Faulty onboard sound card ?

[Behemoth]

I'm really not having a good day. I think the onboard soundcard on my motherboard is faulty. It was working fine this morning. Now all I get is a constant hissing noise. Like the static sorta noise you get when you de-tune your TV.

I've reinstalled the drivers, makes no difference at all. I've tried newer drivers, still the issue remains.

Mother board is an Asus M2N SLI and running Windows 7 64 bit retail, it even does it with Windows own driver

[this_is_gav]

Trying switching it off at the wall until the motherboard's capacitors drain (5-15 seconds) then switching it on again. I get a similar issue with my Xonar DX occasionally, and this always sorts it.

[Behemoth]

The problem seems to have fixed itself, so for the time being it's working. I don't trust this motherboard now though.

[Ulti]

This might be to do with interference sometimes like say you have your mobile phone next to your speakers and you receive a call or something. (Not too sure how interference and shielding etc work)

Just a guess though.

[Behemoth]

It certainly wasn't that, it went on for hours.

[12GaugeShotty]

Most onboard audio is faulty by design. The audio chip is on the motherboard so it suffers from the interference of other components. Even the latest ALC888 chipset sounds bad to me. I still use my old Audigy2 ZS sound card for audio.

[aidanjt]

Most onboard audio is faulty by design. The audio chip is on the motherboard so it suffers from the interference of other components. Even the latest ALC888 chipset sounds bad to me. I still use my old Audigy2 ZS sound card for audio.

Agreed, onboard HDA chips are little more than bad DACs, with zero mixing and zero processing.

[Behemoth]

The annoying thing from my side of it is that a new sound card that I like costs just as much as a new motherboard.

[12GaugeShotty]

The annoying thing from my side of it is that a new sound card that I like costs just as much as a new motherboard.

There are many sound cards that will sound better than onboard sound but be on the low end for pricing. The Turtle Beach Riviera and Turtle Beach Montego are examples. Most of the lower priced sound cards use low end C-Media chipsets or VIA chipsets.

[Behemoth]

There are many sound cards that will sound better than onboard sound but be on the low end for pricing. The Turtle Beach Riviera and Turtle Beach Montego are examples. Most of the lower priced sound cards use low end C-Media chipsets or VIA chipsets.

Is there a PCIE ersion of these cards ? My regular PCI card slots are full.

[12GaugeShotty]

Is there a PCIE ersion of these cards ? My regular PCI card slots are full.

The cheapest PCIe x1 sound card I found was the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio.

http://us.creative.com/products/prod...=16770&listby=

[Behemoth]

Hmm I will look into it come pay day. Looks like a decent card.

[Queelis]

The integrated audio on my motherboard has been doing that all the time, with the hissing varying according to what I'm doing (one type when I watch a movie, other when I play a game), so I've just come to getting used to that. By the way, the hissing isn't there if I connect the headphones to the back panel slot, only with the front ports (doesn't matter whether I use HDA or AC97). But my back port is occupied by my speakers, so, hissing from the headphones it is

[Will404]

The integrated audio on my motherboard has been doing that all the time, with the hissing varying according to what I'm doing (one type when I watch a movie, other when I play a game), so I've just come to getting used to that. By the way, the hissing isn't there if I connect the headphones to the back panel slot, only with the front ports (doesn't matter whether I use HDA or AC97). But my back port is occupied by my speakers, so, hissing from the headphones it is

You could try wrapping the headphone wire in tin foil (the wire between the Mobo and case outputs), to stop any interference which is probably causing the hissing. Just be careful not to cause a short