From a CD-ROM there tends to be more interference than from MP3.

It is especially noticeable when at higher volumes (not necessarily stupidly loud!).

The intereference is like a faint 'crackly' noise - from the CD-ROM it sounds like the noise is spinning on something and is louder - comes closer, dies out, comes closer, etc etc.

Crap description, I know. Does anyone know if this is normal? I presume it is because my friend's RiscPC does this. Would a sound card solve it?

I'd really like to build up (legal) MP3 collection and it's good to listen to music on the computer from CD (saves having to have a stereo there).

My machine is a 1-year old Kinetic, bought new. Castle replaced the sound cable with a higher-quality one than standard (more shielding).

Help appreciated!

Presumably you have your speakers plugged into the headphone socket at the rear of your RPC. Plug them into the headphone socket on the front of the CD ROM drive instead. If the sound is still bad, get a new drive (check storagereview.com for a drive that can rip a whole cd with no errors).

If the sound is fixed (it may be quieter from the drives headphone socket, so compare at same volume level) get an audiodynamics (don't know what they're called now) based sound card, which if memory serves me sound just great.

It must be routing inside. Castle replaced the motherboard once, anyway, so shouldn't be the motherboard.

Does anyone have more info on these sound cards?