PCI cards - noise?

Rotten Guitar String

Rotten Guitar String

New member
Do PCI audio interfaces generally cause electromagnetic noise problems?

My current on-board sound card (it came with the PC), makes a constant faint noise through my monitors, and i hear a little buzz every time I maximise/close a window or something.
The sound card I have is rubbish, but I will be buying a new audio interface and didn't want to end up with the same problem. Will another PCI card be okay, or is there some sort of noise-proofing that they use?
Cheers
 
Re: PCI cards - noise?

I don't believe PCI cards "generally" cause noise problems, although I've heard of instances where they could be subject to the host computers ground problems, but that is not so common. I wouldn't go Firewire unless I needed to (for portability maybe), otherwise I would stick to PCI - especially if I was using a stationary computer.

You will just get much more bandwith and lower latency with PCI - crucial if your going to use plugins or record & monitor in realtime. And they are cheaper too. Firewire is popular now but PCI is superior in terms of bandwith.
 
Re: PCI cards - noise?

What kind of soundcard is it? A soundblaster or similar or is it something more "pro" ?

Computers generate hellacious amounts of noise so it's not untypical. It's best to find a card with either a breakout cable or better, have the conversion in an external box of some sort... like a Motu 24 i/o.

Bandwidth & latency really has nothing to do with PCI vs. firewire... not until you get into running say 24+ discrete channels of audio simultaneously at high sample rates.
 
Re: PCI cards - noise?

The sound card I have is worse than a sound blaster, it's part of the motherboard.. probably designed to play windows sound effects >.<
But the noise that comes through my monitors is terrible, I was just wondering if getting say, and Audiophile 192 would remedy that?

Also, I am planning to connect my POD 2.0 directly into this audio interface, and the output jack on the POD is a 1/4"
I was also planning to connect a microphone directly to the audio interface, however I'm not sure if this is possible without a mic pre-amp, which I don't think is included with the audiophile 192.
Is it possible to connect all this directly to the M-Audio Audiophile 192 without any signal/audio quality loss?

Here's a close up of the connections -
audiophile_192.jpg

Are those analog ins/outs 1/4"?
 
Re: PCI cards - noise?

Are you using a wireless keyboard and/or mouse? Those will cause noise. I had a wireless set and I ditched them within a day because of the noise coming through.
 
Re: PCI cards - noise?

No, my mouse/keyboard is USB, and there's nothing wireless connected to my computer. The noise becomes louder with more CPU activity, so it's definately coming from inside the computer.
 
Re: PCI cards - noise?

I've been using an M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 PCI card for a few years now and I've never had any problems with noise.
 
Re: PCI cards - noise?

PCI cards will generally perform better than firewire, with less latency. I have never had a noise problem with my Echo card.
 
Re: PCI cards - noise?

Your motherboard is more likely to be producing the noise;noise filtering can be bad at best. I have an Asus A7v333,that i replaced because it was so bad.It had a continual "Buzz"[buss noise] and mouse movements and other things would buzz too!Noise can come from the cards but not as much.My Audigy 2 [PCI]on that board and the newer one still has a low level buss noise buzz; whereas my Aardvark 10-10 had-has none[PCI interface -EXTERNAL box with ins -outs and ADC ,s]
if you get a new card and you still have noise you need another motherboard.
Can,t say i can recommend any particularly;Asus have a good reputation for motherboards,but their noise filtering is crap.The one i,m using at the mo is a gigatrend[an off shoot of gigabyte]-it was a cheap retro board for socket 7 chips with SATA and faster chipsets on it
Any one know of a good Noiseless board???:firing:
 
Re: PCI cards - noise?

I have two PCI cards in my PC:

SB Live! has little buzz
Hoontech DSP2000C has plenty of buzz when using the output on the card.

Both depend on the movement on the screen as you describe. The Hoontech is perfectly quiet when using the external breakout box. So it seems there is no guarantee to have a buzz-free output on high quality PCI cards.

BTW, because it was mentioned above: I have an ASUS mainboard. Never checked another one.
 
Re: PCI cards - noise?

Do you get noise in your recordings? i use my ZS2 for monitoring and the Aardvark for all my recording.My recordings come up noise free.It,s the ZS2 that
has the noise in it ;but once again it,s "Buss noise". Creative don,t seem to have very good noise filtering, and that combined with the Asus board was awfull.
It was a tip i got from an engineer that works with one of the major memory manufacturers.It was he that told me about the Asus boards,and their noise filtering;being below par!
:ok:
 
Re: PCI cards - noise?

Onboard soundcards suck, is the problem. A PCI card won't have to deal with mobo-level noise (in the circuit of the motherboard) as much and is also a bit farther away from the "heavy action" Yeah it's still in the case so noise could be an issue. if you are really worried you could always build a faraday cage around it (of course excluding the actual pci slot lol).

I've got a PCI card and it's much quieter than my onboard.
 
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