Crappy Onboard Sound

[Timmeh]

I have an MSI K7N2G motherboard (Nforce 2 chipset) which has onboard sound. According to reviews I've read, this is meant to be excellent. However, I'm finding the output to be very noisy, especially if there is no audio being played. I can hear a faint hissing in the background, and the pitch of this hissing changes if the computer is doing something (like getting a directory listing in explorer or something).

Does anybody else have this board? How do they find the sound? I'll probably end up putting my soundblaster back in it, but it seems a shame to do that as the sound on this board is meant to be so good.

 

[egale]

I think this is a problem common to a lot of current motherboards whether there is onboard sound or not. The frequencies are so high that a lot of noise is generated by the electronics. I have the same problem but with an audigy sound card. I was able to minimize it by muting cd in and line in as they weren't being used. Once I did that, the hissing went away under normal volume levels.

 

[Timmeh]

Wow, that's helped a lot, can't believe something so simple would be the solution. I've done as you've suggested and it's made a huge difference, thanks