Hardware makes a strange pop noise.

[Gemeindepirat]

Hi there! When I use my new Pinebook Pro it makes this strange pop noise. Is this dangerous?

Here is an unlisted video link of this:



Greetings from Austria 

[DjSan]

Hello,

I have a new Pinebook Pro just received in January 2023.

All is well with it, except, it makes that Popping noise from the speakers or something, and has a high pitched sound sometimes, or often.

I'm looking in to a fix.  I opened it up, and checked the Headphone Switch and made sure the trouble shooting power connector was Unplugged, which it was.

Anyone has any fixes so far?

[jmanrunner]

April 2023 just received my first Pinebook Pro and it has the same popping problem reported by others. There is a low level buzzing most of the time as well.

[dachalife]

Hi, it’s not dangerous.

It seems like it happens when the soundcard/hardware initializes; nothing to worry about; mine does it too sometimes & it’s been working fine for quite awhile now (daily use). I never tried to fix it, as it’s not loud enough to bother me.

[jmanrunner]

I never tried to fix it, as it’s not loud enough to bother me.

If this were a lab machine I would agree with you. But in a quiet setting with no appreciable noises around me it is surprisingly unnerving. It happens quite often too in a 30 minute sitting. It is not just at start up, it happens with a switch of a browser tab to a page with video or audio that autostarts when you go to the tab. So dozens of pops. It is not a controllable experience for the most part and not volume adjustable as far as I can tell.

I am not advocating for a refund but I am inclined to disable the speakers and use the device for generic tasks instead of a lightweight laptop. I am certainly not going to travel with it any more. It's usefulness has become minimal which is not a great customer service experience. I am happy to have contributed to the project in this way but at the same time I am looking elsewhere for similar functionality.

[dachalife]

You got me curious, so I had to try to reproduce it. I mainly use my PBP for work; I’m not watching  videos with it.

With some US news sites, I could hear an audible pop upon changing videos (FOX/CNN)/with Freetube nothing changing videos, but sometimes a slight click, once I closed the application.

With headphones plugged in / blue-tooth earbuds, no audible noise of any kind.

I never got any noise with / without headphones changing browser tabs with Firefox 102.10.0 ers, using the stock kernel: 6.0.0-kali5-arm64 or my my own kernel.

From my media server, .avi’s did not have any noise, but .mkv’s did emit a slight click (without a headset activated) once the application was closed (VLC/Parole).

The PBP speakers are not great, I usually just use headphones or an external blue-tooth speaker. The JBL clip works well with the PBP for an external speaker and cheap Maxell or good JBL earbuds work great too, I can’t tell you the exact model number, they aren’t printed on them, I think it’s in the wiki though.

[diederik]

https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=18177 may be worth keeping an eye on.

[User 27258]

Below is a solution that mitigated PBP speaker issues for me using pulseaudio/alsa, such that crackling only happens on startup/shutdown.



The background noise/crackling problem is caused by the audio interface going to sleep.

This power-saving functionality can be disabled in /etc/pulse/default.pa by commenting the line

Code:

### Automatically suspend sinks/sources that become idle for too long
#load-module module-suspend-on-idle # <- comment this

Still, the noise floor (which is now constant since the device does not go to sleeep) remains high. To mitigate it use alsamixer and reduce the gain on left-most bar ("Speakers/Headphones") until noise level is acceptable. Save the settings to /etc/asound.state,

which is sourced on startup, with alsactl store



Some noise (resembling coil whine) will still present when using speakers - pavucontrol allows for changing the default port to headphones, which should make the noise disappear completely (and it is not noticeable on headphones, at least not on mine).