[mjames]

I have a brand new 20" iMac Core Duo and some Sennheiser HD-280 Pro headphones. I notice a hiss on the headphones when playing nothing and want to get rid of this. Is there an affordable way to do this? I'm thinking the iMac comes with a crappy integrated sound card, so maybe an external one would help? Suggestions?

[mjames]

Bump ... is anyone using their iMac with high-end headphones? Do you notice sound in the background?

[Todd Madson]

One possibility is this: make sure in your sound control panel that the
microphone isn't set to your default input or it will record the
background noise in the room your computer is setup in - I ran
into this last weekend when working on my chiropractors' computer.

Another possibility is that the quality of the headphones is sufficient
that (Sennheiser makes great stuff too) that it's magnifying flaws in
your system - I used garbage headphones for years and finally got a
great set of studio monitoring cans for music production and everything
in the house had flaws that were easily heard.

But a loud pervasive hiss? If you connect the headphones to another
device (a home theater amplifier, stereo, am/fm receiver, etc.) see if
this continues. If it doesn't happen in any other device it's the Mac.
If it does, it could be the headphones are of a high enough quality that
you're hearing the actual system noise from the devices you have.

[mjames]

I think I'm hearing background noise from devices. These are DJ-quality studio headphones so they pick up on everything. I don't think I had this problem on my Powerbook G4 1.25 Ghz, do you know why that would be?