Distance between audio devices and desktop PC any relevant?

[Nobunaga]

HeyI

recently watched this video here from Paul McGowan, ceo of PS Audio, i generally believe what he says in his videos and appreciate his knowledge and experience.

He mentions that PCs are very noisy and audio signal shouldn't be processed in such a hostile environment, and that I can be avoided by cleaning or isolating the USB signal or positioning the DAC far away from the computer.

But if I understood him correctly, to either put the DAC far away from the computer or using a USB isolator/regenerator, basically that either things would be a solution. But it doesn't make sense to me how putting the DAC far away from the PC would take care of noise within the computer, by doing that you would only take care of external noise like fan noise.

As far as I know an isolator wouldn't isolate the DAC from an external source of noise, only noise that travels with the digital signal to the DAC.

The reason I am interested in this is that my PC is very noisy at the moment, my GPU fan is running at 90% to keep the GPU from getting too hot. And that's quite a bit of noise. The rest of the PC is fairly quiet, doesn't make any electrical noise even under load, my mechanical hard drives are just for storage and therefore never in use.

I was wondering does it have any importance where I place my audio gear? I have a Khadas tone board, an Alldaq USB galvanic isolator and a tube headphone amp. If I would place my isolator at a distance of 40 cm and my dac 60 cm away from the rear side of my computer would that make any difference compared to 80 cm and 100 cm respectively?

Maybe someone can enlighten me

 

[daftcombo]

You can try and check if you hear a difference.
Perhaps in some positions you would get some faint high pitch noise.
I wouldn't care too much.

 

[Webninja]

I have my mac mini on top of my DAC. I figured that a short USB is the way to go. When I had my tube amp, it was much more sensitive to positioning, but I have a feeling it had a grounding issue.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Noise from a PC could get into other electronics via radiated EMI/RFI which can go thru the air like radio signals. If the distant electronics pick this up, then you can get noise. Moving it further away reduces the signal strength of the interference. The same noise can go via wired connections like ground planes or power supply wires. Distance from the PC makes no difference in this form of noise interference.

If you don't hear anything, or no computer activity like mouse or hard drive noises make it through, you probably have nothing to worry about. USB isolators sometimes work, mostly don't with good DACs and sometimes add low level power supply noise.

Tube based gear can be much more susceptible to picking up noise that is radiated. Just to be on the safe side I'd put it as distant as reasonably possible.

The air noise like fans or hard drives aren't going to cause any problems I don't think. Though if your computer is running that hard it probably is throwing out maximum RFI.

 

[BillG]

Maybe someone can enlighten me

Yeah, he's full of crap: Unless your DAC is very poorly designed, none of what he might suggest is necessary.

Paul isn't thought of very highly around here, by the way...

 

[Nobunaga]

I have my mac mini on top of my DAC. I figured that a short USB is the way to go. When I had my tube amp, it was much more sensitive to positioning, but I have a feeling it had a grounding issue.

Well a battery powered laptop is pretty much the best source for audio, the isolation from the battery trumps anything that plugs in to the wall.

But ye, i also believe in shortest signal path is the best.

Do you hear a difference?

 

[Nobunaga]

Yeah, he's full of crap: Unless your DAC is very poorly designed, none of what he might suggest is necessary.

Paul isn't thought of very highly around here, by the way...

Well i bought my usb isolator to get rid of ground loop but it also has reclocking. It did clean the signal, much cleaner sound now.

It's not a hifi device tho, it's primarly intended for medical and industrial use, also for measuring equipment.
No false promises of divine sound like hifi companies do.

But ye it's situational

 

[M00ndancer]

If you have an external DAC connected with USB, you might run into problems with grounding/humming from the USB port. You have already solved that. Moving the audio equipment will never change the sound, except that moving the audio equipment and listening position away from the computer helps... (Less noise pollution from the PC)

 

[JohnYang1997]

Both external and internal can have issues. Ground loop, usb packet noise, interference etc. All can happen with either. Just don't listen to paul. Solve when you face an issue. Don't let them complicate things for you.

 

[M00ndancer]

Both external and internal can have issues. Ground loop, usb packet noise, interference etc. All can happen with either. Just don't listen to paul. Solve when you face an issue. Don't let them complicate things for you.

Great answer @JohnYang1997
I forgot to ask @Nobunaga , do you experience problems? Did you have a humming ground loop, noise or was it just your noisy computer?