[SPEAKER ISSUES] Potential flaw with Razer Nommo Chroma - Ground loop in speakers themselves | Razer Insider

[SPEAKER ISSUES] Potential flaw with Razer Nommo Chroma - Ground loop in speakers themselves

  • 8 January 2019
  • 4 replies
  • 476 views

So I recently bought the Nommo Chroma speakers (https://www.razer.com/gaming-audio/razer-nommo-chroma). They sound fantastic (albeit a tiny bit muddy), lighting is great, etc.

I noticed an 'electrical buzz' sound coming from the speakers, it sounded like a high pitched buzzing with an additional high pitched ringing noise. I almost instantly knew this was caused by a USB ground loop. I plugged it into my audio ground loop box (it basically stops electrical noises that occur from plugging in your keyboard and whatnot) to see if that would fix the issues. It fixed all of the issues but one - the really high pitched ringing noise. So, I decided to see if it was the speakers themselves causing the issue. I unplugged the audio jack from my audio ground loop box (the speakers aren't jacked into anything now). The high pitched ringing persisted.

I opened razer synapse and went to the speaker's lighting settings. I turned off the lighting. The high pitched ringing noise stopped. I turned the lighting back on. Ringing instantly started again. I dimmed the lighting. Ringing got quieter.

I believe there's a ground loop or some kind of electrical interference coming from within the speakers themselves that is caused by the lighting. The ringing stops completely if I turn the speaker lighting completely off.

I just received the speakers today, is there any way to solve this or should I RMA the speakers? I really don't want to get rid of the speakers, I love Razer products and they sound great aside from the electrical high pitched ringing caused by the speaker lighting.

The TL;DR of this : The chroma lights on the speaker cause a high pitched whirring noise to come from the left speaker, even with the speakers muted.

EDIT : The ringing becomes really, really quiet when I set the lighting to the 'Wave' preset. It is still audible, but just barely. It sounds like a weird lightsaber/laser because of the pulsating of the volume while 'Wave' is running. So the electrical interference is definitely caused by the lights themselves.

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4 Replies

Any staff have any comment on this? I'm still getting that high pitched whirr noise caused by the lights themselves. It only occurs in the left speaker. Even with the speakers completely muted, the left speaker picks up the 'noise' from the electricity of the lights underneath it.
I uploaded an audio recording (Amplified by around 40x so people without doghearing can hear it) of the noise I'm talking about.

You can hear me clicking, that is me changing the lighting presets and colors. Notice how the sound changes when the lighting changes.

Userlevel 7
I would contact Razer Support directly, no one really posts here.
Yeah, I figured as much.

Razer support just reached out to me via twitter about this issue, I'll link them this thread so they can get more info.