About a week ago my computer speakers started emitting an absurdly teeth-grinding high-pitched whine. It doesn’t matter if the OS volume is muted, doesn’t matter if something’s being played through them…they just keep whining. I’m swapped out speakers to no avail, so I’m thinking it’s the sound card, an Audigy 2.
The problem is, I’ve never heard of this happening to a sound card. Can you think of any possibilities I’m missing, like a new source of interference? I can’t find anything that’s changed in the area, but I’d rather look for an external problem than go out and buy a new sound card.
Did you put a new piece of hardware in your machine lately?
Soundcards are annoyingly susceptible to interference. At the very least you should have it in a slot as far away from the rest of the hardware as possible.
I’ve had that happen. In my case, it wasn’t an audio hardware problem, it was a symptom of a failing component in my PSU.
For a week or two I was only aware of the high pitched whine through the speakers, then it became audible from the case with the speakers off. After another week or two it was audible with the computer off, and at that point it became apparent that the noise was coming from the PSU. You don’t by any chance have an Antec PSU, do you?
Speaker noise is generally due to bad wiring, poor shielding, interference, etc. If you plug head-phones into your soundcard do you get the same hiss/whine? If so, then you have an issue either with your soundcard or another device in your computer which is interfering with the speaker out port.
No problem, I hope it solves your issue. Antec should RMA your PSU for you. Apparently you and I are not the only ones to have this particular issue with their hardware. Their RMA department is sloooooow, but cooperative.
