Powerbook and Digi002 - high pitched whining sound

[1248]

I have a Digi002 and Powerbook 15" 1.25 GHz.
Whenever I have either PTLE or the core audio drivers running (e.g. in iTunes) there is a faint high pitched electrical-static-sounding whine coming from the powerbook. (It is not the internal speakers, they are muted.

Has anyone else had this? Did you manage to fix it? I can't convince apple that this is a problem.

(Using PT6.1 and OSX 10.2.8 or 10.3.1 and latest PT update, makes no difference).

[JFreak]

no.

however when playing aac-compressed files from itunes when powerbook's builtin out is connected to an external console's line level inputs, there seems to be something wrong. i suspect the output levels are way too high, but setting lower levels affects eq.

coreaudio seems to be working fine. with my 002R at least...

[1248]

I also have noticed that the headphone output on the powerbook sounds truly awful when connected to a line-in, but i presume that is inevitable (wrong impedance/level?).
Keen to hear if people are or are not having the same problem as me, described above.
Could it be a grounding problem?

Thanks.

[JFreak]

Could it be a grounding problem?

grounding "hum" appears on 50 or 60 hz (plus harmonies). i'd rule it out...

[johnnyreno]

I have the exact same problem. I worked on it last night and found that it's not a grounding issue and that it only occurs once PTLE is launched. Haven't tried iTunes yet. I'm on Digi002/Powerbook 867/OS 9.2.2. What's up Digi?

[1248]

The saga continues. I have put an example of the sounds at:

PBG4 protools whining sound

You can hear the relative difference between normal and 'problem' operation.
I have also tried using different power sockets etc, with no change.

I have contacted digidesign and they claim not to have heard of the problem before.

Apple, however, are being very receptive to fixing the problem, and the problem of white blotches on the screen, this time around.
Last time they had the powerbook in for service, they didn't really fix it, and it took the old 'email to Steve Jobs' tactic to get that much action out of them.

This time, they have put a priority problem ticket in, for someone to collect the computer, and are being very understanding and pleasant to deal with.
Fingers crossed.

[johnnyreno]

Please post when you have an answer. It's a pretty weird sound and as I said before, it's definitely not a grounding issue. It stops while the trackball's "click" button is depressed, have you noticed that?

[Sndguy]

this is the same problem that the G5 is having with the processor noise showing up on the firewire ports. It should also make the same sound without the interface (and a little harder to hear) when you drag an open window around on the desktop - stick you ear close to the keyboard and you'll hear it. Apparently the CHUD developer tools can fix this although I have had a hard time getting it to download from versiontracker. I'll try again in the am and see. (I have a 550 powerbook and G5 and this is killing me).

[eedrac]

This sounds like a problem I had with the MBox and my 15" TiBook. I couldn't get any answers and was afraid I was going to have to suffer it, as the sound did not come through on the recording. However, I solved my problem anyway. It was the USB cable that connected the MBox to the powerbook. The one that came with the MBox was picking up some interference, maybe from the monitor of the TiBook, even though that cable came with some kind of filter on it. I used a cable from something else (with no filter) and it worked fine. Be warned, however, that later, out of curiosity, I tried another cable and that didn't work, either, so if this is, in fact, the problem, you might have to sample several cables. I hope that helps!

[Niljam]

All of this sounds very much like a problem I had (still have) with my Mbox/iBook. High pitched whining when PT is launched. I managed to bring it down to 50% by changing the usb-cable to a much much shorter one (without filter).

Though, the sound is not only on the monitoring, but is recorded if I connect anything but a powered mic to the inputs. :-(

Digi claim they cannot reproduce this noise, but I've seen many posts about this so it's an issue for sure. My guess is that Digi-hardware is picking up signals from the Mac.