I have a wierd problem. Even when my earphones/speakers are muted, I still get a faint buzz/clicking/humming sound coming from them. Usually it is so quiet it is barely noticable. However, yesterday i replaced my iPod earphones with a new pair that cost me £35. ( i use earphones as i live in college halls, and to not wish to disturb by neighbours). Unfortunately, along with better sound quality, also comes unwanted sound. The problem is, that now i can hear this crackling noise all the time and it's driving me insane.

So i tried to find out more about the noise and this is what i found:
- Its definately not the earphones, they work fine with my iPod
- My computer has two sets of sound outputs, one at the front for just speaker/mic and one set at the back for speaker/mic/surround sound speakers etc. The noise is slightly louder if i use the jack at the front of the case.
- The crackling noise is always there, but it does get noticably worse at times of high cpu/gpu activity. It also randomly gets quite loud when im scrolling a webpage, or when i minimise/maximise an application.

Does anybody have an idea of what this could be?

I was thinking that it may be interference from my graphics card as when Im playing a game, not only does the sound become greater, but I can adjust the frequency of my monitor refresh rate to actually change the pitch and frequency of the clicking/humming noise. If that is the case, what can i do?

Random shot in the dark here -
My ipod earphones i believe have an impedence of 20+ ohms, whereas my near earphones have a rated impedence of 16ohms. Could this be the reason that the noise got louder, due to less impedence?. Would it then be possible to buy an earphone extension cable to slightly increase impedence ?

Many thanks

Been there. all the webpage scrolling, CPU/GPU loading etc. Turned out that videocard was the culprit (**** capacitors to be precise). So yeah, its definitely interference from the VC or the PSU.

Ok thanks, is there anything I can do about it?

I've been looking at things called ferrite cores/beads. Being a passive element and all, would it be possible to just wrap one around my earphone lead?

Do you know if it's on board sound (meaning its a part of the MB), or are you using a sound card in a PCI slot?

It can be possible as ZozZoz mentioned, if you check the video card for budging capacitors, or leaking ones. They are not hard to spot.

I do remember a time when a guy used team speak. He brought new sound card, and there was allot of noise when he spoke. It got worse when he got into a game. Boy was it annoying.

Then he switched to his on board sound and the static noise completely disappeared. To me, it seemed like a bad ground problem, or lack of shielding on components, such as the sound card.

im using an ASUS a8n-sli deluxe mobo, which has onboard sound which i am using.

Strange buzzing sound

Thought it was interesting. You did mention:

Do you have software called "magic tune" installed?

This was his fix:

The problems sounds to me like the front panel audio wires aren't shielded very well and are causing the increased humm or buzz when using the front connectors. I had a similar problem, I put some long stirps of heat shrink tubing over those cable and it help a little. Maybe a ferite bead might help more on the inside of the case were the interference is happening. You could try borrowing a pci sound card from a friend that might have one install see if it make any difference.