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I recently built a new PC that I use for multimedia and other purposes. It’s Intel “Sandybridge” 1155 -based, with a Gigabyte P67 series motherboard and Realtek onboard sound. Unfortunately, like so many other recent PC audio systems, it doesn’t have sufficient output power to drive unamplified speakers directly. I have some unpowerd bookshelf speakers that I wanted to keep using. So, I added a cheap audio power amplifier to the Realtek output. The resultant system had slightly annoying audio frequency noise, not 60Hz noise but various other noise from misc. stuff in the PC.  Here are some details re the amp and what I did to fix the noise problem.
The audio amplifier is one I found on eBay from a Chinese manufacturer, with labeling “Kinter 500W”.  Price was about $10 including shipping, cheaper than I could build one for myself. I knew what was in the amp from some googling: an LM-series audio amp IC and typical supporting parts, providing a few watts per channel. Not the claimed 500W :-), but adequate for what I wanted. I run the amp from the PC 12V supply, which is far enough beyond spec for the other stuff in the PC that it’s fine to power the amp with it too. I started with a generic 1/8″ stereo to RCA patch cord about 3ft. long to connect the amp to the PC audio output. (more…)