Fixing The Static Noise, Clicks And Pops with Turtlebeach Earforce PX5

So I got this beautiful piece of headset a few days ago, called the EarForce PX5 by TurtleBeach. It’s claim to fame being an awesome virtual surround sound headset which also does the double duty of providing game audio as well as voice chat over the same headset. I preferred this over the Sony PS3 Elite headset as the PX5 is more generic and can work across multiple devices since it uses the regular bluetooth for A2DP and voice chat and the wireless transmitter has standard optical/RCA inputs and outputs.

TurtleBeach EarForce PX5

However, there was one issue. Out of the box, the headset produced serious amount of clicks and pops and other static noises. This is because the wireless transmission for this headset is done over 2.4 GHz band which competes with the various wireless devices that I have around the house. Trying various tools like inSSIDer proved useless as the PX5 isn’t a WLAN/802.11 connection evne though it uses the same band. Finally after lot of trial and error, I figured out that doing the following things reduced the noise down to a bare minimum (in fact zero):

- Use Channel 9 on the wi-fi router for 2.4GHz band with band width being 20MHz

- Keep the transmitter away from PS3

- Keep the transmitter away from the TV (It’s surprising how much the EMI emitting from those huge LCDs can affect wireless performance.

Now, it’s working awesomely and I just had a decent run of the missing link DLC of Deus Ex HR