Does anyone know a reason why my programs could be causing my speakers to output some soft static? The programs themselves don’t have a single element that outputs sound to anything, yet when I run a few of my programs I can hear a static coming from my speakers. It even gets louder when I run certain programs. Moving the speakers around doesn’t help, so it must be coming from inside the computer.
I’m not sure what other details to put down since this seems very odd. They are OpenGL programs written in C++ with MS Visual C++.
Edit: It seems to be that swapping the framebuffers inside an infinite loop is making the noise, as when I stop swapping I get silence…
Since you say you don’t touch sound in your programs, I doubt it’s your code doing this. Does it occur if you run any other graphics-intensive programs? Also, what happens if you mute various channels in the mixer (sndvol32.exe on 32-bit windows)?
Not knowing anything else I’d venture a guess that it could be related to the fan on your graphics card. If your programs cause the fan to turn on and it’s either close to your sound card or the fan’s power line crosses an audio cable, it could cause some static. Try moving any audio cables as far as possible from the fan and power cables and see what happens.
It could also be picking up static from a number of other sources, and I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily unusual. If non-graphics-intensive programs cause this as well, it could be hard-disk access, or even certain frequencies of CPU/power usage being picked up on an audio line like an antenna. You can also try to reduce the number of loops in your audio wires and see if it helps, but no guarantees.