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Unread 21 Sep 2005, 21:02   #1
HAL-9000
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Wondering if anybody can help me..

Righty. My laptop is connected to my amp via the headphone socket on the laptop to the amps 'CD-In' socket. When my laptop is plugged into the power socket there is a constant and rather irritating crackling coming from my amp, whether the sound on my laptop is turned on or not. At the moment I can also hear a distinct clicking every second or so - very regular - sounds mechanical like a clock ticking. Other times there will be an audiable squeeking and sometimes the noise is quite loud.

The odd bit comes when I unplug the power to my laptop and run only off the battery. The sound is perfectly crisp - no crackling or hissing. No squeeking or ticking. The sound is fine - as if I were listening through headphones (but listening through my amp, obviously). When I use headphones I do not have the same problem and there is no problem when using the laptops own speaker. It is getting quite irritating now and I am beginning to worry about the health of my amp, as it seems like the power going to my laptop is directly affecting it. Do any of you know what is happening here, and could anyone possibly suggest a remedy that would allow me to have my laptop both plugged into the power and connected to my amp? Thanks in advance.
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Unread 21 Sep 2005, 21:11   #2
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Re: Wondering if anybody can help me..

I think I've seen some self-regulating sockets around. The tick certainly comes from your electricity grid, so they will filter it out. If you can't find it in the PC shop, go to some audio store where they sel KEF, NAD, Quad, and brands like that. They can surely hook you up with something.
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Unread 21 Sep 2005, 22:06   #3
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Re: Wondering if anybody can help me..

Right wicked I'll go down to the local electrical store and pick one of those out tomorrow then. Cheers.
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Unread 23 Sep 2005, 09:22   #4
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Re: Wondering if anybody can help me..

Such is the finicky nature of amplifiers and audio gear.

Things like this are almost always a grounding problem, either in the laptop/tranformer or the amplifier. One of the most common and hard to get rid of is a ground loop, when two devices sharing a common ground are connected together and any noise in the power gets cycled between the two devices and the electrical wiring of your house resulting in amplification of that noise. It's the bane of all good audio engineers. The solution will be to find a better ground either by connecting the ground point on the back of your amplifier (if it has one that is) to an isolated surface that's grounded seperately to your household mains, or move one of the two equipment to a different socket in the house further away where hopefully there is not as much of a direct path between the two devices.


The other thing is it could well be the result of a poor quality transformer in the ac adapter for your laptop, which is feeding dirty power back into the mains, and as xtrasyn said getting a power line filter may help to alleviate the problem.
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Unread 24 Sep 2005, 00:23   #5
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Re: Wondering if anybody can help me..

what djbass said.
Although you don't seem to be experiencing it, the ground loop (exhibited as a constant low tone "hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm") can be rather annoying - if you're going to hear it, it often comes when recording from a mic to the PC soundcard.
What you are hearing may well be RF interferance* from the laptop's transformer. Try moving the transformer as far away from the amp as possible. If you have sufficient cable, plug the laptop in to a socket in the next room and try it like that, as a test.
If the problem still persists, it's not likely to be RF directly, but the transformer may be inducing current fluctuations (either in the supply to the laptop, or back into the ring system in the house).
A final option is that the charging gear in the laptop could be doing it, by the same method. This can be checked by removing the laptop battery and running off the transformer - almost all laptops will allow this, and that way the charging circuits will be disabled.

Either way, laptop power gear is not really designed with quality in mind, so unfortunately you might just have to run off battery if you want perfect sound.



* The best example of this is the most often heard and the most annoying. Hold your mobile phone near a speaker and call someone. Behold the wonders of RF current induction.
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