Mouse interferes with sound

[Zachary Turner]

Does anyone know why moving the mouse generates sound from my
speaker? It's a slight ringing noise, it has happened to me on every
version of Windows since 2000, probably before that as well, and it's
horribly annoying. It's even worse when I use the mouse to drag a
scrollbar or a window. Since I've never had a windows installation
where this DIDN'T happen, I'm assuming it's a global problem and
others have experienced this as well. If you don't know what I'm
talking about turn the volume on your speakers way up and then move
the mouse around.

If anyone knows how to get rid of this I would really appreciate it.

 

[Gary S. Terhune]

It's called radio interference and you get rid of it by placing your
speakers *well* away from the PC. I've got a fairly loud static, anyway,
because the base woofer cabinet is practically leaning against my tower. If
I turn my speakers way up, the small battery powered clock that's 6' away
from the desk can be heard tick-tocking. Probably doesn't help that I have
an Army surplus steel desk.

Mine's a wired mouse, currently. Perhaps a wireless mouse would help the
problem. Or perhaps it would be worse.

 

[DanS]

Does anyone know why moving the mouse generates sound from my
speaker? It's a slight ringing noise, it has happened to me on every
version of Windows since 2000, probably before that as well, and it's
horribly annoying. It's even worse when I use the mouse to drag a
scrollbar or a window. Since I've never had a windows installation
where this DIDN'T happen, I'm assuming it's a global problem and
others have experienced this as well. If you don't know what I'm
talking about turn the volume on your speakers way up and then move
the mouse around.

If anyone knows how to get rid of this I would really appreciate it.

Does it have on-board sound ?

With several high frequency clocks running inside the case, the RF energy
is just bouncing around inside. It's called RF interference. On this PC
you can hear the hard drive being accessed.

The easiest cure is to use an external USB2 sound card. Other than that,
you could spend hours/days trying to shield this, and shield that, add a
ground here, add a ground there, but it's not worth it.

 

[Ian D]

Does anyone know why moving the mouse generates sound from my
speaker? It's a slight ringing noise, it has happened to me on every
version of Windows since 2000, probably before that as well, and it's
horribly annoying. It's even worse when I use the mouse to drag a
scrollbar or a window. Since I've never had a windows installation
where this DIDN'T happen, I'm assuming it's a global problem and
others have experienced this as well. If you don't know what I'm
talking about turn the volume on your speakers way up and then move
the mouse around.

If anyone knows how to get rid of this I would really appreciate it.

This can be an issue with on-board audio, especially with earlier
motherboards. If you have on-board audio, the best solution is
to get a PCI sound card. This is usually not a problem on recent
motherboards with on-board multi-channel HD audio.

 

[Gary S. Terhune]

How is a card different than onboard sound in this respect?

 

[Gary S. Terhune]

I'll ask you, too. What makes onboard sound different than a PCI card in
this respect?

 

[DanS]

How is a card different than onboard sound in this respect?

What do you mean ? I said an *EXTERNAL* USB2 device. An internal card is
also subject to the same RFI, and may or may not be as bad as onboard
sound. A higher quality internal card may have more noise filtering, may
have more physical separation from the motherboard traces, may have the
final analog amplifying devices closer to where it exits the case.

An *EXTERNAL* USB2 card is digital. An MP3 is digital info which is much
less suseptible to noise. The digital sound exits the PC case and goes into
the external device as digital where it is converted to analog as the last
step before any amplifying devices, much further away from a large noise
source...the PC electronics.

 

[Ian D]

I'll ask you, too. What makes onboard sound different than a PCI card in
this respect?

The noise problem with on board sound is only audible at high
amplification settings, and most noticeable when no other sound
is being generated. On board sound codecs rely on the CPU for
processing and are tightly integrated into the motherboard circuitry,
and subjected to electrical noise, especially on the v+ line. A lot of
the noise is generated by changes in processing load caused by
interrupts. Most interrupt noise is high frequency and random,
and blends into the normal backgroung hiss. A moving mouse
generates a stream of repetitive interrupts in the audible range,
the effects of which can be clearly heard when the volume is set
high. It's the mouse generated noise that is the cause of complaints.

The PCI bus is more electrically isolated from CPU activity. Also,
most quality PCI sound cards do their own on card hardware sound
processing, and have additional filtering on the power connections.

 

[Pete Stavrakoglou]

What do you mean ? I said an *EXTERNAL* USB2 device. An internal card is
also subject to the same RFI, and may or may not be as bad as onboard
sound. A higher quality internal card may have more noise filtering, may
have more physical separation from the motherboard traces, may have the
final analog amplifying devices closer to where it exits the case.

An *EXTERNAL* USB2 card is digital. An MP3 is digital info which is much
less suseptible to noise. The digital sound exits the PC case and goes
into
the external device as digital where it is converted to analog as the last
step before any amplifying devices, much further away from a large noise
source...the PC electronics.

I experineced the same problem with an older system that used an Asus
motherboards. I could hear noise when dragging the cursor. I disabled the
onboard sound and installed a PCI sound card and the problem was solved.
I've never experienced noise problems with PCI cards in any system I've ever
owned, only with onboard sound. As Ian noted in an earlier post, the PCI
cards are not affected like onboard chips are.

 

[DanS]

I experineced the same problem with an older system that used an Asus
motherboards. I could hear noise when dragging the cursor. I
disabled the onboard sound and installed a PCI sound card and the
problem was solved. I've never experienced noise problems with PCI
cards in any system I've ever owned, only with onboard sound. As Ian
noted in an earlier post, the PCI cards are not affected like onboard
chips are.

I don't completely disagree. Here's my experience.....

My son is into recording music, bad non-music (Rap), but still sounds.
The PC originally had just an on-board sound. When his mic was used,
there was some really bad noise picked up, and subsequently passed onto
the recording. With the on-board, you could easily hear it plain as day.

So I installed a PCI card, a Creative Ensoniq card. This all but
eliminated the noise...to the human ear. But when using audio editing
software, a spectragraph of the audio showed that the noise was still
present, albeit not really audible (to me anyway, a 40 year old adult).

We then went to a digital USB interface. This completely eliminated the
noise in the recording. It was amazing. Silence recorded thru the mic now
sounded like silence between tracks of an audio CD. Same mic used in all
three instances, the only difference being the audio interface.

 

[Gary S. Terhune]

Sorry, I missed the external USB part. Started out too early this morning.
Thanks for the elucidation.

Mostly, I was surprised that the loudest sound I hear when I crank the
volume is that small battery-powered clock sitting six feet away. Not only
that, the machine and the woofer box are *under* a steel desk, away from the
clock. Weird.

 

[Gary S. Terhune]

Thank you, <s>.