SPDIF white noise problem

[leigh]

Hi,
i have my HTPC connected directly from the onboard sound to my amp (5.1) via spdif.
the centre speaker gets a buzzing digital sounding noise coming through it, like white noise. it tends to change from bad to ok when scrolling through menus (i.e. the degree of the noise changes sometimes when scrolling)
has anyone had this problem? i have looked through ac3 filters settings to see if there is some kind of filter in there but there isnt or i cant find it.
it defintely has something to do with the spdif connection, as listening to radio through the amp has no problem whatsoever.

any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

[doylejul]

This is purely a guess, but if you get noise when you are scrolling through menus, it is quite possible that there is some interference/noise being generated on your motherboard which is affecting your onboard audio chipset.
It is unusual to experience it over a digital connection however.
I used to have terrible trouble with noise during scrolling etc from my onboard realtek chipset on my gaming PC, so I ended up buying an X-Fi Gamer card and the audio is now crystal clear. I prob wouldn't recommend splashing out on an X-Fi card for a Media Centre (I have my own audio problems on my Media PC which I am still working through) but you can get a PCI card that should work for about $50 eg a Aopen AO63060
COBRA AW-870LP 7.1 and use the drivers developed at http://code.google.com/p/cmediadrivers/

Again, just a hypothesis.

[leigh]

thanks for the info. i get the sound problems even when live tv is on.

it is quite hard to explain, sometimes its there then sometimes it isnt,
other times when clicking the mouse and opening new windows (on the desktop) can make the frequency of the noise change.

90% of the time it is bearable, the other its quite an annoying noise, and can sometimes be heard over the sound of the tv or movie.

reading this back im not sure i have explained it very well. i think im going to try a better cable and see where that gets me