Noisy PC - Processing "chatter" output to speakers

[shackman]

I am a PC musician and to keep up with the processing power of hungry programs and plug-ins I have upgraded to a dual-xeon system. My problem is that now I hear the internal chatter noise of the PC being transferred to my studio monitor speakers. It appears the more is asked of the processor, the worse the noise becomes.

I seem to have exhausted diagnostic elimination by obtaining and installing a 2nd dual xeon motherboard; a 2nd power supply, different memory etc. Obviously I have also tried different pro sound cards, checked cables and generally scratched my head raw!

I am using XP Pro (SP2), Cubase SE, Reason, Soundforge etc.

Has anyone else experienced this problem? Any solutions out there? all contributionswould be gratefully received...

 

[MacGyverS2000]

A couple of possibilities...

One possibility is temporarily running out of processsor power, like a buffer underrun when burning a CD. This is highly unlikely since you're upgrading the processors to something faster than what you have now, but there's always the possibility of the dual processor architecture tripping itself up.

A second possibility is with increased processing power comes an increase in power drain from the supply. This may not be an issue with your supply, per se (although I would certainly check), but the motherboard's ability to supply those intense peak power demands right when the processors need it (we're talking spikes of many amps here with the newer processors on the market).

I'm not a fan of XP due to the extra headaches it offers, I generally stick with 2000Pro, and that would be another area to consider... poor OS threading or (virtual?) memory management.


Dan
Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[automatic2]

Does your noise sound anything like that of a seeking harddrive?. The voice coils may not be driving audio cones, but they certainly speak. Check that your hardddrive(s) have ample distance and shielding from both your audio cards and motherboard.

 

[MonkeyX]

In a similar vain to what automatic is saying you may be getting some noise from the video card. My gaming system was having a similar problem when the ati card was being taxed. You may try moving the sound card to the slot furthest from the processor, video card, memory, etc. if at all possible. Say the lowest slot on a standard atx case. Also try to keep as much space between it and any other expansion cards or cables.