Crazy Volume Surges

chrisll

I have some speakers (a woofer with 4 speaker) set up on my computer and I get these volume surges. Sometimes the volume will increase or decrease 3-4 fold.

I don't know what triggers it. My system is set up correctly as far as I know. Could it be bad wiring?

When it's surging and no music is playing you can hear a sound as if wind is blowing in the speakers cutting in and out. It's rather irritating. I have tried switching from digital input to analog input and it doesn't make a difference.

Any suggestions?

ledhed

What type of soundcard do you have? I found that when my All In Wonder video card output was plugged into my soundcard input the mouse moving would make noises and sometimes would expierience the same thing you are, my friends computer does this also, though on her's, there is nothing on the input. could be a ground loop but im not sure and if it is, I have no clue how you would fix that on a computer. So I guess unplug any inputs into the soundcard and go from there

chrisll

Actually, it's an old soundblaster value live! card. It didn't do this in the beginning. Only in the last year or so. I just moved and have nothing else plugged into the soundcard, but for the speakers. Yet, it's surging. Sometimes I can turn it off and on in succession and it will improve for a bit.

ledhed

Interesting. Not sure how it would happen but, could be a capacitor letting loose some charge. Anyone else have any ideas? Are these computer speakers or a reciever hooked up to your computer? If you are using a reciever or amp, make sure you don't have the volume on the computer all the way up as the minijack will send more current than RCAs will so, clipping could occur.

Ricardo

Could it be you are geting some kind of "noise" from the power line? I live close to an old radio antenna, and I used to have some kind of interference that went directly to the speakers through the power line and made this funny noise. When I plugged the speakers system into a power conditioner it went away.

chrisll

What is a power conditioner? Something that regulates the power level? Thanks

Ricardo

chrisll wrote:

What is a power conditioner? Something that regulates the power level? Thanks

I am not an expert, but I think that what makes it a conditioner is that it will filter the power to get rid of noise/interference. A normal surge protector will probably not do it, but there are some that include filtering. You can find probably many options in the market, some will cost thousands, but there are cheaper ones; here is one example I could find, though there might be cheaper...

http://www.zzounds.com/item--MONPRO800

If I were you, I would try to test before buying; there could be other reasons for your problem.