USB2.0 isolator

1741 Views 9 Replies 4 Participants Last post by bedog8, Oct 9, 2014

bedog8

Discussion Starter · Sep 25, 2014 (Edited)

Hey folks,

Looking for some recommendations,

I get a lot of noise from my PC bleeding through the sound card. Sounds like a have a wale pod living in my sound system. I have tested it every which way and with the PC off its dead quite no hums or static of any sort. Turn the PC on its back, not loud but I can hear it and it bugs me. I have turned off all the extra sound everything and done all the simple stuff turned off the onboard sound card at the mobo disabled the audio through HDMI and so on.

Oh before I forget I'm using a USB sound card with analog outs...

Be doing some home work and it appears my next step is a USB2.0 isolator to place between my PC and sound card. So my ask is do any of you use these today and what brand version type would be recommend? Im open to other options and ideas as well.

Thank you all in advance.

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soundman101

· #2 · Sep 25, 2014

If it only happens when the laptop is running on AC power and goes away when you are on laptop battery power,
look into a device called HUM X. Sorry I can't send a link because I haven't posted enough yet

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bedog8

Discussion Starter · #3 · Sep 25, 2014

Nope this is a full desktop not a laptop, but good idea thank you

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|Tch0rT|

· #4 · Sep 26, 2014

I've never used one and the only one I know of is the Schiit Wyrd.

http://schiit.com/products/wyrd-usb-decrapifier

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RTS100x5

· #5 · Sep 26, 2014

PC's often suffer from various forms of RF noise coming through the sound. I sometimes hear it when I have the volume all the way down and moving my mouse pointer creates a "phasing" sound... But as you said its very faint.... I finally got over it since I cannot hear it at all when listening to games,music or movies......

As for overall sound quality, I can only recommend highly a card like XONAR or CLARO HT that resample my media to 96khz and in the case of my media player - JRIVER - I can use VST plugins to enhance most of what I listen to - even outputting any source to 5.1 surround....

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bedog8

Discussion Starter · #6 · Sep 29, 2014

RTS100x5, I use Jriver with a xonar u7 sound card as well and the setup woks quite well, except for the bit of noise coming from the PC. I get that phasing sound as well some time it seem louder then others but I’m sure some of that is just me being picky. I did a bunch of reading and it seems that the issue is as you said PC’s suffer from a lot of RF noise and some other reading I did on the subject said that switching power supplies are known to cause these exact issues.

So the best thing I could do is get my sound card off of the PC power supply power. So here is what I was thinking, pickup a PCI-E USB 3.0 expansion card with the Molex connector on it to provide the 5 volts that is needed to power the sound card then pickup an external power supply like this one, http://www.coolerguys.com/840556087...nnelid=FROOG&gclid=CIHbjYzLhsECFaNj7AodlCgA_A .

This would get the sound card on a separate power source and isolate the USB traffic from the rest of the USB stuff (Keyboard mouse)

Thoughts?

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RTS100x5

· #7 · Sep 29, 2014

sounds like a perfect scenario for a ground loop hum... which I often run into istalling home AV stuff ... easily fixd with a ground lift adapter. as well you might just try a good headphone amp....

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bedog8

Discussion Starter · #8 · Sep 29, 2014

Ground loop hum… those are annoying. I had one in my system and had to run a dedicated ground to another earth ground separate from the house electrical system to eliminate it. Dad is and industrial electrician so I make no such changes with out consulting him first, don’t want to burn the house down or get someone zapped. Now there is a very slight hum but it come from the PC bleeding through the sound card, the hum goes away with the PC off. I was thinking if I could get off of PC power and see about lifting the ground. The power supply I was looking at was 2 prong no ground, but I have not picked the ONE I want yet

. At the worst I figure I will spend 30 dollars’ish and get no improvement at best the noise goes away so I’m going to give it a try and see how it goes. I will report back my finding good or bad.

Thank you for your throughts there helpfull

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bedog8

Discussion Starter · #9 · Oct 3, 2014

Just wanted the put in an update.

the parts are on order and will be here in about a week.

I will post my finding after it get them and everything is installed and running.

Thank you all

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bedog8

Discussion Starter · #10 · Oct 9, 2014

OK time for an update and to report my finding.
Sadly enough my original plan of adding a USB expansion card and drive its power from an external power supply did not work and for some reason made the audio sound terrible. Being the persistent individual I am I did not give up and started trying different configurations. The configuration that worked was to use the external power supply to drive all the PC fans (removing them from the PC power supply) then I did plug the new USB card into PC power and plugged the soundcard into the new USB card. This removed all the humming hissing chattering and phase noise from all the speakers but the subs, they still get the phase noise from moving the mouse but its very quite, I had to be right next to it to hear it. So this was not the shinning success that I was hoping for but it was a significant improvement, removed all but one noise and it exists on only one audio channel.

Oh also the PC is set to shut down on over heating to protect the PC if for some reason the fans stop running and the PC does not

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