Feedback/Static Noise in headphones when in Unreal Editor

Development Programming & Scripting
21

I have a regular PC and it occurs for me as well, but again it is most likely the video card inside the pc creating static interference.

If you have a headphone jack on the back of your pc try using it instead of the one on the front, it works much better on mine.

22

I get this as well. I am on a 980

23

Hey guys,

I have made an official report for this UE-8073. Because this is hard to pin-point and because it is happening to a select group of people, we are still investigating the source of the error. The fix for this is currently on the roadmap, but as for a time frame we cannot say. We always appreciate your patience and reports regarding issues as it helps us improve our users experience within the Engine.

I will leave this post marked as unresolved for tracking purposes, and if any other users are experiencing this they can add their comments as well.

Update: After a long investigation and trying to determine if the cause of this is on our end, it seems this noise can is due to something called Coil noise. Coil noise is, as its name suggests, caused by electromagnetic coils. These coils, which may act as inductors or transformers, have a certain resonant frequency when coupled with the rest of the electric circuit, as well as a resonance at which it will tend to physically vibrate.

As the wire that makes up the coil passes a variable current, a varying magnetic field exists around the coil. Forces due to this magnetic field can cause vibration of the coil wires or the core of the coil. For some magnetic core materials, a (strong) varying field can cause vibration of the core due to magnetostriction. If the frequency of the current in the coil falls within the audible range, the resulting vibration may produce sounds audible at a distance from the coil, especially if magnified by a mechanical resonance in the components or in the equipment enclosure.

Coil noise can occur when the coil is poorly secured to the circuit board or is poorly damped. The effect is more pronounced as the signal passing through the coil increases in strength or nears the (mechanical) resonant frequency of the coil.

Link to on Public Issues Tracker : UE-8073

These two links should help define this in greater detail.

http://www.tomsguide.com/forum/61686-6-buzzing-noise-speakers-playing-games

Cheers,

24

I get this too. There is audible feedback ONLY when I click on the Unreal window. Iā€™m using a USB headset plugged into the front. Iā€™ve got a GTX 580.

I recorded it to show an example of it happening.

25

Hey daveSchoneveld,

I just checked the JIRA and this bug has been scheduled to be fixed in 4.8 release. We appreciate your patience with this and ask that if you have any further questions please let us know how we can help.

Cheers,

26

thanks for checking into it!

27

I hope this static problem is done soon my ears at bleeding

28

When is the 4.8 realese Iā€™m tired of that noise

29

Hi Andrew,

do you have any news about this?
If it is already fixed would you provide a git commit that fixes this?

Regards

30

Hey,
Iā€™m using 4.8 and there is no change. Will you fix this? It has been reported nearly a year agoā€¦

31

Which tutorial not all of them work like they use to

32

Thanks, Iā€™m using a 7.1 Soundsystem, itā€™s not that easy/cheap to get rid of the noise sound as it appears on 7 sattelite speakers parallel. Currently Iā€™m working without sound and hope your framework fix will help.

Regards
Kevin

33

I donā€™t know if this is the solution to everyoneā€™s problem, but I had bought a sound pack from the marketplace that was meant for an earlier version of unreal. I had the same crackling effect wen using the files. however, i used an audio converting program to convert the wavs to the normal 44.1khz stereo wav type and after importing it seems to have rid the crackling sound. Hope this helps some of you.

34

Hi guys, Iā€™m having the same, very loud static being picked up in EU4 only - not using headphone jack but EXTERNAL sound card! Itā€™s very annoying, especially because I built this PC to do the audio for our game.

UE4 version: 4.10.2
SoundCard: EXTERNAL Scarlett2i2 Focurite
Speakers: KRK Rokit5 (powered)

Other hardware:
Processor: i7 4790K ā–ŗ Amazon.com : i7 4790k
Liquid Cooler: H100i GTX Extreme Cooler ā–ŗ http://amzn.to/1LrTtrN
Motherboard: Z97S SLI KRAIT Edition ā–ŗ Amazon.com : sli krait edition
Graphics Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 Ti ā–ŗ http://amzn.to/1h4S0uc
RAM: HyperX Fury 16GB Kit ā–ŗ http://amzn.to/1I41MCw
SSD: Samsung 850 EVO 500 GB ā–ŗ http://amzn.to/1V1wEwN
Power Supply: Corsair HX750i ā–ŗ http://amzn.to/1fyVWlY

35

I am using a $650 firewire pro audio interface, with balanced lines going from the interface to the monitors. Still I get th einterference noise. Oddly, if I turn off my line mixer (which routes to the monitors) the noise is still thereā€¦ Very odd indeed.

36

Hey man,

Sorry to hear youā€™re having issues. Iā€™d expect an external card to mitigate the as the video posted before is definitely due to interference in the CPU/GPU and the audio card.

Have you made sure that the OS windows volume is low (ish) and that any audio driver software have their volume sliders turned down?

What happens when you launch UE4 with -nosound? -nosound should bypass initializing the audio engine in UE4.

What happens when you set audio to play in the background in the editor settings?

Do you hear static sounds when you play audio assets in the editor?

Do you hear any static noise kick in when you make a windows OS sound? And does the static noise stay on for a brief period after the sound? (To test a sound with the OS and your audio device, load your ā€œplayback devicesā€ control panel, then right-click on the audio device youā€™re using then click ā€œtestā€).

Can you post videos of this happening for you with the above suggestions? Our QA has not been able to reproduce the internally so itā€™s hard to know what exactly is happening.

37

So I was able to reproduce this on my machine if I crank the volume of my speakers to their max (cranking to 11) and I can hear faintly in my headphones the in the videos above.

With a repro in hand, I tried a few things to mitigate it and discovered itā€™s totally independent of the audio engine AND the OS volume level and entirely dependent on the Slate UI and renderer.

Running UE4 with no audio device (i.e. xaudio2 is not initialized) produces no difference. Interestingly, running UE4 with no audio device and the OS audio volume set to 0 also produces no difference.

However, interacting with the Slate UI widgets affects it (sliding sliders, pushing and selecting buttons, etc). Interestingly, the tone/noise that occurs is reproducible/consistent with the type of widget hovered-over or interacted with. For example, for me, moving my mouse over any of Transform UI of an actor produces a particular noise vs selecting something in the content browser.

Tabbing out also fixes it so the cause is something that is activated when UE4 is ā€œin-focusā€.

Iā€™ll create a JIRA for somebody from our UI/Slate team to look into the problem. In the mean time, turn down your actual speakers and turn up the OS volume.

I set my speaker outputs to about 50% and my OS output to:

77882-volume_slider.png

Though note that above I said that OS speaker volume isnā€™t the dependent variable, itā€™s the hardware speaker volume.

Note that I hear the start happening at about 95% of my max speaker volume output.

38

@MinusKelvin Thx for the input.
I was finally able to solve the today, and it was crazy: for some reason when the GPU is understress it uses the cables to the speakers/monitors almost as an antenna.
When replacing the cables with shielded 1/4 inch cables instead (shielded have a ā€œbandageā€ of copper around the entire wire to shield it from interference) the problem went away completely.
Any normal guitar / 1/4 inch cable will cause the interference to come back.

Really, really interesting. But in my case, itā€™s fixed now.

Hope this will help someone!

39

@MinusKelvin Thx for the input.
I was finally able to solve the today, and it was crazy: for some reason when the GPU is understress it uses the cables to the speakers/monitors almost as an antenna.
When replacing the cables with shielded 1/4 inch cables instead (shielded have a ā€œbandageā€ of copper around the entire wire to shield it from interference) the problem went away completely.
Any normal guitar / 1/4 inch cable will cause the interference to come back.

Really, really interesting. But in my case, itā€™s fixed now.

Hope this will help someone!

40

Whoops I spoke to soon. The coated cables take down the noise somewhat, but donā€™t completely solve it. Itā€™s still very audible and very annoying.

Also, turning down the speaker output volume makes absolutely no difference in my case. The static is consistent (Iā€™m using KRK Rokit 5 powered monitors).