[nmosfet]

I've seen some posts on mydellmini and on other forums regarding this issue on ubuntu, but nothing on this subforum.

the problem -
When I plug in my headphones, a static hiss comes out of the internal built-in speakers below the LCD on the mini 9. There's no clicks or beeps, it sounds just like white noise or AM radio static, and it's about as loud as a spooled-up cpu fan would be on an average notebook. The speakers work fine for playing audio when the phones aren't plugged in, and the headphones sound fine when playing audio otherwise (with no significant hiss coming from the phones themselves, only the speakers). If headphones are plugged in at boot, the hiss only starts until after OS X has started up (presumably after the audio device is initialized in the kernel).
-While sleeping, there's no hiss of course, but once it wakes up the hiss comes back.
-If I mute (while headphones are plugged in) the hiss goes away for the duration of the mute, but once I unmute (headphones still in) the hiss from the internal speakers comes back
- The speaker hiss stops when I remove the headphones, and audio plays back normally through the internal speakers. But once I plug the phones back in, speaker hiss resumes.


Is there a way to disable the built in speakers on the mini9 either through os x or a hidden bios setting? Even though I use them exceedingly rarely, I don't want to just cut the wires to the internal speakers permanently or try to unsolder the wires (seems a bit drastic)

(the only other option I could think of is to use the headphone out from a USB soundcard, which works fine)

Addtl info:
seems like the problem is not isolated to the mini 9, and happens on some other dells/brands of notebooks, so I wonder if its a hardware issue that happens on specific computers with this particular onboard soundcard (someone on another thread suggested it may be some weird grounding or biasing issue). I've also had this problem on my mini9 under moblin 2.1, but since it's a problem under ubuntu as well, I can't be entirely sure it's a hardware issue and not a software issue that exists simultaneously for both OS X and the current linux audio stack.


Audio hiss on Ubuntu Karmic (9.10)
associated bug track:
[Bug 480456] [NEW] Dell mini 9 speakers hiss when headphones are plugged

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Mini9 with 10.6.2, STEC 16gb, working sleep, NBI .8.3 RC5

[meklort]

Known bug, It's due to the way AppleHDA turns on / off the speaker, I'll be working on it, but the fix won't be in the 0.8.3 release.

[yamaha46]

Does every mini 9 running OSX do this (speaker hiss when using headphones)?
Is it unfixable?
has it been fixed??

[berbamac]

easily fixed .
in this thread




Sound and mic working with AppleHDA

[zeitung]

I have the same problem. Running 10.6.8, everything works perfectly except the hiss out of the internal speakers when the headphones are pluged in.

I checked all the threads about fixing audio, did not find anything about this directly,

Since this thread is a year old, can someone update what can be done about this problem?

[CharredPC]

Originally Posted by zeitung

I have the same problem. Running 10.6.8, everything works perfectly except the hiss out of the internal speakers when the headphones are pluged in.

I checked all the threads about fixing audio, did not find anything about this directly,

Since this thread is a year old, can someone update what can be done about this problem?

I fixed this (and my Mic not working) in 10.6.7 by installing VoodooHDA 2.7.2 (I can't speak for 10.6.8- personally don't see enough reward to risk botching things up to try). When it was first installed, I didn't think it worked very well on my Mini9... but it just needed a few adjustments in the settings.

[JMalam]

I've got the same problem. I tried to install VoodooHDA 2.7.2 as suggested but this just gives me a kernel panic and I can't boot.

I'm running 10.6.7. I've reinstalled multiple times and updated from 10.6 to 10.2, 10.4, 10.7 to see if that made any difference (it didn't).

Any other suggestions?