Annoying "whine,' when using headphones plugged into front panel. How do I get rid of it ?

[yeeyoh]

Hello,
Over the years I have heard a "whine," sound coming from my headphones when plugged into the front panel. The sound is hard to describe but I would say high pitched electronic 'noise' Over the years this has happened with different systems to varying degrees but it is particularly bad with my current setup. I have a magnetic, "ring," that came with a motherboard that is supposed to go around the cable that leads from the motherboard to the front panel, in the past that has helped but seems to be doing nothing at the moment. Just to clarify this is a HDaudio wire (that is already wrapped in some black plastic wrap) that leads to the front panel of the computer that has a headphone jack that you plug your headphones into. The larger the dynamic range of the headphones the more noticeable the noise. Just wondering if there was anything I could do to reduce it or eliminate it entirely.
Thanks ahead of time for any help of info

[✨Saint✨]

Update your sound drivers.
Disable all sound enhancements.

[Omega]

Just EM interference. Either the cable is poor or you have something generating a lot of EMI.

Using headphones with a higher impedance works around this issue.

A potential hacky fix would be the isolate the cable with some metalic tape or aluminium foil. If the issue continues afterwards the EMI originates from the board itself or maybe your build-in audio amplifier is bad.

[_I_]

use the rear io, get extension cables

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Many Cases come with very thin and unshielded wiring for the Front I/O

[yeeyoh]

Drivers are up to date, sound enhancements are off.
I would use the rear io with extension cables but then what would I do for the speakers ?
I'm not sure what more I could do to isolate the cable more I've already separated it from everything else in the case. It is wrapped but maybe wrapping it again electrical tape would help... I would be hesitant to use aluminium foil in case it was to rub up against anything else on the motherboard or some other electrical worry.
Thanks for the ideas.... maybe I will try dusting off the headphones I used to use and see if they work a bit better.

[_I_]

and grab the drivers from the mobo mfg site, never windows update

[Bad 💀 Motha]

You have to replace the front i/o yourself, or modify it with proper shielding.

This has been a problem in this industry, since forever.

Better off just if Gamers or people who give a crap about audio would stop using Onboard Audio to begin with. Use USB DAC. If you want the cheap route then buy an extension cable and plug your headphones into Motherboard Rear Audio Jack.

[_I_]

its kind of a perfect storm of problems
case not using shielded cables for front panel analog io
mobo putting sound chip and header on the bottom rear corner
psu right next to it, so it needs to route across all the power and usb and maybe near gpu

shielding the front panel audio cable would help alot
or if the mobo would move the header near the other front panel connectors would be much better, so then they dont need to run near other power to pick up interference

[Bad 💀 Motha]

It's called being cheap.

Case makers don't think people use it, so they do not care.
Back in the 90s with OEM systems; they always had shielding and a ferrite core on the internal audio cables.

I guess today, they figure if you cared enough, you'd buy something better with regards to audio.

Honestly over 20+ years it's never bothered my personal use because I use Sound Cards or USB DAC, not to mention I always have extra cables on hand since I tend to use Headphones that don't have a fixed cable, but require you plug one in, which they should all have honestly because that means if it gets pulled, yanked, caught on something the cable would simply release, not tear or break. I can see earbuds having a hard-wired cable, but large headphones; that doesn't make any sense to me.

[AmaiAmai]

If you don't want to use any of the other solutions, you can also use bluetooth or any other digital "conversion" to cut the noise down.

[Revelene]

No matter what you do, there will always be some sort of noise because of the internal cable. Audio cables are susceptible to interference, and putting them inside a metal box with hardware pulsating with electrical interference is not ideal. Just use the rear IO audio.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Reminds me of my first PC that was a self-build and not an OEM pre-build, back around 1994. My room was on the 3rd floor. I had cheap "computer speakers" for it. Long story short, the terrible build of such speakers allowed the cable that connects the left to the right speaker (since the right speaker has the controls and takes in the power for both speakers) to act as an antenna. At certain times of day you could hear a local AM radio station playing through the speakers. It was faint but if you had no audio playing through the speakers otherwise and you're sitting there trying to work, or read; OMG it was super annoying. And yes it would do this even when the speakers were powered off. When powered on the audio interference was slightly louder, go figure. Within a month I threw them things in the trash and went back to using an actual Stereo System. Something with grounding, shielding and 16AWG wiring. This was also nice because I could load up a game and have that audio come through the speakers, but then use the Stereo's CD Player to play my own music while game audio playing at same time.