Question / Help Buzzing - Even on a muted mic?

[Tidy]

Hi everybody,

I have a strange buzzing noise, and I have tried to fix it before - but to no avail. Please accept my apologies in advance as this is quite confusing to describe lol

Firstly here it is:

This is with the mic muted.

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My setup is kinda strange as I stream to both YouTube and Twitch. I stream to YouTube from my gaming machine which has the blue yeti plugged in - crystal clear mic sound.

I then set the listen to this device - and send it through the Avermedia HDMI. (along with stereo mix) - this works fine - no buzzing all sound is clear.

However, I have very little mic control as it all comes in as 1 feed - so I have tried sending the mic via a 3.5mm cable to various ports from my gaming machine - TO - the streaming machine (this allows me to set OBS to use my mic - which will give me more control over levels etc)

I have tried getting a jack cable to go from a spare headphone port to the line in on my streaming pc - I get this buzzing
I tried from the speaker on the blue yeti to the streaming pc line in - same buzzing
I tried from the speaker on the blue yeti to the streaming pc mic - same buzzing


Is it the cable - no :(

I tried taking the cable out of my streaming PC and putting into the mic port on my gaming PC - and recorded using audacity - No buzzing.


So to me, it has to be something on my streaming PC that's causing the buzzing.

#plottwist - If i plug the cable into my phones headphone jack...then into my streaming PC - No buzzing..WTF? lol

More Pointless Info

The electrics are the same for both the streaming and gaming machine. Its had a new motherboard, CPU and PSU - still the buzzing is there.

Even if i mute my mic - the buzzing is still there.

If i use my linein on the Avermedia - buzzing is there

This week i purchased a really cheap USB soundcard (as the internal one would give the same buzzing like the AVERMEDIA line in), which gives a speaker port, and a mic port - plugged into that - still buzzing.


What else can It be? Is there too much power going through the 3.5mm cable when its plugged into a PC? Is it the case?
Just to confirm, the mic when listened to through the HDMI port - is crystal clear.

I am at a total loss, so if you have any suggestions, please let me know :)



Thank you in advance :)

 

[Sapiens]

I had the same type of issue with onboard sound in my 2PC setup. My favored solution at this point is to run a TeamSpeak server and client on the encoding PC and connect to it from my gaming PC.

 

[FerretBomb]

Look up 'ground loop hum'. Almost definitely your problem.

 

[Tidy]

Thanks for replying guys,

Sapiens,would the team speak server give some sort of output that i could set as the mic in obs? In an ideal world I would like to be able to control my mic level from the streaming PC in OBS?

FerretBomb - I will do some investigating... but on the look of it - i need to contact my electricity supplier? (called electrcian and he said there is nothing he can do)

 

[Jack0r]

Ferret probably meant something like this:
http://www.ebay.com/bhp/rca-ground-loop-isolator

For Sapiens suggestion. You can mostly do whatever you want. I took the setup a bit further and not only send over my voice but also system sounds using the Teamspeak server method. To only get your voice over, the setup is pretty simple.
On your gaming pc, setup Teamspeak as usual, the server can run on either PC, just needs its default channel (you can tweak the quality though as you only use your local network). On the streaming PC you also setup Teamspeak but here we need one little extra program, either VB-Cable or VAC. This will be used as our Output/Playback device in Teamspeak.
In OBS you would then select this VB-Cable or VAC Line as your Microphone, and boom you are done.

 

[Tidy]

Ok, small update... after reading some stuff that FerretBomb mentioned. I have now a decent connection over 'semi' digital.

I am going from my gaming rig via Digital Out (optical) - when then passes to a DIGITAL (optical) to ANALOGUE converter - which then goes into my mic slot on my streaming rig.

No more buzzing.

Ideally would probably prefer to do away with the converter, but cant find a digital pci sound card thingy?

 

[Tidy]

Jack0r - thanks for the info dude :) I have had bad luck with any type of virtual audio cable with robotic noises lol