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hard drive use noise coming through soundcard 8886

post #1 of 12
12/6/02 at 10:30pm
Thread Starter 
Am i the only one that notices that in the stock sound card, all hard drive activity causes a low rumbling/poppy sounding noise to come through the sound output? is there any way to fix this or is it just the proximity of all the electronics?

thanks,
chris
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post #2 of 12
12/6/02 at 10:36pm
Thread Starter 
well this has been brought down to a much more friendly level (though the white noise is pretty sad) by opening up the volume level device and turning on all myriad of hidden "inputs" that need to be muted. also installed some new drivers from the manufacturer's website
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post #3 of 12
12/6/02 at 11:09pm
Strange, I hadn't noticed it at all. Maybe your main hard drive is the Toshiba which makes noises when you access it? The Toshiba is known to make like clicking/clunking as it's being used.
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post #4 of 12
12/7/02 at 12:44am
Thread Starter 
yes, i believe it must be, because it's pretty unbelievabley loud just out the top of the machine through the keyboard. it sounds like it is grunting constantly.. is there any recource for getting it swapped with an ibm drive or am i stuck with it? of course, having not bought it through you i guess you can only really give a best guess.. oi vey..
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post #5 of 12
12/7/02 at 12:56am
Well, most people are not too bothered by the noise of the Toshiba. So, either you're more picky than the average (not knocking you, just trying to lay the case =) or it's not the drive making the noise. If it's something loud enough to hear over the phone, call the reseller you bought it from and let them hear it. If they can hear it across the phone, it's a problem for sure and they should jump to help you get something done.
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post #6 of 12
12/7/02 at 1:07am
They should jump, lol. :-) If only everyone had such high standards, lol, I just got off the phone with HP (my family desktop at home is an HP). Wow, they are wankerific. No better word for it. The button on the dvd-rom drive got stuck in, lol, and after like half an hour of convincing them that I know what I'm talking about and the drive needs to be fixed, they agreed to send someone (I have the at home warranty thing for 3 years). Blah. Well, they'd better replace it. All I can say.

As far as the hard drive noise, you say changing the input levels helped? You get this sound out of the speakers themselves? That's interesting to say the least. Like PCTorque said, lol, if you can hear it over the phone, something is up. But my hard drive in this lappy (not a sager) is that toshiba and it clickety clicks away unless you get Intel Application Accelerator and then open it up and set the hard drive to maximum performance (instead of power save, cuz the clicking happens when the hard drive shuts off its reader heads to save power). Let me know if you need more specifics! Good luck!
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post #7 of 12
12/7/02 at 6:29am
Thread Starter 
Torque: well i doubt you could hear it over the phone. the noise is kind of muted now that i've muted the multiple virtual "ins" into the soundcard system, but it's still there nonetheless.. however, it is quieter than the ridiculous cloud of whitenoise that is floating into my ears , so i won't worry about it. i'm spoiled by audio with very clean (and expensive :/) digital<-> analog converters etc etc, but this was never intended for pro use anyway so i can't say it is any more noisy than a regular SBlaster PCI for example...

beebster: i definitely want details about the technique you're talking about.. Intel Application Accelerator i'm unfamiliar with, and by opening it up do you mean as in a throttle or as in unscrewing i already went into the bios and turned off PIO mode.. what i find odd is i can't find a tab on the device manager to make sure that DMA mode is on on the drive.. the drive just has "optimize for performance" because apparently windows thinks it is a removable.. either that or i'm delerious and tired and missing something..
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post #8 of 12
12/7/02 at 6:47am
Thread Starter 
well for one, it doesn't think the primary drive is removable, but i know on my desktop system i had a setting in xp pro per disk to turn on or off DMA mode.. maybe i have really lost my mind.

i downloaded the Intel Application Accelerator. had to get 2.22 since they removed mobile chipset support in 2.23. I can't really tell any difference in sound. even on the quieter drives, can you still hear it working? it isn't really a shocking sound, and i guess i'm just not used to having a hard drive right up next to me instead of in a tower. i just have very sensitive hearing :/

and torque: when you talk about the techs being able to hear it through the phone, do you mean the noise coming out my headphones or the noise of the drive itself.. if i held a phone up to the drive, one might be able to hear it - but it would just sound like a hard drive working. you'll have to forgive me if i overreact, this is my first portable so i don't know what to expect. the ones i had used before had not been nearly this powerful, the drives not nearly as large, etc .

btw in case i didnt say it thanks for responding so quickly , this is one of the most useful and interesting forums i've ever run across for any piece of hardware i've ever gotten. you should see the cubase forum - hundreds of whiners and barely any content, the exact opposite of this site

i had the sager delivered to my dad's work since i was up at school all day and nobody was home. he works in tech services for the school district here and all the guys were wanting to know about the machine i got and how the Sager brand is. i'm going to show and tell next week and if they ask i'll give them this site to come ask questions on . sager is the sleeper hit of the industry

late and long winded again. this time nearly 4am..

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post #9 of 12
12/7/02 at 1:35pm
If I'm not mistaken, you can get the 2.23 because this is a desktop chipset in the sagers... But, the 2.22 will do nicely :-) When you installed it, did you open it and click on the primary channel (usually that's the one with the hard drive on it). The others should show you other drivers, your optical drive for example). Click on the hard drive channel in the left hand box, as in the one labeled master just beneath "Primary"). Then scroll down in the right hand box til you see "Advanced Power Management" and double click on it. Set it to Maximum Performance and then hit ok and close out of everything. If you already did that, then you're good to go as far as that is concerned.

In terms of sound, the soundcard in the lappy is one of the better ones that are internal to laptops... It has a 5.1 digital out... so you can hook it up to a nice set of speakers and amp and the like. If you have that, try it, and see if the noise comes out of there.... If it does, you may want to have your soundcard looked over. Does the sound come out of there when you are outside of windows?? If so, it is not a driver issue. I will have to think about it more to get any conclusions... Good luck!
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post #10 of 12
12/7/02 at 5:15pm
Thread Starter 
well, at first I did download 2.23 but upon running it, it reported that I wasn't using a supported chipset. Regardless, I just went and found that setting you were talking about so we will see what happens. It's really not so bad, nothing that I'd send it back over.

with regard to the soundcard, I'm not using the SPDIF output, just the analog at the moment with a pair of headphones. Digital output is probably much cleaner, but the analog output is extremely noisy. unfortunately i'm running my studio monitors and sub through a mackie analog mixer, i'll give it a try when i go to austin on my friend's yamaha digital. don't have any 5.1 setup around here, though if I had 3 more satellites, my sub has crossover ports for them.. hrm

I guarantee that the analog hiss would come out of any speakers you put it through, but that is not really comparable to what might come out of the digital out, which would not have a DAC. the DAC is really the source of the noise.

how do you mean when I'm "out of windows" ? like playing a cd with the audio dj controls? i'll give that a go. otherwise i don't have another OS on here yet. and i may not do any funky dual installs for a while.
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post #11 of 12
12/7/02 at 5:22pm
Thread Starter 
Ok i powered down and turn on the audio dj power to the soundcard. even before i hit play on the cd, i knew it was just the signal to noise ration in the DAC on the card. If you're using speakers it is not as obvious because the high frequencies diffuse a little bit before they come out, but if you turn up the volume all the way (and on your speakers/amp) you will be able to hear it. now this is not the hard drive activity noise i'm talking about anymore, simply white noise from the dirty dac.

1) plug a pair of headphones into the audio out on the sager
2) turn the volume all the way up so you get a good noise signal
3) select "mute all" on the main volume slider and notice the noise disappear, then when you unmute it listen as the DAC is stepped up in volume back to the regular noise level (zipper effect).

however it is no worse than any other consumer grade audio card that i've heard.

now to see if the hard drive works better without trying to conserve power, of which there is plenty in the wall!
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post #12 of 12
12/7/02 at 5:44pm
lol, well, yeah, my sound card on here gets hissy on high volume levels too... consider that it is crammed into the lappy on the mobo with all sorts of things around it to provide possible interference, which is minimized as best as possible in any setup, it just depends on the setup. You seem to know exactly what you're talking about with audio though, so I'm glad to hear that it's nothing abnormal in audio cards of that caliber.

By out of windows I meant while it's booting up (to determine if it's something electrical as opposed to software or soundcard related). But, using the audiodj would be the same thing except without the rest of the lappy on.

Let us know how the hard drive works out!
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