PC Master Race

14226 readers

1 users here now

A community for PC Master Race.

Rules:

No bigotry: Including racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia. Code of Conduct.
Be respectful. Everyone should feel welcome here.
No NSFW content.
No Ads / Spamming.
Be thoughtful and helpful: even with ‘stupid’ questions. The world won’t be made better or worse by snarky comments schooling naive newcomers on Lemmy.

Notes:

PCMR Community Name - Our Response and the Survey

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Computer speakers were making a funny sound when plugged into my computer. Fixed it now. (lemmy.sdf.org)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

8 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I own a pair of speakers which are powered by USB. I've had them plugged into my computer for a long while, but whenever I turned up the volume, I'd hear a high-pitched squealing sound from them which would fluctuate in pitch. For the longest while, I thought this was just an issue with the AUX cable, perhaps something relating to my GPU's coil whine.

Recently, though, I more or less completely rebuilt my PC minus 1 of the hard drives, which I'm still using now. I noticed that the speakers were still squealing even with the new motherboard, PSU and GPU.

A couple posts I found online indicated that the problem was likely due to an under insulated AUX cable receiving interference from EMF waves.

Despite that, for whatever reason, I decided I'd try to plug the speaker's power cable into the USB port on my power outlet. The squealing completely stopped! I'm not sure if there is a difference with the power delivered by computers USB ports vs the outlet (Please do let me know if there is!), but the issue has completely resolved itself.

Not sure if this is really the best place to post this, but I just really wanted to tell someone. I'm quite content!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A shared ground connection can cause this, also PC usb output is usually low powered 500 mAh, opposed to 2.5Ah for a separate supply.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

May I ask, what exactly is a shared ground connection? I've not heard that term before.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Electrical grounding shared between devices.