{"id":175,"date":"2007-05-17T16:54:39","date_gmt":"2007-05-17T21:54:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitstep.net\/blog\/2007\/05\/17\/fixing-sound-interference-on-the-asus-a8n32-sli-deluxe\/"},"modified":"2007-06-24T14:08:56","modified_gmt":"2007-06-24T19:08:56","slug":"fixing-sound-interference-on-the-asus-a8n32-sli-deluxe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitstep.net\/blog\/2007\/05\/17\/fixing-sound-interference-on-the-asus-a8n32-sli-deluxe\/","title":{"rendered":"Fixing sound interference on the Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’re running an Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe<\/a> motherboard like me<\/a>, and are using the onboard Realtek ALC850 audio (AC ’97 compatible), you may have experienced high levels of sound interference on the audio outputs. This interference manifests itself as “static” on your speakers, and appears to be correlated with system activity, such as: accessing the HDD, network activity or even moving the mouse. The static can be quite noticeable, and is especially annoying when there’s nothing else coming out from the speakers, or if you’re using headphones. In particular, the interference is unacceptable at high volume levels.
\n<\/p>\n

The cause<\/h3>\n

The cause of this interference is from the PC speaker, or rather, how the pass-through of the PC speaker to the onboard audio, was implemented. The onboard audio is automatically setup to receive PC speaker signals from your motherboard and route them to the outputs. This path was not very well isolated and as a result interference (EMI<\/abbr>) from other system components can creep in, resulting in the noisy output from your speakers. <\/p>\n

Solution: Mute it<\/h3>\n

The solution is to mute the PC speaker output on the onboard Realtek audio. This can be accomplished in two ways, depending on your situation and needs. <\/p>\n

The first is in software, and requires that you have the Realtek audio drivers installed, not<\/strong> the default nForce audio drivers, despite the fact that they work well with the A8N32-SLI Deluxe, an nForce 4 board. You can grab the Realtek drivers from Asus’ site<\/a> or a later version from Download.com<\/a>. <\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Open volume properties (either by clicking the systray icon or through Control Panel)<\/li>\n
  2. Click on Options > Properties<\/code> and make sure that “PC Speaker” is checked, then click “OK”<\/li>\n
  3. Now, mute the PC Speaker input<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    This should have removed or reduced most of the sound interference – this worked well for me. If not, try muting other inputs, such as AUX or Line In, that you may not be using. <\/p>\n

    Getting rid of interference while using NVidia’s drivers<\/h3>\n

    The second method, if you choose to stick with NVidia’s nForce audio drivers, is a bit more complicated. For some reason, the nForce audio drivers do not give an option to mute the PC speaker. I am guessing this was because the nForce audio drivers need to work with a variety of nForce motherboards, so they have to stick with something that’ll work with a reference design. Since not all nForce motherboards might use the Realtek audio and may not use the PC speaker input functionality, it could be problematic to code the drivers for this. <\/p>\n

    Thus, you’ll have to disable the PC speaker in hardware. This is done by opening your case and disconnecting<\/em> the PC speaker connector from the motherboard. This seems to break the connection to the PC speaker input to the onboard audio, removing most of the interference. This also worked for me. While you’re inside of your case, you may want to clean out some of the dust like I did. <\/p>\n

    Which method is better?<\/h3>\n

    At the surface, it may seem like the software solution, using Realtek’s drivers just to disable the PC speaker input, is better and easier. While it is easier, I didn’t really like the audio control panel provided by Realtek. While it had plenty of features, I just didn’t like the look & feel, nor did I appreciate the lack of an equalizer. <\/p>\n

    \nRealtek control panel<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

    The NVidia control panel, by contrast, looks more polished and offers a fully-featured graphic equalizer, that not only shows the different frequency ranges but also each channel. It also has a convenient “Night Mode” that automatically reduces bass and dynamic range for a quieter listening experience. <\/p>\n

    \nNVidia control panel<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

    I was living with this problem for over eight months, and just assumed it was because of the low-cost onboard audio. I was at the point of buying a separate soundcard just to alleviate the problem, before I stumbled across the solution<\/a> in several<\/a> forums<\/a>. It seems like quite a lot of other people have experienced this trouble. Hopefully Asus won’t let this happen in any more of their motherboard designs. However, Asus motherboards have always been rock-solid in terms of stability for me, so I don’t think I’ll switch anytime soon.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    If you’re running an Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard like me, and are using the onboard Realtek ALC850 audio (AC ’97 compatible), you may have experienced high levels of sound interference on the audio outputs. This interference manifests itself as “static” on your speakers, and appears to be correlated with system activity, such as: accessing the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[129,128,79,9,127,130],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitstep.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitstep.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitstep.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitstep.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitstep.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/unitstep.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitstep.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitstep.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitstep.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}