Your equipment and environment, and yourself can alter the level of acceptable noise - What one person considers good (in the context of retro hardware) may be another person's unacceptable. People using speakers will have much less of an issue.

It would be interesting to get a sample of playback so I can compare the noise level to my own card - Of something common so the levels can be matched.

NeoG_ wrote on 2026-03-07, 01:09:

Your equipment and environment, and yourself can alter the level of acceptable noise - What one person considers good (in the context of retro hardware) may be another person's unacceptable. People using speakers will have much less of an issue.

It would be interesting to get a sample of playback so I can compare the noise level to my own card - Of something common so the levels can be matched.

I will try to make a recording - unless it's more sophisticated than just running a cable from SB16's speaker out into line in on my modern PC

In the same system I briefly had an Opti card which had just as much noise or maybe even more, SB Live which was better but still way worse than I expected and Audigy ZS 2 which is perfectly quiet

I tried both suggestions today. Unfortunately my headphone amp doesn't have RCA inputs like I thought, those are RCA outputs, and all other connections are digital inputs - so I can't try this approach, at least not with this device. Recording is also a bust, because when I connected the speaker out from SB16 into Line In on my modern motherboard, the noise levels were somehow filtered in a major way. I had to raise volume a lot compared to what I'd use when directly connecting the headphones, but the noise level was still like a 100 times lower and not bad at all. I could only hear it, when no other sounds were playing. SB16's line out had similar levels of noise when connected like this

It didn't make sense to record anything, as it's not representative of the sound card when it's used "normally", but maybe it is possible to add some intermediate device to filter most of the noise

Feallan wrote on 2026-03-11, 23:06:

I tried both suggestions today. Unfortunately my headphone amp doesn't have RCA inputs like I thought, those are RCA outputs, and all other connections are digital inputs - so I can't try this approach, at least not with this device. Recording is also a bust, because when I connected the speaker out from SB16 into Line In on my modern motherboard, the noise levels were somehow filtered in a major way. I had to raise volume a lot compared to what I'd use when directly connecting the headphones, but the noise level was still like a 100 times lower and not bad at all. I could only hear it, when no other sounds were playing. SB16's line out had similar levels of noise when connected like this

It didn't make sense to record anything, as it's not representative of the sound card when it's used "normally", but maybe it is possible to add some intermediate device to filter most of the noise

So you are using headphones plugged directly into the SB16 and adjusting the volume on the SB16 itself? I think that is the root cause as the card's background noise has no attenuation like it would if you were using an outboard amplifier/attenuator with the SB16 mixer settings maxed out

NeoG_ wrote on 2026-03-11, 23:27:

Feallan wrote on 2026-03-11, 23:06:

I tried both suggestions today. Unfortunately my headphone amp doesn't have RCA inputs like I thought, those are RCA outputs, and all other connections are digital inputs - so I can't try this approach, at least not with this device. Recording is also a bust, because when I connected the speaker out from SB16 into Line In on my modern motherboard, the noise levels were somehow filtered in a major way. I had to raise volume a lot compared to what I'd use when directly connecting the headphones, but the noise level was still like a 100 times lower and not bad at all. I could only hear it, when no other sounds were playing. SB16's line out had similar levels of noise when connected like this

It didn't make sense to record anything, as it's not representative of the sound card when it's used "normally", but maybe it is possible to add some intermediate device to filter most of the noise

So you are using headphones plugged directly into the SB16 and adjusting the volume on the SB16 itself? I think that is the root cause as the card's background noise has no attenuation like it would if you were using an outboard amplifier/attenuator with the SB16 mixer settings maxed out

Yes that's what I would do, if the noise level was bearable, at least for the time being. My build does have multiple sound cards, so it's not ideal, but I didn't do any research into audio mixers yet - or whatever kind of device I'd need to avoid having to re-plug the cable every time I switch to a different game. Maybe you could suggest something?