it is not normal that a good sound card would have that audible noise. i have a strange problem in my analog mixer i have a very bad ground noise only in a few channels, and strangely enough when i turn off my computer's display monitor the noise disappears. so i just work with the monitor powered off. but it took a while to find out what the problem was. try turning off every thing but the computer. any device or connection could produce noise even if it is not directly connected to your audio system. of course you can always use a noise gate that will shutoff the track when there is no music.. ----- Original Message ----- From: Omar Binno To: ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Monday, March 05, 2007 10:25 AM Subject: [ddots-l] To Gord or anyone else Hi Gord and everyone else: I'm getting a small staticky or grounding type of noise in my audio recordings where there are no instruments playing. Gord, I don't know if you remember, when you were here, you determined that this grounding noise was coming from the computer's soundcard, and that nothing could really be done about it. Whatever it is though is also coming out in the audio recordings. It's covered up when the beat is playing, but if there is a blank spot you can hear the noise in the background. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks. Omar Binno