On Mon, 2005-20-06 at 14:21 -0400, Adrian Irving-Beer wrote: > On Mon, Jun 20, 2005 at 01:34:58PM -0400, William Case wrote: > > > If I turn my speakers on I get horrible squawking and static that > > seems to shadow all my keystrokes etc. > > This sounds like my laptop. The cause (in my case, as far as I can > tell) is a cheap (onboard) sound card plus general interference from > the various laptop components, all of which have their own EM fields, > share a common ground element, etc. > > In particular, the AC adaptor provides a ton of noise (besides getting > very hot); if I put my ear to the adaptor, I actually get the same > buzzing and tweeting that I get from the soundcard. > > Similarly, if I touch a stereo jack with the laptop running on my lap, > I become a giant antenna for the EM from the laptop as a whole, and > buzzing ensues. The buzzing is much less without the laptop present. > > In a PC, this interference should naturally be less, because stuff > isn't packed so close together. An onboard soundcard will have some > noise, though. How loud is this noise you report? Is it background > noise (relatively speaking), or very loud? > > In your case, I would check the connectors. Make sure they're pushed > in *all* the way. I've seen connectors that don't *look* unplugged > but are making that same kind of noise; giving them a little extra > push locks them deep in place and stops the noise. You may also have your gain turned up far too high on the primary mixer. This will result in ambient electronic noise being amplified before it gets to the output amplifier (depending on the arch of the sound setup of course) which is why most audio is done at line level out and then amplified later on in the process outside the computer (inside the speakers typically for computers). Check your mixer and try turning down the various settings and using an external amplifier. If the defaults are set too high you could see the behaviour you are having. I hope that helps.