Speaker Crackling

[Septih]

Having problems with the new speakers (link) I bought back in April crackling a lot. They did a little before I moved house this week but now it's worse.

The speakers plug into the sub-woofer and they still crackle when the sub-woofer is not plugged into the PC. If the PC is turned off then the crackling stops which suggests that something in the PC is interfering with the speakers, though my housemate suggested that maybe it's the PC amplifying the interference from something else.

I've tried moving the wires away from the PC and it doesn't get any better. It still crackles when the PC is idle but it seems to get worse some times when in use. It is quite quiet when POSTing, but picks up when it gets to loading windows.

Any ideas? Is this a fault with the speakers or a PC component? Is there a way to track down the guilty part if it's in the PC or to protect the speakers from it?

The one thing I need to try when I get home is to plug the speakers into the PC directly so that they're powered through that and not the sub.

 

[DEATHMASTER]

Try them on a friend's pc to rule them out. Try different speakers on this same pc.

 

[Septih]

My old speakers had a similar problem on the same PC. I guess I can try plugging in the speaker system away from any computers at all as well as a friends.

 

[Septih]

I've moved a few things around and it seems the interference dies out when the 3.5 connector is moved away from the computer and increases substantially when moved close to the audio card. I can't detect a difference when moving around close to the PC so it could be anything in there that's causing it.

 

[DEATHMASTER]

Oh yes, I think I've had that problem once long ago too. Good to know it wasn't anything serious.