Can you share a recording of the noise? Does it repeat identically across the different outputs and over headphones?

When you say "through" the sound card, are you talking about sound coming through the speakers / headphones? Or coming from physical components on the card itself?

Assuming it's the former, this sounds like ground loop interference. Basically noise gets transmitted through the ground connections and translated into audible interference.

I've noticed my own Vortex2 cards (pair of Diamond M300's) also have this issue. It's super noticeable under Windows, but they do pick up some system noise.

Unfortunately this sort of problem can be very difficult to deal with. There are ground loop isolators available for audio connections, but my own experience using them hasn't been great.

Thanks for the replies everybody.

Here is a recording of the sound:

It seems to be coming 90% out of the right side of the headphones. I've also tried both 'Output 2' (headphone output) and 'Output 1' but it's the same result.

I'm also using 250 Ohm headphones which are a bit difficult to drive I think but the volume is more than enough (too loud) so I don't think that's a problem?

EDIT: I just tried a ground loop isolator and also a headphone amplifier but it didn't help at all.

This may not be the video card's fault. If the noise only or mainly happens when the PC is driven hard, there may be a link with power delivery (maybe even the PSU itself), for example. You could test that with something that loads only the CPU, like Prime95, while listening to an audio player application.

Are using an audio jack directly on the back of the card or something driven by the front panel header on the card ? If it is the latter, maybe the noise is being picked up by the wiring to the front panel connectors ?

You could try digital ( S/PDIF ) output into an external DAC as a last resort.
Info on the Diamond Monster Sound MX300

Thanks again for the reply. I’ll check out the information in the thread you linked but I also tried my Audigy 2 ZS and it had no problems at all.

I’m not sure if the Vortex is defective (probably not?) or just a lot more sensitive maybe.

I’ll also check the situation while running Prime95, etc.

Oh, I’m also using the connections on the card itself and not the front panel

sofakng wrote on 2024-02-24, 19:50:

I’m not sure if the Vortex is defective (probably not?) or just a lot more sensitive maybe.

My experience is they are just more sensitive.

This is true of sound cards in general. Some are virtually silent when it comes to unwanted noise/ground loops. Other cards are more prone to it.

One way to confirm the issue is to run the system off a battery bank (e.g. not plugged in to the wall). If the noise disappears it is a grounding issue. In my experience there aren't great solutions for that.

Unfortunately I don’t have a UPS battery or anything readily available.

I was mostly hoping to check out A3D 2.0 which is why I picked up the Vortex. Most of my equipment is in storage (including UPS batteries) so for now I’ll just have to use the Audigy (w/EAX) it seems.

Thanks for the help though and if anybody has any other ideas please let me know.

Just another quick update from further testing...

The A3D demos at first sounded fine, but I noticed that when it had more than one object in the scene it started to introduce the problem (only in the right channel).

For example, the 'A3D 2.0 Player' lets you select a 'Blue Source' and a 'Red Source' so I selected [Bee.wav]. When I click [Play] on the Blue Source it sounds perfect and I can move it around the scene, etc. However, when I click [Play] on the Red Source it starts to introduce the noise problem.

I also tried playing Half-Life and disabled [A3D hardware support] and the audio sounds perfect. However, once it's enabled it introduces the problem.

I wish I had another machine to test the card but I'm now wondering if perhaps the card is in fact defective?