First post, by Gahhhrrrlic
So this is here because I have a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz card in my legacy XP machine and have been working away for months making a homemade 5.1 surround system for it, so I can experience the Sensaura in all its greatness. Unfortunately the first time I plugged the speakers in, they started buzzing... loudly. Like really loudly.
No, it's not the speakers themselves. I have connected them to my laptop which has a Creative Audigy 2 ZS Notebook card in it. I put it to 5.1 mode, tinkered a bit and got very nice and clean sound going to all my speakers. This rules out mechanical or electrical problems with the speakers, or the amplifier boards that drive them. The problem must be either the card itself or the PC.
The PC is powered directly from the wall and I'm wondering if the AC cable could be causing the problem except that's 60 Hz and this sound is the 120 Hz variety. Even with the buzz, I was able to hear sound from all 5 speakers although there's no widget to check the channels like creative has so I don't know if the pinout for creative is compatible with the Santa Cruz. I have the ability to swap the channel positions on the pinout though so that's no big deal.
The speakers are powered from a big ass battery so there's no noise coming from that and I don't see how it could cause a ground loop either since batteries have no ripple.
One other thing is that my signal plugs are 4 pole but the card only supports 5.1 so it's likely 3 pole plugs (3 x 2 channels each). I'm not sure if the middle 2 rings are shorting or something.
I'm not sure where to start so I'm just mentioning everything. As I said, the speakers sound really good on my Creative enabled Laptop.