VitekST wrote:

The noise even changes little bit when I open some apps.

Sounds like "coil whine".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coil_noise

Not really much you can do about it, I think. Your Vibra16 is probably just better isolated for one reason or another. I guess you could get some kind of band-pass filter for your sound card output, but I don't recall ever reading about someone having such a setup.

To Jorpho:

To my knowledge, coil whine is produced by coils, when they physically resonate. This vibration can be heard as a sound, but isn't an electrical signal, thus it can't magically get to the line output. But feel free to correct me.

Does the noise seem to change when the computer is doing certain things?

I found my 386 with a SB Pro would do this... the noise would change as I moved the mouse around in windows 3.11, and when the hard disk was reading/writing.
Only way I managed to stop it was to swap to a different (not Creative) sound card.

I possess one of these green AWEs.
Have you checked the mixer (gain)? Muted Line in?
Even drivers (aweutil version).

Everywhere I read a popular advice --> keep the video card as far as you can from the sound card.

When mine did that to me, I immediately thought something went very wrong, then I just installed it in another machine. Ease !

To DonutKing:
It does change, the noise changes little bit when I open up Cakewalk. Not drastically though, I cannot distinguish differences between different tasks.
I was told, that the early SoundBlasters (including the SB Pro) had really poor noise level. But... I mean... SB AWE64 was a heck of a card back then, it is really weird that a higher end class card (AWE64) has awful noise level compared to lower end class card (Vibra16), which is practically noiseless.

To Frasco:
The overall volume is on max, otherwise it's quiet (obviously). But, the Vibra16 is noiseless at this level.

I muted every external input, Mic In, Line In, CD and PC Speaker. No change.
I am running Windows 95 with drivers for this OS, but aweutil.com in C:\Program Files\Creative\Ctsnd\ reports to be version 1.36.

Sounds like a similar problem to what I had... I referred to it as 'computer thinking' noise. I never really did get to the bottom of it.

This is the point where people start wrapping their sound card in tinfoil to eliminate the induced noise. 🙄

When I think of Creative's ISA cards, good signal quality isn't what comes to mind. 😀

swaaye wrote:

When I think of Creative's ISA cards, good signal quality isn't what comes to mind. 😀

I found a local Pro sound forum where the most important sound card advice was "Don't buy a Creative, avoid Creative"...and that included the PCI models 🤣

gdjacobs wrote:

This is the point where people start wrapping their sound card in tinfoil to eliminate the induced noise. 🙄

I did exactly that, guess what... it didn't help. 😁

So DonutKing nailed it. But why Vibra16 is so good ?

Sorry to open a new front, but my KL133-ML (Athlon 1,7Ghz) and its onboard sound are doing the
computer think noise while I move the mouse. So unusual! Any ideas ? Probably an Live/Audigy is the
right way, despite the backlash here 🤣 .

I tried the AC97 connector to no available, same thing.

To Frasco:

The onboard sound card isn't isolated from the rest of the system - some kind of signal does induce into the line output (probably PWM signal for the VRMs).
Yeah, Audigy should be fine.

VitekST wrote:

gdjacobs wrote:

This is the point where people start wrapping their sound card in tinfoil to eliminate the induced noise. 🙄

I did exactly that, guess what... it didn't help. 😁

What you're after is an EMI shield. Creative received so much love because of the X-Fi Titanium with
this feature, remember ?

Frasco wrote:

its onboard sound are doing the computer think noise while I move the mouse. So unusual! Any ideas ?

I had that specific problem once just because my mouse cord was too close to the speaker cable.

I had the same issue with my budget AWE64. Tried different slot placements, PSUs, CD drives and other stuff, but nothing worked. Switched to an Audician32 and the noise was gone.

These cards just have poor signal quality and there is very little you can do about it.

How are you listening to the output? Headphones?

What you're hearing is the noise on the power supply of the sound circuitry that is coupled to the output: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_supply_rejection_ratio

I had exactly the same problem with a Dell laptop a few years ago. Basically impossible to use with headphones. It would drive you crazy. So, I built a little adapter with a phono jack and plug and two 150 ohm resistors (each in series with the L and R signals). Completely eliminated all the noise and resulted in a perfectly clean sound.

Bad cap, maybe. Generally power supplies in a PC are good enough for digital uses in the PC but you need much more stable power for an analog audio signal. Could be that the caps on the card (or even on your motherboard) are still good enough to work, but aren't stabilizing the power enough, causing ripple or noise to get through. Been a long time since I've had a genuine Creative ISA card so I've long lost my "reference" as to how noisy they "should" be.

dosgamer is right about headphones and the reason for it is that headphones typically have about 10dB higher sensitivity than speakers. With lower sensitivity speakers you need more power for the same output, and not all noise in an audio system increases linearly with gain. It's often the case that the signal to noise ratio (SNR) improves with higher gain because the signal is getting amplified but the noise either is not, or by a lesser degree. He is simulating lower sensitivity speakers with the resistors, though he's also lowering damping factor, but that's not as big a deal as a lot of car audio guys think it is.

Edit to add: Another thing you can try is to make a custom EMI shield around the card. Get it as close to the card as possible without touching any components. Anchor it to the expansion slot bracket, and use rubber or plastic at the other end just to keep it from sagging down and touching the card or motherboard. If your card has a little hole in the corner then maybe you can use it as an anchor point. I can almost guarantee you that this will help, but I cannot guarantee you that it'll help by a lot. It could help a lot, or it could just barely help at all and not really be worth the effort (though if you have a little scrap metal around this shouldn't take that long to make, especially if your scrap metal is thin enough to bend easily without much in the way of tools).

To dosgamer:
Yes, I am listening on the output with my headphones.
I even tried using built-in speakers in my "monitor" (it's more of a TV than a monitor), and I still could hear some noise.
I went as far as plugging it in my Zoom H1 audio recorder, with the same result (I adjusted the gain properly).

But I will try the resistors though.

To kenrouholo:
Caps... logical possibility and to some extent I even though this might be the cause.
When I will get an access to LCR meter, I will troubleshoot further.

//EDIT:
As I said before, I tried wrapping it in aluminium foil. I glued it on a soft plastic with the size of the whole card, covered the card from both sides, no difference. I tried to ground the alu-foil to a ground of PSU, same result.

Sorry I missed that post. I literally just re-read the thread 2 more times before I saw it. D'oh.