Hi, i recentley bought a new set of headphones, the Razer Barracuda HP-1 Gaming Headphones, now they are good and do sound a lot better than my old headphones, but the thing is when i turn the volume up to high i start to hear a crackling/buzzing noise, now this doesn't really bother me that much because when i listen to music, or play a game, the sound of the music/game drowns out the buzzing noise.

Also i havn't tried them out with that many games, but when i play multiplayer source games, so cs:source for example, if the sound is turned up to high on them menu you can just hear a constand beeping noise, now once again the ingame sound basically drowns this out but i dont think that this should be happening anyway.

I am using on-board sound, i have an ASUS P5B Deluxe MotherBoard, do you think that this might be the problem, the fact that im using on-board sound, i was thinking of getting a sound-card a while ago and if getting a sound card also solved this problem i would probably definatley get one.

So i really don't know if the headphones are faulty or not, because in the end they do sound a lot better than my old headphones but i dont think they should be doing stuff like that when turned up too high, anyway thanks for your help and cya.

Dave

[eirejam]

plug the headphones into your mp3 player and see if you are getting a crackle/buzz. You probably won't.

You can get headphones now with built in sound card that work very well.
Sennheiser make a pair called pc166's. They have a usb adaptor which has a sound card built into it. That is the cheapest option.

Check around, other manufacturers probably make similar units.

Well thanks for the reply, but from what i have said do you think that the headphones are faulty or because of the fact that im using on-board sound?

Dave

[StevieDvd]

Can you try the same with a set of speakers? if it's the onboard then the speakers would get the same interference.

It's hard to say which is more likely in your case as it could be either the headphones or the PC.

On my Shuttle the usb interface was particularly noisy even with decent add on soundcards - so much so I now use the optical out to lose any PC related interference.

If it is the headphones rattling or loose inside then any device such as an mp3 player or radio should bring this out at higher volumes.

[Reano]

If PC related it can be a noisy power supply (as in interference) there is sometimes an option on the initial setup screen to reduce this interference something like spectrum spread it will be called and yes the onboard sound is usually more noisy than third party sound cards and not as good quality. Go for the top cards from creative, terratec, M-Audio, E-MU (also creative) and the like as these are used to play and record music in a lot of studio's.