Issues with monitors and hard drive noise

[kvraudiothrowaway__]

About a few months back I purchased a pair monitors, Focal Alpha 50s. I considered this a good purchase because of what I had read about the Alpha 50s in regards to their sound and build quality. Anyway to the juicy part of this story. So after I got the monitors I was having so much trouble with them, but I finally got them to work. They just didn't work the way I would like.

Essentially I have two main problems with my monitors in their current state. First, the monitors come with this built in stand by mode. They will turn off after about 30 minutes if no sound is coming through. Except in my case they turn off even if there is sound coming through, so after about 30 minutes of being on they will just both shut off. After they shut off I have to physically turn them back on. That may not sound like much but it can get quite annoying.

The second issue is once my monitors connect to my computer there is a distinct noise coming through them. It sounds kind of like hard drive noise. A sort of buzzing white noise sound. It sounds like computer noise. I know it's computer noise though because sometime when I scroll with my mouse I can hear a sort of scrolling sound through the monitors, I'm not quite sure how to describe it.

I'm connect both monitors to a PreSonus Audiobox with an XLR cable. The PreSonus is connected via USB to my computer. Both monitors are plugged into a power strip.

Is there a solution to either of these problems?



tl;dr: Monitors have computer noise coming through them and turn off after 30 minutes of use. Is there a way to fix this?

[jdnz]

tl;dr: Monitors have computer noise coming through them and turn off after 30 minutes of use. Is there a way to fix this?

can’t help with the standby issue, but the noise issue sounds like a video card with rf emission issues - swap the video card (or remove it and use the built in gfx on your motherboard) and see if the noise goes away.

[VariKusBrainZ]

In your Bios look for CPU EIST Function and CPU Enhanced Halt(C1E) and try disabling them, they relate to Speed Stepping.

This solve a similar problem on my system

[WOK]

You'll need a DI-Box with ground lift for the XLR-connection.
Many computers, especially notebooks, have the problem injecting kind of bus noise (mostly from the graphics card) to the USB jacks, going on thru the audio interface.
A Palmer Pan 02 behind the audio interface solved this problem for me.

The standby problem sounds like a defective unit to me.

[BertKoor]

How are the volume settings of:
1) the monitors
2) the audio interface

If 1) is set full blast and 2) is set at 10% then this explains both issues. It should be the reverse: sound card full blast and monitors 10% only.

Because if you feed too low level to the monitors, they might sense that as "near silence" and shut off. Also your signal/noise ratio is quite off.