Audio hissing, buzzing, buzzing, and other types of hearing defects can be irritating to say the least. It’s never a welcome experience to suddenly be disturbed by disturbing buzzing or screeching noises while you’re listening to music through your headphones (or, even worse, while you’re recording your own audio). However, there are several factors that cause the speaker to hiss. Older speakers were frequently affected by electromagnetic interference from cell phones in the early 2000s, but this problem has become exceptionally rare.
A source of hiss in your audio stream could be coming from faulty built-in amplifiers in your passive speaker system. In such cases, simply turning down the volume is a possible solution. If you have the volume set too high on the speakers themselves, you may hear a hissing sound when nothing is playing. So, before you get into troubleshooting a little further, try turning the volume down a few notches. In case your speakers are connected to an audio interface, such as the very popular Focusrite Scarlett, you may also want to avoid plugging the interface into a USB hub.
Hubs and docks can cause sound problems because they actively carry signals between devices, including their own power sources, which could introduce grounding issues or interference. Rather than running your audio interface through a docking station or USB hub, it’s best to give it its own dedicated connection on your PC to reduce hiss due to electromagnetic or ground loop interference. But this is more of a borderline case.
Lower it
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A simple solution is to start turning the sound down, as you could introduce noise or distortion by injecting too much sound. Noise is an additional signal that has found its place in your configuration. Distortion is the original signal altered to the detriment of your enjoyment.
If the sound pumped through your speakers is too loud, it can cause distortion in the mix. In some cases, your speakers may not be able to produce the volume you want, but correcting the distortion may be as simple as simply turning down one element of your setup. Before changing your input, try lowering the gain or volume of your speaker until the unpleasant sound is reduced or eliminated. If it’s still there after that, you’ll need to change the output volume of the input to give yourself enough overhead to increase the speaker volume.
Often hiss can be introduced into your speakers because you increase the volume of the background noise. This is low-level audio that exists due to the electrical nature of sending signals, but is not heard until the volume is increased. Understanding the limitations of your hardware will allow you to get the best results from your audio experiments. Once you have determined that it is not distortion that is causing the hiss, but rather introduced noise, you should then take a look at the ground loop section below.
You might need a ground loop isolator to fix the problem
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In many cases, speaker hiss is caused by ground loops. When ground loops occur, your speakers may emit unpleasant noises. In such cases, get an inexpensive ground loop isolator. Simply put, ground loops occur when a speaker and an audio source are connected to each other but grounded separately; This grounding difference can cause unwanted electrical noise. Plugging your speakers into a ground loop isolator can eliminate the ground loop path itself, which can correct the hiss.
This advice also applies if you use power strips. Plugging multiple pieces of hardware into the same power strip can also cause interference. In addition to purchasing a high-quality power strip or surge protector, plugging your speakers into their own dedicated wall outlet should immediately ground them. Once this is done, sound issues such as audio hiss should disappear. For those using wireless Bluetooth speakers, your strategy will be more about ensuring that the “air” is as clear of any disturbance as possible.
In rare cases, this may also involve changing the equalizer settings on your device. Of course, these troubleshooting methods can’t fix all types of audio disturbances from your speaker; Sometimes the problem is with the internal components or wiring of the speaker, which would require the use of a screwdriver. You generally shouldn’t have to do this to repair high-quality speakers, but even these can be affected by ground loops and signal problems.
