White Noise/ static coming from speakers

Initially, the only sound that came out of the speakers was static. When I tried messing with the volume settings, however, I found something interesting. I run windows 7, and in the volume mixer, there is a master speaker volume and then separate volume controls for every application you have open. lowering the master volume had no effect, but as I lowered application volume, the static dissipated. only when I lowered it to 1 volume did the sound for that application become almost normal (loud sounds still made a crackling sound). Its been like this for a few weeks now, but interestingly enough, one day I booted up my CPU and the problem was totally gone. sound was utterly normal. when I turned i off and back on later, the problem was back. I tried plugging headphones in in place of the speakers to test if is was a speaker problem, and it didnt change.

Does anyone have any ideas? I have no idea whats going on...

btw when I look up my audio card manufacturer in dxdiag, all it says is "pnp audio device"

Edited by st3v3yo, 15 September 2010 - 10:01 AM.

Hello and welcome to Bleepingcomputer.

The applications volume control which is associated with system sounds may have a circuit that is close to something inside the computer that is picking up electronic pulses from a close by source.

I am not sure if you have an on-board sound card or not, or if your sound card is an add-on card.

You may have something as simple as a cooling fan wire in close proximity to the audio circuits.

Make sure your power wires from your PSU are also not close to the audio circuits as your audio amplifier could be picking up noise from these wires as well.

Once you have made sure, there are no wires close to the audio circuits, test your audio volume levels again.

Hope this helps.

Bruce.

i havent had the time to test your theory but my computer has been randomly freezing and rebooting while i'm using it, and it will sometimes go into this hibernate-esque mode if I leave it sitting for a while (I checked; hibernate is turned off). could these problems be related, or do I just have really bad luck?

ok i posted a new thread because a huge new variable just presented itself. heres the link:

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic349221.html

Initially, the only sound that came out of the speakers was static. When I tried messing with the volume settings, however, I found something interesting. I run windows 7, and in the volume mixer, there is a master speaker volume and then separate volume controls for every application you have open. lowering the master volume had no effect, but as I lowered application volume, the static dissipated. only when I lowered it to 1 volume did the sound for that application become almost normal (loud sounds still made a crackling sound). Its been like this for a few weeks now, but interestingly enough, one day I booted up my CPU and the problem was totally gone. sound was utterly normal. when I turned i off and back on later, the problem was back. I tried plugging headphones in in place of the speakers to test if is was a speaker problem, and it didnt change.

Does anyone have any ideas? I have no idea whats going on...

btw when I look up my audio card manufacturer in dxdiag, all it says is "pnp audio device"

I had a similar problem a while back. I installed a new sound card and that fixed it but I could no longer use the front jacks when I wanted to quickly plug in a headset.

Completely by accident, I discovered that the sound problem stopped when I unplugged the usb connector for my wireless keyboard and mouse.

I'm using a wired keyboard and new mouse and the problem has completely disappeared.