Comptroller
Offline
Edinburgh

I'm getting a constant high-pitched whine when running Protracker ST 2.1. I know a certain amount of background noise is inevitable, but this seems unusually loud; you can hear it over everything. There are also regular pops. 12khz or 50khz, the whine is always there.

I can hear it to a slightly lesser extent when using maxYMiser also. In Octalyser there's silence except when something plays - then the noise is immediately back (I guess there's some kind of cut-off).

I'm using an STe, TOS 1.06, taking sound direct from the phono sockets, and the DMA chip is not one of the 'bad' ones (if that makes any difference). I've been googling like crazy for 'ST noise reduction', 'audio problems', etc. but no dice. Can any of the Atari wisemen here help? Is this a problem that can be fixed, or is this just normal STe sound?

505
Offline
Germany

yes, STE audio output is noisy unfortunately. One weird but working option is to change the colours in Protracker (prefs menu) to dark/black. This reduced the noise in my setup earlier on. Apart from this you could also try the monitor output (you will need a special adapter cable for it), its less noisy in some cases. Also, models differ regarding audio out quality.

Comptroller
Offline
Edinburgh
505 wrote:

yes, STE audio output is noisy unfortunately. One weird but working option is to change the colours in Protracker (prefs menu) to dark/black. This reduced the noise in my setup earlier on. Apart from this you could also try the monitor output (you will need a special adapter cable for it), its less noisy in some cases. Also, models differ regarding audio out quality.

Cool, thanks for the advice. Unfortunately changing colours didn't make much difference, but I'll look into monitor output options smile

XyNo
Offline
Joliette, QC, Canada

woah didn't know that ! Will change my spacepig-like colors right now ! XD
Thanks 505 !

arfink
Offline
Minneapolis

Of course, as with any piece of electronic equipment, if you wanted to go really crazy you could do the following things to remove noise, but they're all overkill and might not work:

- Use a higher quality PSU to remove line noise from your DC power supply.
- Trace the audio route and add shielding to the circuits.

Of course, this amount of work is pretty crazy for the tiny gains you might actually see.

Theta_Frost
Offline
Milwaukee, WI

I have just swapped out the PSU on my 1040STe with a modern atx picoPSU.  I'll let you know if the sound is any better.  It would be really neat though to see a add on board that cleaned up the output and offered optional channel splits ala this.

http://www.atarimusic.net/atari-music-n … 8&t=13

Audio mods on the STe are really a tough nut though, YM and DMA + Microwire eeeeek

gwEm
Offline
London

Some STe computers are worse than others. Try turning the microwire master volume a little, that can sometimes help a surprising amount.

maxYMiser has commands to do that, or there's also a desk accessory.

gwEm
Offline
London

Channel splits are overrated wink

Comptroller
Offline
Edinburgh

Cheers for the microwire tip, I'll experiment with that.

Theta_Frost, I'll be interested to hear if that PSU swap makes a difference.

vitaflo
Offline
Minneapolis, MN

May not be worth much but my STe has zero whine, I need to turn up the volume on my speakers really high to hear anything and at such a level I'd blow my speakers if I played something out of the STe.

But your post made me think of something I always found different between my STe and others I've seen posted online.  My power supply has two large ferrite rings in it, both at the input of the power into the ST and at the exit of the power supply into the motherboard.  Most every other photo I've seen of the ST PSU online doesn't have these for some reason.  Since ferrite rings suppress high frequency noise, I'm wondering if this is why my ST is so quiet compared to yours (assuming yours doesn't have the same rings).  You can see a photo of mine here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vitaflo/3599671798/