I have a Sennheiser PC 350 SE headset and I've been hearing a static noise which becomes clearly audible when raising the volume. It has been around for years now and I assumed it's a problem with my headset, it didn't bother me because I rarely raise the volume over 30%.

Today I tried playing around with the settings to get better sound quality, I turned the "Front Pink in" slider from 100 to 0 and left all other settings unchanged. The static noise in my headset disappeared even when I raise the system volume up to 100%. I tested a few games and music, everything seemed normal. I googled the static noise problem and they don't mention this particular solution.

How did this eliminate the static noise? and should I keep it this way?

PS: I'm not using any soundcard or DAC/AMP, just my headset and motherboard's (Asus z190-A) onboard sound.

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It sounds like that input had a lot of noise with the gain turned up and nothing terminating it so it was just pumping noise into the headphone out.

Could be the wiring to the front connector is not shielded or has poor shielding so introduced radio frequency noise from the computer. RF generated in various parts of the computer can induce noise in wiring. Early computers sometimes used this for sound generation with AM radios.

Do you think it's a good idea to keep the settings this way?

Yes, you should keep it that way.

Essentially, the front pink in is supposed to have a microphone (or another input) plugged in, and it will amplify the signal and play it back to you. If nothing is plugged in, it is simply amplifying noise and playing it back to you.

Only thing setting that will do is decrease electricity usage a tiny bit and increase your auditory experience - just remember this when you plug a microphone in and it doesn't work

Yeah my headset has a mic and it is actually plugged in, however it’s always muted since I rarely use it. Another weird thing is that both the headphones and mic are plugged in the front of the case, if i plug them directly in the motherboard (behind the case), both the sound quality and the static noise get much worse.

Absolutely, especially if nothing is plugged in to it. I suspect that if something was plugged in with an impedance that was optimal the noise floor would drop, but if it is just an open circuit there's no harm in leaving the gain down.

computer is a noisy enviroment, your headphones might just need better shielding

Alright will do. Thanks!

Pink most likely means pink noise

And so you probably just turned off the pink noise generator.

Pink noise is sometimes used for calibration applications in sound studios. Like, for example, when you’re mixing sound for a feature film, at the end the Dolby engineer comes in to make the Dolby encoded audio and they have a special pink noise generator that they use to calibrate the sound of the studio to their theatrical standard.

Not sure what the use is here, but it’s probably related to testing whether your headphones / speakers have a flat frequency response.

See also this handy video explanation.

Desktop version of /u/ScaleLongjumping3606's link: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_noise>

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Pink noise

>Pink noise or 1⁄f noise is a signal or process with a frequency spectrum such that the power spectral density (power per frequency interval) is inversely proportional to the frequency of the signal. In pink noise, each octave interval (halving or doubling in frequency) carries an equal amount of noise energy. Pink noise is one of the most common signals in biological systems. The name arises from the pink appearance of visible light with this power spectrum.

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