GA-7n400 Pro 2 sound problems

Hello,

I bought this board off ebay recently (rev 2.0). Using the onboard
sound I get buzzing every time there is disc activity (sata if that's
relevant).

Do all boards do this or is mine faulty? What can I do, other than use
a third party sound card?

Thanks.

Fred wrote:
Hello,

I bought this board off ebay recently (rev 2.0). Using the onboard
sound I get buzzing every time there is disc activity (sata if that's
relevant).

Do all boards do this or is mine faulty? What can I do, other than use
a third party sound card?

Thanks.

Have you connected the CD audio cable, to the back of a CD drive ?
Disconnect it. You can get CD audio via the IDE ribbon cable (DAE or
digital audio extraction). The analog CD cable sometimes works as an
antenna, and picks up electrical noise. Remove that cable completely.

Go to Device Manager, select your CD Drive. There should be a Properties
tab for the CD Drive. Mine has a tick box for "Digital CD Playback".

Various motherboards have had problems with crosstalk. For example, one
board ran some Ethernet wiring in parallel with audio wires. Every time
packets were sent, there was a background noise in the audio. Adding
a sound card to the computer, is one way to solve that one.

Paul

On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 02:31:59 -0400, Paul wrote:

Have you connected the CD audio cable, to the back of a CD drive ?
Disconnect it. You can get CD audio via the IDE ribbon cable (DAE or
digital audio extraction). The analog CD cable sometimes works as an
antenna, and picks up electrical noise. Remove that cable completely.

Hello,

Thanks for the fast reply. I didn't think I had added this cable but I
just opened the box to check and I had! I have unplugged it but I'm
afraid there's still some noise on disc activity. I haven't had long
enough to see whether it's as bad as before or whether it has improved
slightly.

I guess I can add a sound card, it's just such a waste of a pci slot
when there's built-in sound already.

Thanks.

Fred wrote:
On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 02:31:59 -0400, Paul wrote:

Have you connected the CD audio cable, to the back of a CD drive ?
Disconnect it. You can get CD audio via the IDE ribbon cable (DAE or
digital audio extraction). The analog CD cable sometimes works as an
antenna, and picks up electrical noise. Remove that cable completely.

Hello,

Thanks for the fast reply. I didn't think I had added this cable but I
just opened the box to check and I had! I have unplugged it but I'm
afraid there's still some noise on disc activity. I haven't had long
enough to see whether it's as bad as before or whether it has improved
slightly.

I guess I can add a sound card, it's just such a waste of a pci slot
when there's built-in sound already.

Thanks.

Your built-in sound has a number of input sources. The Mixer
control panel controls them. Muting each of the inputs, may
help eliminate the noise. At least on some motherboards, that
was the solution. Other than that, I'd use a sound card. I use
a cheap CMI8738 based card in mine, and its only saving quality,
is no background noise. Everything else about it, sucks :-)
(Headphone setting doesn't have proper ambience.) I understand
in some cases, you can find those cards for $7.

Paul

On Wed, 10 Oct 2007 01:10:40 -0400, Paul wrote:

Your built-in sound has a number of input sources. The Mixer
control panel controls them. Muting each of the inputs, may
help eliminate the noise.

Hi. I've tried that already but without success. I can't seem to find
any "basic" sound cards for sale here (UK); they all seem to be 7.1
Dolby digital affairs. I guess I'll try ebay.

On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 02:31:59 -0400, Paul wrote:

Various motherboards have had problems with crosstalk. For example, one
board ran some Ethernet wiring in parallel with audio wires. Every time
packets were sent, there was a background noise in the audio. Adding
a sound card to the computer, is one way to solve that one.

I updated the driver and it solved the problem; no need to buy a
replacement card after all!