Turtle Beach Santa Cruz Sound Card GIVES me a ground loop?

rmjjensen · 11-14-2003, 03:37 PM

I've got a turtle beach santa cruz PCI sound card and absolutely love it.......except for one thing. Before it outputs sound, there is a terrible ground loop.

For example, I get in the car, start the computer (and the car) and there's a ground loop. A REALLY bad one might I add. Once windows boots up, the ground loop GOES away PERMENANTLY!

Kinda seems like the op amp built onto the sound card is disabled until the card is fully initialized......like a zero-bit mute circuit .....well I hate it.

Any ideas? Thanks ....oh and I've tried a ground loop isolator - didn't help.

hijinks21 · 11-14-2003, 03:39 PM

ground your sound card and also ground your PSU to the same spot on your cars frame. If you use an inverter.. use that grounding point

starfox · 11-15-2003, 07:26 AM

Like hijink21 said, make sure your sound card, amp, etc are grounded.

I have a santa cruz in my home computer, and once i didn't screw it in properly to the computer case. After i switched my amp on it buzzed like crazy. It also buzzes a lot if the ground connection's dodgey.

Might be that the op amp isolates until it initialises? I guess if grounding doesn't help you could put a dummy load on the amp...