Recently reinstalled Win 2K Chinese on my computer and the speakers have been hissing ever since. Constant low level white noise, sometimes jumps in volume if e.g. music is played. I re-reinstalled the OS, but the sound is still there. The same computer is also running Win 2K English and there is no problem there - so it’s not a hardware issue.
Any ideas what could be causing this? Since I reinstalled there are no programs with audio output- apart from those bundled in windows (media player, CD player etc.). Failing a solution, does anyone know of any application that lets you monitor the input to your sound card?
Try opening up the windows audio control panel and muting line-in, midi synth, cd player, microphone, wav input etc. one by one until you isolate what’s causing the noise.
thanks for the suggestion, but the hiss persists. The only way to mute it from audio control is to mute the sound control itself. Muting any of the others has no effect. What does that suggest?
That means it’s not the speakers I guess.
I still think monkey is probably right, it’s probably coming from from unused connection. In Volume Control it doesn’t always show all the possible inputs, go to ‘Options’ then ‘Properties’, and click all the little boxes so it will show all the inputs, and try muting them again one by one.
That’s weird… The master volume changes the volume of all the sound sources, obviously. But each sound source should have a volume too… The hiss must be coming from one of those sources, it must be coming from somewhere…
Can you try new sound card drivers ?
downloaded new sound card driversssssss
updated Windowssssssss
it’s no good. White noise is here to stay - at least until I can get my hands on the original installation CDs. Maybe that’ll help. Thanks for all the advice, anyway.
Did you check the plugs? Maybe you got a loose jack to the sound card or to your speakers. Try plugging some headphones in after you check the jacks to see if it’s not your speakers.
[quote=“MaPoDoFu”]It’s pretty much impossible for it to be plugs or any other hardware, since the hissing stops when he mutes the master volume control.
[/quote]
Double check the plugs.
Just because turning down/off the volume via software removes the hiss, it doesn’t automatically eliminate hardware/user error.
But then I’ve never heard software generate real white noise. When I’ve had software problems affect sound, I usually end up with tones, screeching, buzzing, clicking, “pink noise” – just about anything except true white noise.
Here’s a long shot: If you have a dial-up modem on your computer, you can route the modem sounds through your sound card during dial-up to monitor the connection progress. I wonder if there’s a driver conflict there that might be causing the white noise problem?
I’ll ask a couple of friends who are MS-Windows geeks.