How to Stop Speakers from Buzzing — Ground Loop and Other Common Causes for Humming Sounds

Speakers are made to delight your ears, but a buzzing sound can ruin your AV experience. Fortunately, this dilemma is 100% solvable even if you have limited practical experience. Read on to find out how to stop speakers from buzzing right from our experts.

How to Stop Speakers from Buzzing

Check for a Blown Speaker

The number one cause of the buzzing sound is a blown speaker. Having a blown speaker doesn’t mean you must replace it. It’s usually a minor issue that you can fix with ease. So, if you have a blown speaker, this is how to stop speakers from buzzing. 

The first step is to gather a screwdriver, a damp cloth, rubber cement, and ensure the speaker is connected and ready to play. 

Second, remove the casing covering the speaker where the buzzing sound is coming from. Wipe the membrane with the damp cloth so you can locate the tear or hole.

Next, play some music to help you locate the hole or tear with ease. As the music plays, the torn area tends to slowly open up.

When you identify the tear or hole, the next step is to patch the damaged area using a small amount of rubber cement.

Once you are done, connect the speaker and test it from a low volume. Increase the volume slowly as you listen attentively if there is any buzzing noise.

Adjust the Volume

Sometimes, the buzzing noise can occur when you leave your speakers on high volume, but not using them to play anything. The simplest way to solve this is to lower the volume of your speakers to test if the sound will work properly.

Inspect the Speakers’ Connections

Chances are your speakers’ ports or cable may be the cause of the buzzing noise. To test and solve this, switch to another cable or port, and check if the buzzing noise will disappear. 

Update Your Speakers’ Drivers

Your speakers could be functional but might be producing annoying buzzing sounds due to faulty or outdated audio drivers. Fortunately, it is pretty easy to troubleshoot this problem. 

To solve this issue, visit your speaker manufacturer’s site and manually download the latest drivers. 

Check For Frequency Interference

In this era, our homes have become a hub of modern gadgets. As a result, you might have many devices such as TV, cell phones, computer monitor, and fan among others near to one another, which may cause the frequency between the different gadgets to interfere with each other. 

In such a case, turn off and disconnect all devices placed near the buzzing speakers. If the noise disappears, turn on the devices one at a time to identify the culprit. In addition, keep your speaker far from strong electrical devices to prevent electromagnetic pulse.

If you cannot remove the frequency source, you can attach a ferrite bead to your cable to block any Radio Frequency signals. 

Fix a Ground Loop

An excellent power distribution system is crucial for seamless operation of your audio system. Any noise that you may experience due to the power supply line may have something to do with grounding.

A ground loop occurs when different pieces of your speaker are connected to different AC sockets. When these pieces are connected together via electrical signal cables and wires such as HDMI, RCA, [1] and composite you may experience a ground loop. This is because their shielding is on the ground. As a result, the connections form a single-loop antenna, which sucks in different kinds of noise through electromagnetic induction. 

To eliminate the annoying ground loop buzzing from your speaker, you need to break the loop. Here are the two main ways on how to stop speakers from buzzing.

One of the simplest methods to get rid of the ground loop buzzing is to plug all your speaker pieces into a single AC outlet. You can do this using a heavy-duty power strip with surge protection or using a more reliable power conditioner. 

If the first option does not work, you can use an isolation transformer, which allows signals in the cables to pass freely, hence breaking the ground loop. The isolation transformer is the most recommended solution since it comes with surge protection and a warranty.

Conclusion

Listening to continuous buzzing sounds can be annoying since they interfere with the quality of the audio. Fortunately, with this guide, you can find and fix the underlying issue without replacing the speaker or visiting a repair shop. Although it is a bit of work solving this mystery, our experts can all agree that there is no better feeling than fixing the problem yourself. 

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