Members Coaster Posted October 17, 2010 Members Share Posted October 17, 2010 for quite some time i have been hering a very odd sound when using my PC. for a month i thought it had nothing to do with the PC, but now i know it is the PC. the sound is below 1khz, maybe as low as 600hz, maybe 800hz. i'm not sure. its likely mostly a square wave/ sine wave type of sound and only lasts for 500-600ms. AND, here is the weird part. it ONLY HAPPENS when i load or reload web pages in web browsers. both firefox and IE. the sound is coming from the case itself, not from the audio system. i've never heard of anything like this. now that i have isolated the cause of the sound, its driving me crazy. when i thought it was a truck backing up a block away it didnt. any ideas? what the heck could cause a sound when the pages reload? windows explorer ("my computer" etc) does NOT cause this sound, only web browsers. HD? video card? government spy technology? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted October 17, 2010 Members Share Posted October 17, 2010 Are you sure it's not coming from the computer sound system? If not, is it possible it's coming from the simple sound generator on the mobo used for producing the infamous beep tones that can signal mis-seated memory, PCI cards and so forth? If it was coming from the computer's sound system or an attached USB or FW audio device, I would suspect video signal system contamination of the digital audio stream. That has happened a lot with FW sound systems where the host machine doesn't use Texas Instruments-chipped FW controllers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Coaster Posted October 17, 2010 Author Members Share Posted October 17, 2010 i have completely shut off my audio system; interface, power amp etc. think mac audio studio with a PC next to the mac. the PC doesnt have any built in audio, and the sound is a lot lower in pitch than the error beep (or maybe not, but its a totally different sound than an error beep. much smoother tone. without comparing the freq of the tones i guess i really cant say) i'm trying to think of a sound i can correlate this to...... its very hard to pinpoint the sound; for a month i thought it was coming from my right side (PC is on my left side). i have to position myself just right to hear it in both ears; i cant explain that (my hearing is good). but can effectively repeat the sound 100% of the time by using a back or forward button with known sound causing url's, loading almost every bookmarks i have (i found one url that doesnt cause the sound when loading the bookmark or using back/forward button). it may be a video card thing. i really dont know. i also realize how crazy this sounds. but please understand - this will drive me insane and dominate my freetime until i get this to STOP. this is not something i can live with. (i'm still thinking of another sound that is similar) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Coaster Posted October 17, 2010 Author Members Share Posted October 17, 2010 member in the late 70's early 80's how they had those one minute emergency broadcast tests "this is a test......boooooooooooooooooooooh) think of that sound, slightly lower in pitch and run through a 12d/oct LP filter set at 1k. thats as close as i can come up with at this point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Coaster Posted October 17, 2010 Author Members Share Posted October 17, 2010 without actually hearing the sound they are talking about, it sounds like this may be it: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1411899 they mention loading web pages as a cause as well. my card is an ATI 4560 i believe, might be a 4570. i'll have to check. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted October 17, 2010 Members Share Posted October 17, 2010 No, I don't think it sounds crazy. Although I suspect looking for the source might drive one crazy. Different thing. Obviously, anything that can be caused to mechanically vibrate or oscillate can produce some kind of noise and the fact that there is a simple audio generator on most mobos further complicates things. I wish I had more concrete suggestions. Hopefully someone who's got a better day-to-day familiarity with PC hardware problems will pop in here to help out... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Beck Posted October 17, 2010 Members Share Posted October 17, 2010 There are a few things it could be. A common one that drives people crazy is when the fan mounted to the CPU is starting to die. Fans speed up to cool the CPU when it's under more load. When it does you may notice the sound because it's about to die... bearings are going out. It's going to be worse if you have spyware taxing the system when loading web pages. I've seen this cause a few times. Spyware in combination with the resource hogging browsers like IE 7 and up, or Firefox. The fan speeds up for a second and you hear the grind. If the fan is new and whisper quiet you normally don't notice it speeding up and slowing down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Coaster Posted October 17, 2010 Author Members Share Posted October 17, 2010 could be cpu fan i gues, but its unlike any fan sound i have heard before. think about an old school bus with air brakes coming to a stop half a mile away. that 800hz tone with the harmonics wiped out, no attack, and smooth release. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jeff da Weasel Posted October 17, 2010 Members Share Posted October 17, 2010 Maybe it's singing to you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members TimOBrien Posted October 18, 2010 Members Share Posted October 18, 2010 Open up the case and look at the fans. Have a can of compressed air handy, there's probably dust bunnies in there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members nat whilk II Posted October 18, 2010 Members Share Posted October 18, 2010 Don't let it drive you crazy - it's just some oddball thing you haven't figured out yet. You may never figure it out, or you might. Related to loading web pages?? Logically that could only be what? Do you have a fan on your sound card? It could ramp up and down possibly..... There's a whole bunch of things that can rattle, hum, vibrate, and oscillate in PCs...and there are background processes with their own timers, agendas, triggers, and ways to get out of whack....if it just really bugs you and can't find it and you can't de-obsess, guess you'll have to just get a new computer. What I would do would be to worry about excess heat...so you might download or, if already installed, run something that monitors cpu heat...you might find a correlation there. But again, it's a machine - like our own bodies. After a certain number of years, some things just hurt or make noise or get cramped or otherwise act up in ways that can be alarming at first. I call my computer "BUZZ" because, well, that's what it does no matter how I try to silence it.... nat whilk ii Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Ernest Buckley Posted October 18, 2010 Members Share Posted October 18, 2010 for quite some time i have been hering a very odd sound when using my PC. for a month i thought it had nothing to do with the PC, but now i know it is the PC. any ideas? what the heck could cause a sound when the pages reload? windows explorer ("my computer" etc) does NOT cause this sound, only web browsers. You need a MAC. (Hopefully Blue had his morning coffee.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Coaster Posted October 18, 2010 Author Members Share Posted October 18, 2010 i have SEVEN macs; one sitting right next to the PC both on the same KVM. the mac is considerably noisier in general than the PC. i think the sound might be the hard drive; i shut everything else in the room off and just listened to the machine for a while last night. i was surprised to find that in addition to the 1khz or 800hx tone there is a substantial lower freq "uuuuuuuhhhhhhh" below the tone, maybe 120-200hz area. hard drive is a 40gb WD sata I that otherwise works fine but needs to be much bigger. i bought this computer this summer, maybe 6 weeks ago(?) and its been a great machine. its my first SATA machine so i had to rebuild my XP installer disc with slipstreamed sata drivers and service pack 3. when i say "loading web pages" i mean the sound follows the blue progress bar in the browser EXACTLY and only that progress bar. i have tried disc intensive operations like loading/playing GTA SA but that game doesnt make the sound except for the initial splash screen, then never again. that game is cpu intensive as well so i am surprised that no sound occurs. when i get some free time i may just have to open the case and listen. (going to be PITA or i would have already) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted October 18, 2010 Members Share Posted October 18, 2010 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Ernest Buckley Posted October 18, 2010 Members Share Posted October 18, 2010 LMAO... Blue thats hilarious. Where did you get that? Seriously, all kidding aside, my Apple G5 sounds like a concorde at takeoff at times. From what I`ve read online, this G5 is one of the earlier models and due to the HD placement, it tends to get a bit hot in there which in turn revs up the fan more than usual. This doesn`t sound like the OPs issue but I just wanted to be "fair". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jeff da Weasel Posted October 18, 2010 Members Share Posted October 18, 2010 My MacBook Pro is utterly silent. I have to be driving the CPU like a madman to get any fan noise at all out of this thing. My old G3, though, sounded like a leaf blower. I think I'm done forever with tower/desktop computers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted October 18, 2010 Members Share Posted October 18, 2010 And then there was the G4 Mirror Door. FWIW, I built a PC back around '99-2000, got a good mobo and cpu but low-balled the case and PS ($40 for both) and, well, it definitely wasn't quiet -- and after a couple years, the bearing in the fan started going out. When I finally replaced it with a thermo-controlled fan PS, I couldn't believe how much quieter it was. Then I got a Pentium M (Centrino) lappie and it was even quieter. Then I got the $344 refurbed Dell desktop I use today back in '96 -- the original plan was simply to use it to house some extra drives as a utility server -- but when I powered it up, left the room, came back, and didn't hear it going, I was pissed. Until I looked over at the monitor and saw the XP logo. For a moment I was dumbfounded. Then I leaned up close to it and heard the drives and some subtle fan noise. (It's god a huge heatsink, minimal video accel and D-shaped big holes in the side of the case. Sort of a perfect quiet storm, so to speak.) That said, if I'm watching a video while I'm rendering a video, I can get the fans to crank up. They're still not super loud -- but it's not exactly a fast machine by today's standards -- at least in terms of clock speed. That said, it typically feels sprightly and responsive because I keep it running pretty clean. Then again, that's important, as I tend to open things and leave them open so I can jump around. It's not uncommon for me to have two or three heavy lifting programs and maybe a bunch of browser windows (from a cuple of browsers) going. Right now, I'm listening to Rhapsody online, have 8 FF tabs open, Chrome, Dreamweaver, my bitmap editor, some folders, Ecco (the old outliner/organizer -- which I recently rediscovered, what a great program for the outline-oriented), Wordpad, and Notebook. That's pretty typical, although if I'm doing serious audio work, I'll close most everything down... even then, though, I'll often pop a movie up in Media Player Classic -- I'll admit it, even my own music bores me after a while when I'm working on it; it's one of the reasons I don't take clients -- the day I found myself browsing the 'net on a secondary machine while I was tracking overdubs for a pro bono client, I thought, this isn't any fun anymore.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted October 18, 2010 Members Share Posted October 18, 2010 My first advice is to open it up and blow the dust out max once a year. Since you rebuilt yours, It may be OK. If you reused the power supply though its possible the fans are dusty or are getting tired. For your sound it could be several things. Fans are #1. they dont have to be old to fail and can make all kinds of noises. hard drives can make noise before they fail. My last one was making all kinds of screwey sounds before it crashed. Hard drive mounting is a problem too. Drives can vibrate and make cases oscillate. A littel masking tape around the drive can deaden much of that noise where it touches the case. Boards like network and video usually have power transistors on them with heat sinks. They usually use a heat sink paste between the heat sink and transistor to dissipate heat. Over time this paste can evaporate and leave a gap between the two. When power is applied it can make for osscilation. Just tightening the screw for the transistors will usually fix it. In the past few months, My monitor would make noise when I visited web pahes that had alot of white background. White draws more power through the components creating more static etc. I simply opened the back, blew out all the dust and it was quiet again. Video cards draw more power too so a checkout cant hurt there either. Lastly, some older boards would have an on board speaker. Its usually a littel round black thing thats used for basic troubbleshooting. You usually dont hear them unless you're installing and OS and you're running low level boot disks and such. You can disable them through Bios in most cases. Some dial up modems have a mini speaker too. You may have a dial up modem in there even though you're using the network card to connect to the internet. Pulling the dial up card is a good way to go in any case. Saves resources if it isnt being used. Thats all I can think of. Fans #1 for noise followed by drives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Anderton Posted October 18, 2010 Members Share Posted October 18, 2010 You need a MAC. (Hopefully Blue had his morning coffee.) FWIW I was about to say it's probably the infamous Mac Whine problem discussed at length in the Mackie Onyx pro review, but then I saw it was a PC so that got ruled out. The first thing I'd say is to back up that 40GB hard drive as soon as possible if there's anything you want on it. Hard drives making is usually a precursor to imminent failure. That might not be the problem, but better safe than sorry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members dailymixdown Posted October 19, 2010 Members Share Posted October 19, 2010 My PC was whining... worse than my teenagers... so one day I brought her out to the garage.. and swept her off her feet with about 400PSi of air. No more whining. Power supply works harder for certain tasks.. if dirty will make more noise during those tasks My .02 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members CLun910 Posted October 20, 2010 Members Share Posted October 20, 2010 Don't know if this has any relevance, but have you tried doing some basic maintenance, updates, etc? Another thing I would try is go to the manufacturer and see if there are any updated drivers to load. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members mNels1010 Posted October 31, 2010 Members Share Posted October 31, 2010 Thanks CLun910. I wasn't having the exact problem, but I followed your advice and magically the problem was solved. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Coaster Posted October 31, 2010 Author Members Share Posted October 31, 2010 damn. the spam talks to the spam. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members nat whilk II Posted October 31, 2010 Members Share Posted October 31, 2010 damn. the spam talks to the spam. :lol: and you've written a good line for a song...rhymes, too. Well, close enough for the radio. nat whilk ii Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members shafinahmed Posted November 2, 2010 Members Share Posted November 2, 2010 The common features are mentioned every where by every one, free easy to download and install media player, opens all file types and formats, up scaled voice and visual quality, simple control panel, DTS sound support, and all the stuff we heard and read about.What am trying to do here is dig deeper, go to the core, you have read also that it supports DVDs and CDs and other formats, ill try to talk about this and explain it more.vlc player download Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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