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Sort of an EE/Physics question...


My soundcard produces crackling/popping noises whenever my new controller card accesses the HDD. So I was wondering, would a layer of aluminum foil (with paper to prevent shorts) between the two cards prevent this?

First off, are the cards as physically far apart as possible? inverse square law might do more than attempting shielding.

Yeah, I'm going to be experimenting with that, since the slot next to the sound card was the last available one. So I'll be rearranging cards tomorrow to see which ones interfere the least.

Chicken wire mesh or aluminium foil should do the trick. Just make sure that they don't short circuit anything vital, else you get a nice dead piece of kit.

Shielding won't help if the noise is being transmitted over the PCI bus.

Would that be a dodgy motherboard then or can this be simply a fucked up card?

Have you checked to see that IRQs aren't causing the interference?

A few years back I was having a similar problem with an audio card. I eventually had to purchase a prosumer level card to eliminate the issue.

I don't suspect my issue is the same as yours, but it's something else to look at.

Admiral Valdemar wrote:Would that be a dodgy motherboard then or can this be simply a fucked up card?

Could be either or both, or even a crappy power supply.


Getting some distance between the cards is the best bet, shielding with foil is very risky and not recommended. The foil has to be insulated from any possible contact, secured in place, and properly grounded. Doing all 3 is not exactly easy.