whining noise from laptop speakers

Hi all,
My HP Pavilion laptop has started making a whining noise through the
speakers. It is most annoying when the CPU fan starts spinning, but I can
also hear it when the CPU fan is off, the difference is the noise is
intermittent, maybe when the hard drive arm moves to read something or when
the RAM is written to. I know it's coming from the speakers because I can
mute them, thereby suppressing any whining noise.

What is this? Is it electrical interference? How can I get rid of it?

someone_else wrote:
Hi all,
My HP Pavilion laptop has started making a whining noise through the
speakers. It is most annoying when the CPU fan starts spinning, but I can
also hear it when the CPU fan is off, the difference is the noise is
intermittent, maybe when the hard drive arm moves to read something or when
the RAM is written to. I know it's coming from the speakers because I can
mute them, thereby suppressing any whining noise.

What is this? Is it electrical interference? How can I get rid of it?


Low internal supply voltages. The sound electronics starts
misbehaving because of that.

Or a decoupling electrolyte near the soundpart has degraded,
with the same bad behaviour.

someone_else wrote:
Hi all,
My HP Pavilion laptop has started making a whining noise through the
speakers. It is most annoying when the CPU fan starts spinning, but I can
also hear it when the CPU fan is off, the difference is the noise is
intermittent, maybe when the hard drive arm moves to read something or when
the RAM is written to. I know it's coming from the speakers because I can
mute them, thereby suppressing any whining noise.

What is this? Is it electrical interference? How can I get rid of it?



Have you checked the mixer control panel for the sound device ?
Are all the input channels, except the one you're interested in, muted ?
The Mixer panel may have a "record" and "playback" section, and
sometimes the panel attempts to deceive you by hiding some of
the important bits. Some computer audio devices have a "what you hear"
option, which loops an input, back to the speakers, and that might
result in additional unexpected noises. It is even possible some
piece of audio software (Skype? or an "in-game audio option" ?)
may have reconfigured the audio for you, in an unacceptable way.
Check what you've installed lately, for something audio
related.

Paul

On Sun, 22 Feb 2009 00:30:17 -0000, "someone_else"
wrote:

Hi all,
My HP Pavilion laptop has started making a whining noise through the
speakers. It is most annoying when the CPU fan starts spinning, but I can
also hear it when the CPU fan is off, the difference is the noise is
intermittent, maybe when the hard drive arm moves to read something or when
the RAM is written to. I know it's coming from the speakers because I can
mute them, thereby suppressing any whining noise.

What is this? Is it electrical interference? How can I get rid of it?



Has anything about the system or use changed, particularly
software or ambient room temperatures?

Generally this is noise on the power rails, that it didn't
happen previously leads me to suspect some variable has
changed causing a different amount of power consumed.

Is it possible you had the noise all along but now the
volume is set higher than it used to be so you are hearing
it louder? Noisey audio on laptops is far too common, but
normally it is there all along not appearing only after some
time.

"Paul" wrote in message
...
someone_else wrote:
Hi all,
My HP Pavilion laptop has started making a whining noise through the
speakers. It is most annoying when the CPU fan starts spinning, but I can
also hear it when the CPU fan is off, the difference is the noise is
intermittent, maybe when the hard drive arm moves to read something or
when the RAM is written to. I know it's coming from the speakers because
I can mute them, thereby suppressing any whining noise.

What is this? Is it electrical interference? How can I get rid of it?



Have you checked the mixer control panel for the sound device ?
Are all the input channels, except the one you're interested in, muted ?
The Mixer panel may have a "record" and "playback" section, and
sometimes the panel attempts to deceive you by hiding some of
the important bits. Some computer audio devices have a "what you hear"
option, which loops an input, back to the speakers, and that might
result in additional unexpected noises. It is even possible some
piece of audio software (Skype? or an "in-game audio option" ?)
may have reconfigured the audio for you, in an unacceptable way.
Check what you've installed lately, for something audio
related.

Paul

Thanks to all for your suggestions they helped me find and fix the problem
in:

XP control panel
sound and audio devices properties
Sound recording
Volume
Advanced
I Unchecked [Other controls 1 Microphone boost]
Close

This setting may have been changed by recently installed language software,
or by me trying to route sound files through Second Life, or maybe it was
set already and I just recently become intolerant to this noise.

thanks all!

On Feb 21, 7:46 pm, Sjouke Burry
wrote:
someone_else wrote:
Hi all,
My HP Pavilion laptop has started making a whining noise through the
speakers. It is most annoying when the CPU fan starts spinning, but I can
also hear it when the CPU fan is off, the difference is the noise is
intermittent, maybe when the hard drive arm moves to read something or when
the RAM is written to. I know it's coming from the speakers because I can
mute them, thereby suppressing any whining noise.

What is this? Is it electrical interference? How can I get rid of it?

Low internal supply voltages. The sound electronics starts
misbehaving because of that.

Or a decoupling electrolyte near the soundpart has degraded,
with the same bad behaviour.

Another possibility may be interference. Try to see if there is a
mobile phone or any other radio device that could be responsible.

On Sun, 22 Feb 2009 13:28:53 -0800 (PST), Boris Epstein
wrote:

On Feb 21, 7:46 pm, Sjouke Burry
wrote:
someone_else wrote:
Hi all,
My HP Pavilion laptop has started making a whining noise through the
speakers. It is most annoying when the CPU fan starts spinning, but I can
also hear it when the CPU fan is off, the difference is the noise is
intermittent, maybe when the hard drive arm moves to read something or when
the RAM is written to. I know it's coming from the speakers because I can
mute them, thereby suppressing any whining noise.

What is this? Is it electrical interference? How can I get rid of it?

Low internal supply voltages. The sound electronics starts
misbehaving because of that.

Or a decoupling electrolyte near the soundpart has degraded,
with the same bad behaviour.

Another possibility may be interference. Try to see if there is a
mobile phone or any other radio device that could be responsible.


Come to think of it, on one laptop I ran a latency test and
found the broadcom PCIe wireless card, or it's driver, was
responsible for a bit of audio crackle, but this seems a
different noise than just periodic crackle. Disabling it in
windows' device manager removed the problem, but in this
case I think a bus/timing issue rather than RF pickup.