[Mouton]

When I play a sound on my PB 12", it always does 'tick' then plays the sound... Not that bad. Probably normal sound-card behaviour I thought.

But now, I sometimes hear the tick when no sound plays. It does tick......tick...tick............tick....tick....t ick...tick...............................tick..... ............tick....
and so on... kinda random ticks... i can work on the laptop for a long time without hearing it, then it starts... and sometimes stops after 2-3 mins, sometimes continue for 1h+...

Now, I just made the hardware tests (all ok) and restarted the PB, and the tick noises started even before I logged in... At the grey Apple screen...
And I restarted it without logging in, and now it doesn't do it... But I waited at the login prompt, and it started after like 3 mins. It looks very random... Never does it when on sleep.

There's no Apple store nearby, but there's a B.Mac, an Apple Authorized Reseller. http://www.bmac.ca/english_site/index_english.html

The PB is still under 1 year repair warranty, but past the 90-days phone tech support...

Any suggestions ?

Thx.

-Mouton

[chabig]

To save power, the Powerbook shuts down it's sound circuitry when not being used. The tick you hear before playing a sound due to that circuitry powering up again. It's normal.

As for the other ticks, I have no idea.

Chris

[rag on a muffin]

can you record the sound? i would like to hear it

[Mouton]

I tried, but my mic doesn't get it clearly enough... eh..

But u can hear it on yours. Put it to sleep, and when u wake it, it makes the 'tick' I have. tick..bzzzzzzz-bzzzzzzzzzzzz

[rag on a muffin]

i dont have that noise. i had a noise like that after i got my lemon ibook g4 repaired. that thing was the spawn of evil. i got that replaced so fast its not even funny. but that was only when sound occured

[Mouton]

I'll drop by B.Mac tomorrow and see if they got a pb 12" in demo that we could try waking from sleep to compare the sounds with mine...

[rag on a muffin]

heh. it might have the same problem, just as my ibook g4 did. press on the bottom left corner of the 12" model with an average amount of force when your there. thats not my thought of using the track-pad to click.

[Pierre B.]

As has been already pointed out, this is related to sleeping the audio hardware for power saving reasons. It should only occur when you are on battery.

If you want to avoid the "popping sound" effect, you may try KeepSoundAwake

[Mouton]

That might help on the continuous tick problem
I'll try it and see if it still does it...

[Pierre B.]

Originally posted by Mouton:
That might help on the continuous tick problem
I'll try it and see if it still does it...

Great, don't forget to post here the results.

[eevyl]

I also suffer this sympton and I tell you it is not the sleeping sound hardware issue, it is another.

However it is the same exact sound, but it ticks continuosly and randomly. I get the "tick" sound normally after some idle time of the sound controller, but just sometimes the PB goes mad and start doing the sound all the time ... like "pop pop pop pop pop" over and over, in random cycles not periodic.

Then, it stops for no reason or I have to shut it down to avoid turning insane and throw it over the window.

I read about it at the Apple discussions forums, and several other owners sent the PB to repair, only to receive it back with the note "nothing was found wrong with the computer", just because it is such a random problem.

I just hope the sound hardware goes definitely nuts and break altogether, so they can fix it for sure... sad but true I want my pbook to break ...

[rag on a muffin]

have you tried muting it? that will narrow down if its a crossed wire or something like that. take your computer to the apple store, and just use it until it starts making the noise. after you get it to make the noise, hurry over to the genius bar, and ask them what's wrong. explain that it happens randomly, and they will know exactly what to write as the problem.

[Mouton]

Muting the PB doesn't fix it.

eevyl: Have u tried using the KeepSoundAwake ? Maybe it's a problem that when sound card goes to sleep, it might randomly wake up and go back to sleep in some kind of infinite loop..?

[eevyl]

Originally posted by rag on a muffin:
have you tried muting it? that will narrow down if its a crossed wire or something like that. take your computer to the apple store, and just use it until it starts making the noise. after you get it to make the noise, hurry over to the genius bar, and ask them what's wrong. explain that it happens randomly, and they will know exactly what to write as the problem.

Well, if I could I would do that the minute after I experienced this. But in case you didn't notice from my info at the left, I live in Spain, Europe, so the nearest Apple Store is at a expensive plane flight over the ocean

So I am stick to send the pbook to the europe applecare tech support, and they need to be able to reproduce the problem easily or they will give it to me untouched.

[eevyl]

Originally posted by Mouton:
eevyl: Have u tried using the KeepSoundAwake ? Maybe it's a problem that when sound card goes to sleep, it might randomly wake up and go back to sleep in some kind of infinite loop..?

Well, it is not worth the effort of trying. I have experienced the problem when plugged in and just a few seconds after starting up the computer, right in the gray screen. So if the OS isn't even loaded yet, how would KeepSoundAwake make any difference? None in fact.

[Mouton]

Just dropped it at B.Mac.
It was doing it, so i walked across the street and let the technician hear it. Said he didn't know what it was. He kept it until tomorrow afternoon or thursday morning so he could look into it. We'll see.

*edit:
Arg!
Re-checked on my bill, and I bought it march 15th 2003! So my warranty is over already :| I'll get 45$ estimation or much more (the'll call me to tell me how much) for repair. Let's be patient.

[Mouton]

Got it back this morning.
Tech said it did the toc soud once on boot, and not anymore after that... Said he tried playing a dvd and mp3s that were on my desktop, and tried browsing the web. Said he left it open all night and never heard the sound again. Thinks KeepSoundAwake fixed it. But even if it didn't, it would cost mee 600-700$ cdn to change the logic board, since I'm not under Applecare anymore.
Bleh...
We'll see in the upcoming days if KeepSoundAwake really helped...

[rag on a muffin]

well thats good to know. if i ever have that problem, i will know what to do.

[kimtaro]

I think I have the same tick sound on my two weeks old 15" powerbook. I'd definitely say that it's the hard drive that's the source since the same sound can be heard when NetNewsWire accesses a post from it's local copy.

Can't offer any suggestion on how to fix it though. It'd be a bummer to have to send it to apple for repairs.

[MacApple]

I had the same issue and found the following: When I checked in sound panel for sound output I could see that my computer was switching between internal speakers and headphones all the time. Each switching is a "tick" noise. After putting a connecter in and out in my headphone output the "tick" noise disappeared. Try it!

[paganini]

This just began happening on my partner's Rev. A 12inch.

1) it is the for certain the sound of the audio circuity turning on but,
2) it is not when it wakes up. rather it is totally random.
3) just as MacApple notes, if you open the sound control panel, you can see the machine switching between internal speakers and headphones on its own. Plugging in headphones seems to kill the loop.

So, the question is: is this a hardware sensor problem, the powerbook isn't able to tell when headphones are plugged in? or a software issue?