Bug 129613

Summary: low buzzing or hissing noise when using high quality headphones
Product: arts Reporter: Ron Pepper <feffer777>
Component: xine_artspluginAssignee: Multimedia Developers <kde-multimedia>
Status: RESOLVED NOT A BUG    
Severity: normal    
Priority: NOR    
Version: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Debian testing   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:

Description Ron Pepper 2006-06-21 23:54:57 UTC 
Version:            (using KDE KDE 3.5.3)
Installed from:    Debian testing/unstable Packages
OS:                Linux

Using high grade headphones (Sennheiser 280 Pro), I get a low level buzzing/hissing noise when using Amarok. My output is through ALSA. The noise is present even when no music is playing. Noise intensifies when mousing over hypertext links and active control spots both in Amarok and other applications. This noise wasn't noticeable using low grade headphones, but is very distracting using the Sennheisers. However, the noise doesn't come from a defect in the headphones, as they work fine in OSX using iTunes. Also there's no noise using xmms on my Linux box with these headphones. This noise is very distracting and will prevent me from using Amarok unless it is resolved. This bug was posted for Amarok and I recieved the answer: "amarok does not do any audio processing by itself. it's all handled by the backends (xine, helix)." Therefore, I'm reposting the bug to Xine.
Comment 1 Scott Wheeler 2006-06-22 00:07:30 UTC 
Sorry, but the Xine Arts plugin is not the same thing as Xine.  What you're looking for is here:

http://www.xinehq.de/index.php/bugs
Comment 2 Donn Washburn 2006-06-22 03:01:38 UTC 
Beside it is likely a headphone related problem.  It is likely due to having a higher frequency respounce.  It could also be due to an impendience mismatch.

I doubt it is a xine or amarok related problem.  More likely a alsa or oss kernel related problem.

Donn Washburn
FCC Licensed, Owner of d.w. Sound System and HAM radio operator.

Good Luck!
Comment 3 Scott Wheeler 2006-06-22 03:08:38 UTC 
For what it's worth, and while we're making generally unqualified speculations, when I've seen stuff like this (as a studio headphone junkie), it's usually mismatched mixer settings.  The gain is up very high on certain channels, which picks up RF interference (some of which is generated by the computer itself).  It doesn't help that Linux's mixer UIs generally suck.

Try muting all of the channels that you're not using and turn the gain down to 50-80% on the channel that you're using (PCM, specifically).  If there are "switches" that you can toggle in KMix, see if any of them have a significant effect.