testicles

I've managed to narrow the problem down to being as a result of both my external hard drive, and the power adapter being connected to the notebook. Once both connections are removed, I can record directly to the notebook's internal drive, on battery power, without any noise. In my country, both of these items have 2 pin electrical plugs, so I would assume that the entire system has no connection to the earth and that this is the source of my noise issues. I will be searching for an ASUS 3 pin adapter and hoping that it will sort out all my noise issues very soon.

I recently had to buy a new laptop as a result of theft. My UX1 was working perfectly on the previous laptop (Lenovo G50-70) but has a constant buzz/hiss/electrical static when used on my newer, more powerful laptop. I bought an ASUS X555LA (i5-5200u, 8GB RAM, Windows 8.1). The difference between the two PCs is that the Lenovo had a 3 pin power plug which connected to the AC adapter, and the ASUS has a 2 pin power plug. The noise persist when running on battery power though, which it shouldn't if it were a ground loop though right? There is no noise at all when playing back unrelated music files, but it is impossible to record at the moment (even the dry output is affected). I have optimized the PC, disabled the internal soundcard and disconnected from the wireless network. This issue doesn't exist on my old desktop and even a gate doesn't help as the buzz is highly audible when the gate opens anyway. Does anyone have any other suggestions before I spend even more money trying to solve the issue? Any suggestions or suspicions to point me in a general direction would be very much appreciated! :unsure: