Speakers producing high pitch buzz in Ableton Live 8

[Soulution]

Hi I have a pair of KRK Rokit 6 monitors, as well as a standard 5.1 set of Logitech X-540 home surround sound speakers. Both speakers are connected to my external sound card so I can monitor my music from two different perspectives. But when I turn on my KRK monitors in Ableton, I receive a very audible buzz. This buzz only exists in the KRK monitors, not the Logitech speakers. The buzz is present when using the speakers outside of Ableton, however it is most obvious during use with Ableton.

Does anyone have any idea as to how to eliminate this sound?

System/gear:

Windows 7 professional 64 bit
Ableton Live 8

Intel i7 940 CPU
8GB RAM
2 KRK Rokit 6 connected with XLR to RCA cables
Novation Nio 2/4 sound card

[kleine]

Hello,

That´s quite hard to pinpoint, it might be more hardware than software related - does the buzz "change" when you
move the speakers? Does it change when you plug them into a different power plug?

best,
Christian

[dsu]

There are a number of reasons that noise could occur and figure out the source is not always easy. Some of the most common sources are:

- groundloops which cause a hum
- Radio frequency (RF) signals and you can hear static, beeps and things and sometimes voices
- Thermal noise.

There is lots of information on groundloop troubleshooting I googled it and came up with this reference http://www.jensen-transformers.com/an/ts_guide.pdf

Electric guitars are good examples of audio devices that are sensitive to RF sources. The pickup and cable looks like an antennas. You change your position in the room and the sound changes, gets louder or quieter. It is better our worse at different times of day.

Thermal noise is a hiss and this usually results from either a defect componet (bad capacitor for example on a circuit board) or a poor gain structure due to a very weak signal source or the signal is turned down at some point and your than trying to amplify it later to get the amplitue back.

Practically there are some things you can do.
1st I'd switch the cables and inputs between the Rokits and the Logitechs. Does the noise follow the speaker. If the noise is in the logitechs after the switch than you can look at the cables and your sound card.


If the noise follows the Rokits I'd try pluging them into another signal source like a CD player. Use completely different cables. If the noise is still in the Rokits I'd take them to a dealer to be checked out (or have a friend come by who likes this sort of problem).

Cables are frequently the weak link so you could try replacing the cables.

Hope this helps.
David

[Soulution]

Thanks for the advice guys, I will give it a try and share the results

[planet_b]

Did you find any solution for the buzzing yet? I've had this also on my laptop with Nio 2|4 as the audio interface, I can hear the computer's internal noises, like hard drive noises and buzzing when cpu is doing something intensively. I've come to the conclusion that it's grounding related issue, as the monitor speakers are grounded and with Nio's unbalanced RCA outputs it's not possible to get noise-free sound. I might be wrong thou! As already mentioned in previous replies, moving devices to different electricity sockets (everything in the same audio chain should be connected to same source) could be your best shot here.

This is not really related, but thought to share anyway:
Similar issue on my desktop PC with internal RME HDSP 9632 (pci card) with balanced XLR outputs. Hard drive noises and cpu "chatter" (high pitched constant buzz) could be heard through the speakers and headphones, this was reduced when Windows power profile was set to "portable/laptop" so it uses less power. RME support insisted it was grounding issue, but when everything was checked on that front (I rebuilt my PC completely), started looking for other solutions. This was completely solved by disabling "Intel C-state tech" from the BIOS's CPU features section. Unfortunately sometimes such issue can be really difficult to find!

[Soulution]

I haven't gotten around to testing it yet, tough i did try switching the rca connections, and that didn't help. i've used this same set up in another house with the same gear and i had the same problem. what really boggles me is the fact that the inexpensive logitech speakers don't pick up any interference, even when switching the rca outputs. i tried different usb cables, and different usb ports, but no solution yet.

i'll still have to try testing.