So I had this problem with the front panel and my headphones that went away when I plugged them in the MB. It's a strange hissing noise and it gets even worse when downloading something.
"So what's the problem?" - you may ask yourself.
Well, the problem is that I want more reach with my headphones. And I don't need much, just the length that I'm loosing by plugging the headphones in the back.
I could just spend some money and buy an extension, but what fun is that?
So could I use aluminium foil to insulate the cable? Maybe use electrical tape to avoid the aluminium touching anything it shouldn't?
I'm not sure that a layer of aluminium foil would cut out the EM interference. Check that the wire doesn't pass too close to any hard drives or caps, that could maybe help. Other then that I can't think of anything, it just seems a bit dodgy having foil in the case.
Personally I'd go any buy a nice quality extension cable, but like you said, there's no fun in that!
put the FP connectors through ferrite cores. foil would need to drain to ground on one end to work as a shield otherwise you could make a ground loop and just cause more issues as apposed to ferrite cores who's purpose is exactly to reduce noise and interference.
You can use the clip on ones or feed the cables through the larger ones if the cables are long and small enough.
Sometimes the rear connector is just better than the FP connector too in terms of noise depending on the mobo and onboard audio used so using an external extension cable isn't a bad option.