How can I get rid of the horrible popping and crackling static noises on this new Predator PO3-640

JImmyJamz

Hi there,

I chose this computer for my school classroom to teach music recording and various other things, since it's like a powerhouse work station, and for the first time in my life, I've encountered an issue where the PC is full of bizarre static noises! How am I going to resolve these issues? I have spent two weeks working with 1 Steinberg Cubase, 2 Nvidia trying to resolve these issues unsuccessfully and I'm doing a million other things at school too.

Sincerely,

James

billsey

Also, look at the electrical noise around your environment. Are all the outlets properly grounded? Do you have power lines and data lines too close to each other?

GotBanned

It won't make a lot of difference, but could you tell us the exact model you have?

JImmyJamz

Hi there folks. I spent hours, actually 2 weeks, updating, removing, cleaning installing, nivdia drivers, updated Bios, running latency mon. There's a dang chirping sound.

Today I powered off and used a totally different power bar and outlet with a minimial setup, unplugging everything systematically, but nothing stopped the chirping, which is only audible if I turn on an audio channel in cubase, but even with audio channels turned off cubase shows the same singnal inccessantly chirping with an audio indicator. I'm really at wits end. I believe it is something in the hardward of the This

Here's a video: https://youtu.be/7dUnMpQs8Ek

[Edited to hide sensitive information]

JImmyJamz

Other points: I've tried another cheap pc in this classroom and works no issues! Tried my home PC and it works no issues! It's this PC!

JImmyJamz

I just got it the other year, so I wonder if it's still under some kind of warranty as well. This definitely isn't working and I'm wasting weeks now trying to teach music recording to my students at school. This is the powerhouse computer for my classroom though and the rest are old and cheap.

GotBanned

Latencymon didn't say something was wrong? Audio popping, hissing and cracking can be real pain in the derriere to solve, as you have already noticed. Often they are caused by some grounding issue, bad cable or bad connection.

Your "little friend" is so constant and even in frequency - almost like a fan was causing some interference. If the CPU or GPU does something strenuous in the background, does the sound change in pitch or frequency?

I fear that the sound is caused by the PSU, thou. I have zero confidence in these PSUs ACER uses in some of their models. They seem to pop and even sparkle(!) at times.

On your video, where is sound coming from? Active speaker? Does the sound manifest in headphones (headphone jack or USB)? If you use HDMI, does the monitor/TV speakers have this annoying sound as well?

Sorry to be of no real help.

JImmyJamz

Yes it does. It says Nvidia Drivers are messed up. I have trying removing and clean reinstalling numerous times without luck. But there are times that Latency Mon shows everything is fine, and the "Chirping" noise will start cut in again. Something about this computer just is defective I'd say. Yeah sure, I could yank it apart and put in a new graphics card to see if that works. But man, i'm just getting overwhelmed. I watching life go by while I should have been teaching students so much. How much school time can I waste on this dumb thing?

JImmyJamz

My question is what is most likely the culprit on the hardware: Motherboard or Graphics card?

GotBanned

If the culprit is the GPU, the only way to be sure is to try another GPU and see if the noise goes away. It'd be best if you can borrow one for free, but if the PC is meant for making music (no video or photo editing, no gaming), then almost any cheap passively cooled GPU from Intel, AMD or nVidia will do. Just be certain it fits inside of the tiny box.

If the noise is caused by the PSU, you are pretty much out of luck. The PSU Acer uses (ATX12Vo) is not common and really hard to find. Furthermore, their motherboards are way too expensive for what they are, if you can even find one. In that case the best and easiest thing to do is to return the PC and build a proper dedicated PC by yourself.

You could try changing CPU power states and see if they make any difference. I'll add one pic of what I have on my PC just for reference.

Good luck!

JImmyJamz

Hi there and thanks. Are you suggesting I should bring back that minimum cpu setting to 5%?

I just plugged in a different audio interface, a focusrite 18i and it seems to be performing better.

Also observed that funny noise I was recording earlier, was probably the computer doing the "latency mon" scan. Latency Mon still show like it's not ideal for recording, but I'm not hearing the drop outs and click before when i was using a smaller steinberg ur22

latencymonupdate.txt

GotBanned

Hello!

The pic is there just to help you find the settings I was talking about. In some cases not running at High Performance mode can cause performance issues, but that's naturally mostly gaming related. On a desktop I turn off all power savers etc, because they can cause lag and unresposiveness. For example, I don't want Windows to turn off my hard drive, LAN card no matter what happens.

Since you have tried so many things already, I though that maybe some CPU power management setting/power throttling was causing your problems.

Do you have a HDD in your PC? If you do, unplug the power cord… and hope for the best?

I really hope can use the PC the way you want to. Keep us posted if you find something.

JImmyJamz

Anyways, guys is there anything in BIOS we can disable??