Honking Noise from Speakers

[DHT11444]

Hello, I am having a sound problem on my computer. I have been getting an intermittent foghorn honking sound for a month or so. It makes the sound every four or five seconds and turning off the sounds stops it so it is coming through the speakers. My speakers were connected to the analog jack on the back of the computer which is on the motherboard, but since my video card (ATI HD 4350) has an HDMI Jack I hooked an HDMI cable to the sound card to my monitor which has built-in speakers. I still get the honking noise. I also get the noise when headphones are plugged into the analog jack on the front of the computer. When I disable the ATI HD 4350 sound controller I get sound only through the analog jacks and when I disable the Realtek sound controller on the motherboard I get sound only through the HDMI connected speakers. In both cases I still get the foghorn sound. I was thinking about replacing the ATI HD 4350 but I'm wondering if the problem is on the motherboard. Any suggestions?

 

[groundrat]

First things first…
Are there any RF sources or magnets near your computer? A transmitter (even a cell phone) near an unshielded speaker wire can induce voltage onto the wire and produce a honking sound.

Back in the day, certain audio effects, like reverb or echo, if left on could result in this kind of feedback (that’s what it is called). Disable any effects you may have turned on inside your audio control panel, just to eliminate that possibility.

Your GPU gets its audio from the motherboard so it will pass along anything that is coming from it. Disabling the GPUs output would cause all audio, even the honking to go away, from that device only.

For this next test to be definitive you need to remove the MB from your case and power it up on a non-conductive surface. Remove all components and inputs from the MB and turn it on with just CPU/fan, 1 memory sim and GPU attached. Is the sound there? If so it’s on the MB.

Add the components back on one by one and you should be able to determine where the sound is coming from.

Failing everything thing else: Do you have a little brother? There is a device on thinkgeek called an annoyatron. It’s the size of a quarter.

 

[DHT11444]

Thanks for the reply, I'll give your test a try.