Hey guys, I just got this same issue, but I have no DAC, just a newly purchased sp200.
Let me paste this that I wrote in another topic to make it easier.
My mobo is a rog strix z370-f. Are there any tricks to look for the grounding issue in the PC? I'm asking because I'm waiting for a DAC to come from drop, but it'll be another month until they ship it. I already know the solution will to use them to the same ground (likely in a different wall socket, the same for both, and a toslink cable from my onboard sound card). But in the meantime, I'd like to be able to use the sp200 connected directly to my onboard sound card without all this static.
This was my reply in the sp200 topic looking for advice when I thought my unit was defective.
Hey Guys,
I'm new in the forum and this is my first post. I've had sennheiser hd650 and fiio e9 headphone amp for 8 years, and after reading a lot and checking the new tech from 2019, I decided to pull the trigger to hopefully have a new AMP (and a topping d50s that should arrive next month from drop), for another 10 years.
My setup is pretty simple, I never had a DAC before, so the sound comes directly from my monitor, or my sound card P2 output.
Usually goes from monitor P2 headphone output to FIIO RCA in. (I use a p2 to RCA stereo standard cable). And the HD650 connected to the FIIO. My monitor gets the sound from PC via the displayport cable.
It always worked like that, and I never had any issues before.
So, my boss came back from the US today and brought the SP200 I bought from amazon. And this is where the nightmare story begins:
I never expected to have any issues, so what I did as soon as I got home, was simply plug in the sp200, and move the RCA cables from the Fiio to the sp200. As soon as I turned it on, I could hear a lot of noises/static.
That bothered me a lot, and the first thing I thought, is that it could be the HD650 cable. I had a spare one, replaced it, and the noise/static was the same. Just to make sure, I got the RCA cables back to the Fiio, and it was clear of static.
The next thing I thought, was the P2 > RCA cable, so I ran to the closest store, got a new cable, plugged it in, same thing, static/noise.
I was getting really frustrated with that.
So, next step, would be to try to eliminate the noise from the monitor, so I plugged the P2 directly in my sound card output > sp200. Still a lot of noise/static. Tried the new cable, still static.
Now, It was time to try something different. I brought the SP200, and instead, connected it to the p2 of my wife's iMac and hd650 still connected to the sp200. Now, surprisingly, the noise was pretty much gone. When I had high gain setting, I could hear some kind of low tone, so I started thinking my unit was defective or there was some noise coming from the AC/PSU/Power outlet it was connected to?
Then, I wsa pretty much hopeless, and connected it to my macbook pro. WOW, no noise, perfect sound, as clean as the angels singing.
This made me really puzzled, 3 different inputs, one perfect, one with horrible noise, the other one with a low tone, WTH?
After seeing that apparently the unit was good, I decided to try it again in my PC, still connected to both monitor and directly sound card, both with a different power cable (the one who came with the unit, just in case), the noise was still there.
So, my monitor has multiple inputs and is also connnected to a nintendo switch, so I tried it. Still noise. I decided to try one last thing. I shutdown my pc, with the sp200 connected to the monitor to output the sound of the nintendo switch.
The static is GONE.
Now, I'm really thinking either my PC is the issue generating noise out of nowhere, or my unit could be somewhat defective, not sure yet.
Last thing I have to try, is to connect it directly to my pc, and unplug everything from my PC, so maybe something connected to it could be could be generating the noise.
Until my d50s arrives (at least another month), I'm stuck with this setup. I'm hoping that with the d50s connected to the PC through USB, and with the premium RCA to RCA cable to connect the d50s to the sp200 the noise will be gone.
So, my question, is: does anybody have any idea what could be causing this noise/static in my PC so I can try to fix it before the d50s arrive?
Second question: could my sp200 be defective? It's really odd it's outputtinng so much noise while my FiiO e9 has no noise at all. Could it be that more sensitive to noise?
I really thought that my unit was defective, but after hearing it clean and flawless from my macbook pro I don't think my sp200 is defective anymore.
