Howdy my hardware-savvy gerbil friends, I come to you with a weird issue that I can't seem to isolate.
I have a gaming headset from Sennheiser. Simple mic boom with split wire for mic/headphones line in. Nothing fancy. A few months ago it broke when the wire got caught in my chair wheel and I replaced it with the same model because I liked it and it wasn't expensive.
Well, now when I am actively in a game that uses the discreet graphics, my friends say that all they hear is me plus what sounds like a pair of hair clippers buzzing nearby. If I alt+tab out of a game, even if the game is still running, no buzzing. Normal desktop usage of Mumble with no GPU acceleration running and it will be clear. It's not Mumble, because other chat programs I use also do this.
I have found some google results that claim similar things that said they were resolved when the sound card was isolated (I guess in this case, it's a ground loop of some sort) but why would it only happen when a game is actively running vs when I'm on my desktop etc? Wouldn't that suggest the PSU has some say in the matter?
The other most prominent solution is to disable mic boost, but in scenario even with the max mic boost in mumble, I'm very quiet.
I'm going to try moving the xonar to another PCI slot. The only other idea I had was to make sure the plugs for the PC's power are receiving good power and everything is grounded. We had a lot of power fluctuations lately from storms and construction. If anyone has any other ideas I'd be appreciative. It's so bizarre to me that it only happens when I'm actually in the game (any game).