Thumping / Popping Sound from V GENE Onboard Audio

[John_Drake]

Anybody else experience this?

I have my h/k receiver connected to my V GENE via the optical TOSLINK cable. Every now and again - especially when the computer is shut down or suspended - it produces this obnoxious thumping/popping sound. Loud. Full volume. Sounds like someone's trying to bust down my walls.

Can't for the life of me figure out what could be causing it. Worse, it's intermittent, which makes it difficult to diagnose.

I'm running the latest drivers, Win 7, yadda yadda yadda...

[HiVizMan]

This happens when your system is powered down or all the time?

[John_Drake]

It happens mostly when the machine is shutdown (or crashes and reboots - I've had some instability, although that seems to have cleared up the past couple of days, knock wood). I have had it happen twice while the machine was just running normally, though. It doesn't happen consistently, unfortunately...

[HiVizMan]

What it sounds like to me is there is some kind of intermediate earthing happening.

Please check each and every cable that is connected to your motherboard, PSU cables, front panel headers, USB cables the works. Physically inspect them for small nicks and cuts or stray strands of wire that may make intermittent contact with your case or the chassis of the motherboard tray.

[John_Drake]

I hadn't thought of that, and I'll check, but it seems unlikely. The receiver is connected via an optical cable, and I have all of the inputs on the sound card muted, apart from programs. The power supply was fine in my prior computer.

I've actually had the machine apart once since this problem started - to swap some drives around and replace the CPU cooler - and the problem persisted, so it's not likely to be a cabling issue. I'll also look at cables that aren't connected to anything, and maybe tie their ends up well away from anything metal, just in case...

I wonder if that goofy LED light on the motherboard is bleeding into the TOSLINK cable somehow and causing some sort of false signal to register with my receiver. Maybe I'll try deactivating that as well in the BIOS...

[HiVizMan]

Most of the time it is with the header cables, they get nicked and start touching occasionally against the inner frame of the case. Worth removing as a variable at least.

[John_Drake]

OK, so I opened her up and did a little surgery. I checked the ends of any disused PCI-E or hard drive power cables to make sure they weren't touching anything or coming too close to the case walls. Used cable ties to bind them into places where they weren't likely to cause any trouble. Checked for cracks in the cables but didn't see anything. The new case has fantastic cables and cable management options - it's this Silverstone case, which I pretty much love apart from the drive cage, the placement of which makes it impossible to mount large CPU coolers - even towers - with the the fan blowing on cooler. I have mine pulling air thru the cooler, which works surprisingly well, maybe because it blows straight out of the case.

So I also checked the fan cables and got those up and off and away from the case bottom and walls. I checked all the drive cables. Didn't see anything odd.

Then I remembered that mPCIe card at the back of the board. I recalled thinking when I installed the thing that it has lots of little metal solder points that press right up against the backplate. So, I stuck a piece of electrical tape on a zip tie and shoved it down between the backplate and the mPCIe card. Don't know if it'll make any difference, but if the problem does go away that's the likely culprit.

We shall see...

[HiVizMan]

Ah ok, lets hold thumbs that you have nailed down the cause.

[John_Drake]

Nope. That didn't fix it, either.

I am open to suggestions...

[HiVizMan]

Final set of suggestions.

Remove all but the basics from your system.

VGA and on HDD

And run for a while and see it the sound improves.

What I am trying to work out if there is a problem with some of the additional hard ware you have attached. Like that PCi add on card you taped.

If not RMA the motherboard.