Q: I wonder if anyone has any advice on a small but annoying problem I have. I am running Cue Player to play sounds effects for stage productions at a theatre group in Warrington. Everything sounds fine through the PC’s internal speakers (though that may be because of the much lower audio volumes involved). However, I take a lead from the PC’s speaker socket into our audio mixer and feed it to the hall’s amplifier/speaker systems. When I do this I can hear what sounds very much like a scratching sound each time I move the mouse (touchpad), and at a volume that makes the whole setup unusable unless I have hotkeys for all operations, and even then it’s difficult to avoid using the mouse at all. Any ideas?
This happens with lots of systems, though it’s usually not noticeable on standard speaker setups. Because you’re amplifying the output it becomes more of a problem. It occurs due to the sound circuitry picking up interference from other components on the PC, this is a particular issue where the sound processor is onboard rather than on a separate card.
The solution is therefore to try a separate sound card, obviously because this is a laptop you’ll have to go for a USB option. This allows sound generation to take place outside the PC’s chassis which should eliminate the problem. You can pick up a USB sound card for £20 or so if you shop around, though it’s possible to spend much more on professional quality units. It’s worth checking what sort of inputs your amp accepts, if it has an optical or S/PDIF option getting a soundcard which supports this will get you a cleaner signal. You’ll need to disable your existing onboard sound via Device Manager to avoid carrying over the problem. It’s also worth going into Control Panel and disabling any sound channels that you’re not using, such as the CD Audio channel, as this will minimise the potential for picking up interference.
An external sound card may help avoid interference from other system devices
Originally featured in PCU121
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Great info, thanks for useful post. I am waiting for more