HDD causes "noise" in audio

  • Thread starter Thread starter Hoib
  • Start date Start date
H

Hoib

Hi. I've posted this question in another NG but no response, so may I try
it
here?

I have Windows Media Prayer 9 and a collection of mp3s I like to listen to.
But, recently, anytime the HDD seeks or writes, I get this weird raspy noise
in the audio stream. The moment the HDD subsides the sound resumes nice and
clear.
This happens also with headphones so I know it's probably not the speaker
system itself
of a connection dying. At times of intense HDD activity the sound stream can
come to a
stop with many hesitations galore but again, the moment the HDD rests and
the sound once
again comes in clear.

I have DMA turned on. HDD is defragged every 3-4 days. When I play an MP3
off the thumb drive, fewer disturbances but it's still there. This symptom
has started within
the last 2-3 weeks. I don't think I've installed anything crucial.

Any ideas what's going on here?

WinXP Pro - SP2 updated.
AMD64 @ 3.2 Ghz
RAM 512 MB
HDD - SATA 160 gig about 1/2 full.

H.
 
Since you get the noise with either the hard drive or the thumb drive my
guess is that the power supply is going bad as it is allowing noise to go
unfiltered through to the audio components. You may also want to check any
capacitors on the motherboard for leakage as this could also be the culprit.

JS
 
Well, if I may - comment back...

This is not true "audio" noise as generated by some faulty RF somewhere. If
it were a leaky component I'd expect to hear it at other times rather than
just during disk access. I probably was less than clear.

The "noise" I'm talking about is not static-y or raspy within the stream
itself. It's hard to explain. At this point, I don't think it's the PS or
caps on the MB because the interference (if that's what we call it) takes
the form of a raspy sound that absolutely follows the rapid millisec firing
of the disk being accessed as observed by watching the disk access LED.
Further, the raspy sound will sometimes (not always) evolve into the audio
stream hesitating (slows the music down to a crawl) or complete stoppage for
a few seconds as the disk is really taxed to the max like when I open or
write a file or surf somewhere where heaviest disk access is called for.
With the system latent, the music plays perfectly. So, this doesn't sound
like a PS issue but rather one of the disk system vying and competing for
CPU attention/cycles with WMP or vice versa. Again, this just started
happening recently. It all played together nicely until a few weeks back.

I've tried this with no other apps or background tasks open - bare bones if
you will. I haven't yet tried it in safe mode. Guess that might be next,
if WMP drivers can be used in safe mode. I'll try that and try to post
back.

Thanks for the input.

H
 
'Hoib' wrote, in part:
| I have Windows Media Prayer 9 and a collection of mp3s I like to listen
to.
| But, recently, anytime the HDD seeks or writes, I get this weird raspy
noise
| in the audio stream. The moment the HDD subsides the sound resumes nice
and
| clear.
_____

Suggestions:
#1. Check the audio input settings on your sound hardware mixer function;
mute the microphone input, the CD player input, and the AUX input. This
will eliminate interference picked up on the CD/DVD drive audio cables.
This will not help with the 'hesitations'.

#2. Is it possible that a CD/DVD is in use? That also will cause the
'drive in use' light to show activity. Remove any CD/DVD disks.

#3. 'Use Task Manager' to check CPU usage; with just the Windows Media
Player application activity, CPU usage should be only about 10% at most.
Hesitation in track playback could be caused by some application or process
of which you are unaware taking up very large amounts of CPU time. Disk
contention should not be a problem because caching and 'read ahead' that
likely has the entire tune cached in memory during playback.

Additional information would be helpful for diagnosis (such as the sound
card you use.)

Phil Weldon

| Hi. I've posted this question in another NG but no response, so may I try
| it
| here?
|
| I have Windows Media Prayer 9 and a collection of mp3s I like to listen
to.
| But, recently, anytime the HDD seeks or writes, I get this weird raspy
noise
| in the audio stream. The moment the HDD subsides the sound resumes nice
and
| clear.
| This happens also with headphones so I know it's probably not the speaker
| system itself
| of a connection dying. At times of intense HDD activity the sound stream
can
| come to a
| stop with many hesitations galore but again, the moment the HDD rests and
| the sound once
| again comes in clear.
|
| I have DMA turned on. HDD is defragged every 3-4 days. When I play an
MP3
| off the thumb drive, fewer disturbances but it's still there. This
symptom
| has started within
| the last 2-3 weeks. I don't think I've installed anything crucial.
|
| Any ideas what's going on here?
|
| WinXP Pro - SP2 updated.
| AMD64 @ 3.2 Ghz
| RAM 512 MB
| HDD - SATA 160 gig about 1/2 full.
|
| H.
|
|
|
 
If the disc is really being used that much, I bet it's paging a lot to the
swap file. I bet a nice stick of RAM would clear it up, especially if you
have a lower end processor with little cache, that could be tearing it up
while it tries to decode audio and page files to the swap file in the
background.

- skeene
 
'Shawn Keene' wrote:
| If the disc is really being used that much, I bet it's paging a lot to the
| swap file. I bet a nice stick of RAM would clear it up, especially if you
| have a lower end processor with little cache, that could be tearing it up
| while it tries to decode audio and page files to the swap file in the
| background.
_____

The original post indicates 512 MBytes memory installed, an AMD64 @ 3.2 GHz
equivalent, and a 160 GByte SATA hard drive.

| If the disc is really being used that much, I bet it's paging a lot to the
| swap file. I bet a nice stick of RAM would clear it up, especially if you
| have a lower end processor with little cache, that could be tearing it up
| while it tries to decode audio and page files to the swap file in the
| background.
|
| - skeene
 
OK, thank you all for your input and suggestions. I agree and think what
this is, is truly a performance degradation issue. I did try to launch WMP
in safe mode. Forget it. The "audio devices" (win drivers) WMP needs don't
get installed. I then tried it normal mode but stripping out (unchecking)
as much as I dared in msconfig's startup list. Kill the firewall, AV,
Anti-Spy, BHOs and the like. Almost no discernable difference. I do note
that when watching Task Mgr as one person suggested, a "SYSTEM" task will
float to the top of the list (if you sort it by CPU usage) briefly,
utilizing percentage points more CPU time than the 7-10 percent allocated to
WMP while it works. Sometimes (again, not always) when that happens, WMP
gets the shakes. Does this "SYSTEM" task increase in parallel with the disk
activity light? Unfortunately not every time so I can't establish a solid
relationship there. There's also two Adobe related background processes
that never seem to go to a zero state but drift around at about 1-2 percent.
Again, things are happening so quickly, it's very difficult to see. I've
tried putzing around with the update values in Task Mgr but you need good
"resolution" when events are quickly taking place.

What I need is three sets of eyes or a $15K dollar high speed camera...
Sigh.

Anyway, I should try the easy things first. Go buy the RAM (BestBuy has a
good sale on here), stick it in and watch to see what that does. It's
probably time for that upgrade -regardless- of the current issue.

I'll try to post back with some results, for those of you who may be just
curious.

Thanks again, folks! Nice newsgroup here. I've made a subscription to it
in OE.

H
 
JS said:
Since you get the noise with either the hard drive or the thumb drive my
guess is that the power supply is going bad as it is allowing noise to go
unfiltered through to the audio components. You may also want to check any
capacitors on the motherboard for leakage as this could also be the culprit.

JS
Click to expand...

That's a possibility, but not a likely one IMO, unless the system is
heavily loaded with other peripherals/cards not mentioned. Overclocking
to 3.2 GHz would make if feasible, for instance, but if it's a factory
system it would be pretty unlikely from the given symptoms.

It's also pretty unrealistic for a guy off the street to be able to
check capacitor "leakage" on the mobo. Given the apparent age (3.2 GHz)
I'd also put capacitor problems on the backburner as long as this was a
new symptom after having worked correctly for some period of time.

Regards,

Pop`
 
Hoib said:
Hi. I've posted this question in another NG but no response, so may I try
it
here?

I have Windows Media Prayer 9 and a collection of mp3s I like to listen to.
But, recently, anytime the HDD seeks or writes, I get this weird raspy noise
in the audio stream. The moment the HDD subsides the sound resumes nice and
clear.
This happens also with headphones so I know it's probably not the speaker
system itself
of a connection dying. At times of intense HDD activity the sound stream can
come to a
stop with many hesitations galore but again, the moment the HDD rests and
the sound once
again comes in clear.

I have DMA turned on. HDD is defragged every 3-4 days. When I play an MP3
off the thumb drive, fewer disturbances but it's still there. This symptom
has started within
the last 2-3 weeks. I don't think I've installed anything crucial.

Any ideas what's going on here?

WinXP Pro - SP2 updated.
AMD64 @ 3.2 Ghz
RAM 512 MB
HDD - SATA 160 gig about 1/2 full.

H.
Click to expand...

I haven't read the other posts so there might be some better info in
those, but to me it sounds like it could possibly be, if anyone has been
inside the machine lately or adjusting things:
-- A miswire to the audio card.
-- A missing ground connection on either the sound card or poor ground
on the hard drive. I assume there's only one hard drive? You could try
a different power connector to the hard drive and see if it helps
anything.

Is the SATA a new addition, or was it there prior to this problem? In
this case it might indeed be helped by choosing the power connector (if
you have the choice - mine uses the standard power connectors rather
than the new one for SATA standards) further up the chain, physically
closer to the psu.

I'd also try reseating the audio card and checking to be sure none of
its input connectors were offset a pin on the connectors or anything
like that.

Off the top of my head it sounds like a hardware issue rather than a
software issue IFF you aren't stressing the power supply with overload.
If this is a personally built machine, all bets are off <G>.

Regards
Pop`
 
Hoib said:
OK, thank you all for your input and suggestions. I agree and think what
this is, is truly a performance degradation issue. I did try to launch WMP
in safe mode. Forget it. The "audio devices" (win drivers) WMP needs don't
get installed. I then tried it normal mode but stripping out (unchecking)
as much as I dared in msconfig's startup list. Kill the firewall, AV,
Anti-Spy, BHOs and the like. Almost no discernable difference. I do note
that when watching Task Mgr as one person suggested, a "SYSTEM" task will
float to the top of the list (if you sort it by CPU usage) briefly,
utilizing percentage points more CPU time than the 7-10 percent allocated to
WMP while it works. Sometimes (again, not always) when that happens, WMP
gets the shakes. Does this "SYSTEM" task increase in parallel with the disk
activity light? Unfortunately not every time so I can't establish a solid
relationship there. There's also two Adobe related background processes
that never seem to go to a zero state but drift around at about 1-2 percent.
Again, things are happening so quickly, it's very difficult to see. I've
tried putzing around with the update values in Task Mgr but you need good
"resolution" when events are quickly taking place.

What I need is three sets of eyes or a $15K dollar high speed camera...
Sigh.

Anyway, I should try the easy things first. Go buy the RAM (BestBuy has a
good sale on here), stick it in and watch to see what that does. It's
probably time for that upgrade -regardless- of the current issue.

I'll try to post back with some results, for those of you who may be just
curious.

Thanks again, folks! Nice newsgroup here. I've made a subscription to it
in OE.

H
Click to expand...

When you get a lot of small numbers in Task Manager like that, it's
sometimes better to watch the Idle time; as long as it stays less than a
few percent, the processor -should- be doing fine.

Pop
 
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