I own a pair of speakers which are powered by USB. I’ve had them plugged into my computer for a long while, but whenever I turned up the volume, I’d hear a high-pitched squealing sound from them which would fluctuate in pitch. For the longest while, I thought this was just an issue with the AUX cable, perhaps something relating to my GPU’s coil whine.

Recently, though, I more or less completely rebuilt my PC minus 1 of the hard drives, which I’m still using now. I noticed that the speakers were still squealing even with the new motherboard, PSU and GPU.

A couple posts I found online indicated that the problem was likely due to an under insulated AUX cable receiving interference from EMF waves.

Despite that, for whatever reason, I decided I’d try to plug the speaker’s power cable into the USB port on my power outlet. The squealing completely stopped! I’m not sure if there is a difference with the power delivered by computers USB ports vs the outlet (Please do let me know if there is!), but the issue has completely resolved itself.

Not sure if this is really the best place to post this, but I just really wanted to tell someone. I’m quite content!

  • @DNAmaster10OP
    link
    21 year ago

    May I ask, what exactly is a shared ground connection? I’ve not heard that term before.

    • ma11en
      link
      fedilink
      English
      11 year ago

      Electrical grounding shared between devices.