Noise/humming in microphone while playing games

[Estatus]

I've experienced strange static-like or humming noise coming from my end when talking while playing games. Friends have complained before when speaking over ventrilo so I decided to record how it sounded like when the mic was on during a game session, and indeed I heard this annoying noise in the background. I returned my first card for a new one, but the issue was consistent. Tried both the drivers on the CD as well as the latest drivers from the ASUS page. I've also tired moving the sound card to the slot farthest away from the GPU card since I've been advised by the support at my store as well as on other forums to do so as there can be interference between the soundcard and the graphics card; but this boggles me since, not only is this an expensive high-end ROG sound card, but there is also a case built on the card itself to protect it from any kind of interference from other devices on the computer.

To listen to how it sounds like visit this video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3E-uhY-TJ4&feature=colike

[DLoaderMega88]

not that i know of 😕 But I have seen this issue on many posts. They are usually asked to RMA it but then it comes back and its the same thing. Not sure whats causing it.

[Gismo]

Ok - time I dipped my toe in this pool and joined the discussion. Yes I bought a card, I've always used Creative cards in the past and this was my first foray outside of my comfort zone by buying the ROG Phoebus. Having read this thread and just RMAed the card to the supplier I can't help feeling I've made a dreadful mistake. Here are my components,

XFX 7970 3gb card
Asus M5A99R1
AMD bulldozer 4.2
8GB 1600
Sennheiser PC350 headphones

So I followed the instructions and uninstalled my old Creative drivers and removed the card. Followed the manual as far as installation went and yes, upon connecting everything I had a motorbike engine in my pc. So I went looking for solutions and this is what I've tried.

Software - tried all the tweaks on here, as the PC350 headset has a good quality microphone I've dropped the gain down to zero DB. Sadly it's not made any real difference.

Moving audio card away from video card. I've dropped my card into the bottom slot as far away from my video card as possible. It lessened the EMI - a little. Off to RS Components and £20 worth of ferrite cores and stuck them on every power lead and audio cable. Not much improvement there. Liberated a £60 sheet of moldable EMI shielding from my work. Again, small improvement.

Moved the cables away from the video card by routing them round the other side of the PC - no difference.

Installed an old dead video card from another pc to act as a barrier - again a slight improvement.

Disconnected the front panel audio connector - no difference.

The only thing that made any appreciable difference was unplugging my microphone altogether - that works. sadly it makes using TeamSpeak slightly difficult.

Last thing I could think about doing was replace the old PSU with a shiny new modular one. £150 lighter for that but that didn't change a thing.

So last night I solved the problem and my TeamSpeak friends were delighted as I was coming through clear and there was no additional background noise. The only reason this happened because I uninstalled my Phoebus to RMA it and stuck back in my very old Creative Xi-Fi card.

To say I'm disappointed with this card would be the understatement of the millennium.

[Necro86]

helo guys. i have to share my experience.
i had this problem too like there was a huge chaisaw blowing into my mic.
i0ve found a solution to this or atl east in my case.
i use a razer tiamat 7.1 and since i did this i never had any problem.
i plugged all audio connector to the board except for the mic.
i plugged the mic into the rog base wich regolate the volume.
after this i went to the software and i turned on the nfc (noise control field i think).
since i use this configuration i totally extinguished the problem :)...
i invite you to try this guys cause it really changed my life.
like lot of you i was struggling with this problem 🙂
hope that this can be helpfull for someone

[Neumi]

Gismo wrote:
....

It was quite the same for me.
My solution was to buy a 5$ USB sound card and connect my microphone there. I deactivated the Asus' microphone port, the USB adapter does a much better job.
Get the cheapest one you can find, you won't use it's output anyway. It's sad that junk hardware works better than such a expensive sound card as the Phoebus,

[kynbote]

I have been following this thread since I purchased my Asus Xonar Essence STX sound card and experienced the microphone buzzing sound.

A while ago I solved the issue - or at least greatly diminished it, by disabling the Intel SpeedStep option in my motherboards BIOS.

Recently I updated my BIOS and formatted my hdd, experienced the buzzing sound again, disabled Intel SpeedStep in the BIOS and the microphone buzz subsided

I hope this solution is able to help some others.

Other components include an Asus P79x79 Pro motherboard, NVidia GeForce 560Ti and Intel i7.

[oG_kill3r]

I found it 🙂

[eccorino]

Hello Estatus!

I can see this post is a bit old..

I recently bought a Phoebus card myself, and experienced the exact thing as you did. I've tried so many things to solve this problem, which many users seem to have.

So... Since ASUS themselves could not come up with an good explanation, I had to take it in my own hands. So I contacted the website from where I got the card and explained my problem to their service center. The guy who answered knew exactly what I had to do, since he also had the same problem before..

He told me to lower the sample rate in the in settings of ASUS software. And it's that simple. Try it and see if it works! You could always connect your microphone the the motherboard by activating it, and just use the sound coming from the sound card it self. But hey, that's not why we got it right!!

Good luck!

[Susscon]

Well i tried everything after just buying my card, including the onboard sound, even bought a cheap USB soundcard, and also lowered the sample rate, tried different pci-e ports, different headsets... u name it i tried it.
the only way i could get the mic working withought interference was to use the ''line in'' port on the back of the card.
i dont have to explain the downside of doing that, but at least now people can hear me on teamspeak withought interference and a clean voice transmission, its just they all have to turn me up there side on TS3.
as for getting the actual mic port on the card to work withought problems... well i given up, and emailed asus support for an explination.

Hope this helps some of you. if you guys can actually get this card working with the mic it is worth it because the sound is very good for the price, its just a real bad letdown as we should not have to deal with these problems in the first place.

[GoNz0-]

Sample rate has not worked for me, I got a little excited when I saw the new driver version and put the card back in. Tried everything to be met with horrible interference.

I think this is disgusting that I have a Asus Video card, Motherboard and Soundcard, all the top of the range and you get this.

Asus do not seem to care.

Oh well the cards going back up for sale.

Has anyone replaced with another high end soundcard with good headphone amp as I am looking for an alternative..

[Scotchjock]

Well, I've had my Phoebus solo for about a year now and only started to use the mic recently and also got this terrible humming noise reported to me by friends, it's a real shame as the card works flawlessly when mic is not in use and only starts humming as soon as I launch a game. Seeing all you guys with this problem is unacceptable and Asus really do need to address the problem, have now had to switch back to onboard sound, my spec as follows...

Gigabyte Z87X UD5H / Intel 4770k @ 4.5Ghz / Nvidia reference GTX 980 x2 sli / Corsair AX1200i PSU / Corsair H100i AIO / Corsair K70 / Corsair vengeance pro 8Gb 2133mhz / Corsair obsidian 750D / Asus ROG Swift / Asus xonar phoebus solo, now onboard because of humming mic / Corsair SP2500 speakers.