Strange Buzzing sound? (Solved?)

[Mr.Brink]

I'm not sure if it just started or if I'm just now noticing it, but there's a persisting low buzzing sound. It goes away when I'm in a pause menu, but resumes when I go back into the game. Now that I've heard it, its driving me crazy. <Edit> On a whim I decided to try the rear ports for my head phones and now the buzzing seems to have stopped. Weird.

[Death Approaches]

it could be so many things from physical layout to your sound driver to literally anything, even just impedance mismatch (like plugging 16 ohm headphones into a line out jack not meant to drive such a load). It could even be an intentional sound you didn't know the game was making.

So first play a different game or some music and see if it's in that, too, or just Cy77.

If it's in both, are you using headphones? does the wire or the bluetooth dongle run beside your wireless mouse dongle? using a long audio cord next to your power cord for your speakers? Could there be a dirty jack with a weak ground connection, plug not inserted fully? etc. does the frequency of the buzzing change or stay even and constant?

when there's nothing playing you don't hear it, because of the way audio works. You probably can hear it during silence, you'd just have to increase the amplitude to blow-the-speakers volume.

Waveforms become sound at the voice coil converting the electrical signal into mechanical vibration, motion which moves air and makes what you perceive as sound. It's quite dumb and analog, it will convert whatever signal arrives without discretion.

Audio is "pushed" by a carrier wave to your DAC either at the soundcard or your BT headset, a frequency, that chops up this information to move it down a wire or transmission through the air. And along the way it can pick up all kinds of garbage, mostly RFI, emissions that work in a similar way in a similar range, that can couple to your audio signal. And then the analog signal is ripe for signal coupling as well, especially on unshielded wires.

There's no way for us to troubleshoot you remotely, but tell you what it could be and you'll have to solve it.

[Mr.Brink]

Originally posted by Death Approaches:

it could be so many things from physical layout to your sound driver to literally anything, even just impedance mismatch (like plugging 16 ohm headphones into a line out jack not meant to drive such a load). It could even be an intentional sound you didn't know the game was making.

So first play a different game or some music and see if it's in that, too, or just Cy77.

If it's in both, are you using headphones? does the wire or the bluetooth dongle run beside your wireless mouse dongle? using a long audio cord next to your power cord for your speakers? Could there be a dirty jack with a weak ground connection, plug not inserted fully? etc. does the frequency of the buzzing change or stay even and constant?

when there's nothing playing you don't hear it, because of the way audio works. You probably can hear it during silence, you'd just have to increase the amplitude to blow-the-speakers volume.

Waveforms become sound at the voice coil converting the electrical signal into mechanical vibration, motion which moves air and makes what you perceive as sound. It's quite dumb and analog, it will convert whatever signal arrives without discretion.

Audio is "pushed" by a carrier wave to your DAC either at the soundcard or your BT headset, a frequency, that chops up this information to move it down a wire or transmission through the air. And along the way it can pick up all kinds of garbage, mostly RFI, emissions that work in a similar way in a similar range, that can couple to your audio signal. And then the analog signal is ripe for signal coupling as well, especially on unshielded wires.

There's no way for us to troubleshoot you remotely, but tell you what it could be and you'll have to solve it.

Thanks for the post. I tired some some tests. First, I lowered every volume slider in Cyberpunk's audio menu one at a time to see if it was tied to a specific sound. What I found was that even if every category was lowered to 0 the buzzing remained. I tired this with Deep Rock Galactic and warframe, I noticed a similar sound on the right side of my head set which matches with my Cyber punk problem. Oddly, Tf2 did not have the same issue.

[Death Approaches]

Yep sounds like inductive signal coupling. That it changes where you can hear it, sometimes in balance, sometimes in one channel, but it's the same basic buzzzzzzzz.

bluetooth or wired headset? and if wired, is it 2-jack for combo mic/headphone or combo 4-wire plug? If it's wired USB, does it come with it's own USB driver or uses the system USB?

If it's regular 3.5mm plugs it's not like you can change the ports, and the crappy part is that if it's motherboard audio, that little twisted 3-wire connector has to run inside your chassis to the jacks, and again, anything can couple to it if it passes close enough.

Lots of people with window cases and LEDs discover this one, because crappy $1.00 Chinese LED control circuits are frankly notorious about just how bad their RFI is from their PWM control circuit, noisy garbage can radiate for a meter! Even full tower cases aren't THAT big anymore. You have to get creative with your internal case wiring if that's the case, but it's weird you didn't notice it til recently. (if that sounds like your case, just unplug the LED driver from the molex connector and see if you get blissful silence)

[Mr.Brink]

Originally posted by Death Approaches:

Yep sounds like inductive signal coupling. That it changes where you can hear it, sometimes in balance, sometimes in one channel, but it's the same basic buzzzzzzzz.

bluetooth or wired headset? and if wired, is it 2-jack for combo mic/headphone or combo 4-wire plug? If it's wired USB, does it come with it's own USB driver or uses the system USB?

If it's regular 3.5mm plugs it's not like you can change the ports, and the crappy part is that if it's motherboard audio, that little twisted 3-wire connector has to run inside your chassis to the jacks, and again, anything can couple to it if it passes close enough.

Lots of people with window cases and LEDs discover this one, because crappy $1.00 Chinese LED control circuits are frankly notorious about just how bad their RFI is from their PWM control circuit, noisy garbage can radiate for a meter! Even full tower cases aren't THAT big anymore. You have to get creative with your internal case wiring if that's the case, but it's weird you didn't notice it til recently. (if that sounds like your case, just unplug the LED driver from the molex connector and see if you get blissful silence)

I'm not very computer savvy, but I'll do my best here. Its a wired headset. There's an add on cable that makes them into a 2in1 jack. Would a wireless set bypass this issue all together? I had a friend build this pc so I could have them have a look at the innards.

[Death Approaches]

That's the ideal scenario, getting someone else to do it. But usually you can fix it just moving the wires; let's say for example you have a 6' cable to the headset and then the 2-to-1 adapter plugged in...

first just pop off the adapter and plug in the headphones part ignoring the mic for now, does it sound clean? Now plug in the mic. Still clean? Now plug in the adapter and both jacks, etc.

Just how the cord lays, does it cross the mouse wire or keyboard wires? (especialyl if either have LED lighting in them) etc. Moving the cable to the other side of the monitor, or adding a clip on the bottom of your desk to hold the wire away from the case as it goes up to your head, little things like that can be enough to give you peace.