seem to emit quite a lot of intereference, best to keep the computer tower away from everything if possible.

@mobiusfun: Can you test the audio from the graphics card and see if it fixes the issue or make it worse?

I have my PC and my speaker on two different outlets, which I think are also on different circuits in the house, so I don't think the grounding situation can be improved anymore. Never heard of a Ferrite Core choke before so i looked that up and that sure looks useful. But also I got a real bird's nest of wires going on behind my desk. I should definitely try just organizing my cables better. Thanks!

@cikame That's pretty wild. I wonder if video card manufacturers ever test for interference like that?

@giant_gamer I don't think I have a monitor that would support sending the audio from my video card to my speakers. I did remember these things came with a RCA to 3.5mm cable though. Next I'm going to try using that to plug the speakers into my front headphone jack. If that doesn't have any interesting results then I guess its cable cleanup time.

@mobiusfun: What slots do the graphics and sound card occupy on the motherboard? If there is space to move them further apart, try that.

@gaff: They're as far apart as possible.

Using the front headphone jack didn't help. I might be done trying solutions for today.

Does the buzzing sound like this?

Also, is your card MSi?

@treetrunk: It kind of sounds like that but quieter and lower in pitch. Its also in both speakers. Its not in my headphones so I don't think it would show up if I recorded game footage like this guy did. My video card is made by EVGA.

Edit: Just to make sure, I recorded a game that causes buzzing and the buzzing was not in the recording.

The buzzing isn't in your headphones, are you sure it's not the speakers? Anyway, if you're convinced it's electrical noise from card... maybe try underclocking your card. You can probably do it using EVGAs precision tool.

If worse comes to worse, and this would be a last resort, is to reflash your VBIOS (bios for video card) to a version more stable. I did that for my MSi card, but for a different issue (frequent crashing).

You could try using a SPDIF/toslink optical cable to connect your soundcard to an 'external amp' / 'box' / 'toslink to rca converter'. Since it's optical and not electrical it could solve the potential grounding issue. The downside is that it might bypass the nice DAC on your internal soundcard. You could also try an external usb soundcard with optical out.

Have you tried hooking up different speakers to the same RCA port on your soundcard?

Better to game at 48khz, it can cause audio issues at 44 as they are designed for 48.

To be honest this has only ever been an issue for me in one game but it seems like a good rule of thumb to follow.

I don't think this is going to be the issue though.

I got my DAC today and also discovered that I do have a stereo in my home that has RCA aux inputs. I got enough testing done to determine that my speakers seem to be the problem.

Plugging the DAC into the optical port on my soundcard, and then plugging the speakers into the RCA connections on the DAC did get rid of the buzzing when playing games. But the buzzing was replaced with a static-y white noise that played all the time. I also plugged some headphones into the DAC and heard no buzzing or static.

I tested the stereo both by plugging it into the DAC and then directly into the soundcard. I couldn't replicate the static nor the buzzing using the stereo.

Guess I got some speakers to return. :(