What should I do if my speakers are crackling when connected to my laptop but not any other devices?

Asked by shrubbery (10326

) April 20th, 2011

I’m pretty sure this only started today, or I only noticed it today. I have a set of logitech external speakers, like this, and they are awesome. I have had them since the start of last year and they have been so good to me.

Just now though, when the auxiliary is plugged into the earphone jack of my laptop, I can hear a faint, constant static crackliness coming from them. It gets louder when I turn the volume up, but it’s not louder than the music or anything, just loud enough to be slightly worrying.

I have used them twice at near but not quite maximum volume, for parties, both last year, and there were absolutely no problems and I’ve never heard this static noise from them before.

I thought it might be the cords/wiring, so I plugged the auxiliary cord into both my iPhone and my iPod shuffle but both of those sound perfectly amazing as usual, the same as what it has sounded like from my laptop up until just now.

When I plug my earphones- really good sports ones with extra bass- into the earphone jack of my laptop everything sounds normal, no crackling.

It’s definitely not just the one song or one album or just mp3 or just m4a.

What do I dooooooooooooooooo?

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3 Answers

Had the same problem before and in my case, my Bose speakers were too close to my internet modem.

mazingerz88 (29262

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like @mazingerz88 conjecture, definitely worth moving the speakers and wires around etc. to avoid interference from neighboring devices. Blackberrys can put chatter on nearby phones and you might have some telecomm gizmo close to your laptop that isn’t in the picture in your other test scenarios.
If it only happens with the laptop and the problem is none of the above, sad to say it could be the audio output section on your laptop. Analog circuitry can fail in slow stages with output transistors getting ‘noisy’ If it gets intolerable you could get a USB sound gizmo as surrogate for the builtin.

dabbler (18896

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yeah, definitely try moving them away from any wireless equipment as that could cause interference, make sure no magnets are nearby too as they could also create problems

otherwise try making sure the speaker port on your laptop isn’t dirty as once that caused speaker problems for me – weird that your head phones still worked though, if this is the case; just try blowing into it to clean out any dust that might have settled there.

NorbertFish4 (99

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