Q: Does your new 27" LED Cinema Display buzz?

Same problem here. I allready bought new speakers because I thought that they are the source of this noise. Are they official informations from Apple about this problem and maybe a solution? I bought my screen at Amazon.de in February.

Hi danny m,

I had exactly the same issue after 3 months of use - five days ago. My 27" LED-Cinema-D. went clicky when brighter - the intervals got abour 20-30secs. When going back to 50% brightness, it clicked about every about 40-50 secs. Since I work on a quiet environment, this is not acceptable for me. I returned it to Amazon (germany). Had my money back after three business days, luckily. Puuuh...!

Now happily returned to working with my 2006 ACD 20", which is small, but brilliant for me. This one, too, has a "hum-issue": It hums in every brightness-position EXCEPT the "5 squares" and the "full" position on the brightness-overlay. But "5 sq" works fine for me. I never needed "Full" up to now. An apple-engineer said thats the inverter-issue, well known by apple, costs carried by user...

Cheers, chrishees

Hi sbrinkmann,

siehe meinen thread in englisch. Ich hab mein 27"-LED nach gut 3 Monaten zu Amazon Deutschland zurückgeschickt und um Erstattung gebeten. Drei Tage später hatte ich mein Geld zurück.

Viel Glück und alles Gute,

chrishees

I am on my second Cinema Display and now both have made this annoying humming sound.  I brought the first one (24" inch display) in a few months ago and they couldn't hear the sound.  It was too loud at the Apple store to hear.  Unfortunately, the 1 year of Apple Care had expired to get it fixed.  Said it would cost about $700 out of pocket to fix.

Now, I have the 27" Cinema Display, which my company purchased for me only few months ago and it's now doing the same thing.  It gets louder when I adjust the brightness up.  I work in a quiet environment, so this is really annoying.  So bummed this is happening again.  I buy Apple products because they are quiet.  I hope they can fix this.

I'm having the same problem right now as well.

I've had my display for about 2 years. I purchased the display with my macbook pro in 2011. It's worked perfectly fine until about a month or so ago. I have the same problem with the brightness creating a louder buzz/hum sound the higher you go. I can't even play some music over it after so long because its just a constant annoying sound..

I brought it to the Apple Store by me (Orland Park, IL) and had them diagnose it and take a look. Told them the same deal everyone else is having... Higher the brightness, louder it gets. They said that it would be either power supply (magsafe, usb, display port) cable that was faulty, hence giving it a bad electrical grounding or the board on the back since its a backlit monitor. I left it at the store for about 5 days... hoping that the repair was possible and I could go back to using it as normal (seeing as i spent $1000 for it..). They said they could not find anything wrong with and they stressed it for 3 days trying to find the problem.

I've been troubleshooting this myself for the last 2 weeks or so, trying every possiblity since the Apple Store couldn't help solve the problem. I've tried different magsafe connections, replacing my powerstrip, unplugging other electronics in my room (even all of them but the computer), moving the computer in varoius different locations away from the monitor, and even using a seperate macbook to confrim that it wasn't my magsafe connection on my laptop.

I'm baffled on what else it could be since the apple store couldn't recreate this problem, or either they couldn't hear the sound (which i have no idea how you cant). So if anyone has any other troubleshooting workarounds, I'd love to hear them cause I'm all out of ideas. Thank god I'm not the only one out here with this problem though..

I have just the same problem, but mine made some fog before, behind the glass, in the corner where the the ennoying buzz seems to come. And that will happen just at the end of two years guarantee. 

What's the answer? Apple Store, again? Is there nothing I can do?

Ordered my 27" LED refurbished. It arrived yesterday and my love affair was short lived. About an hour in, the buzzing started. At first, I only noticed it when loading Web pages. Then it progessively got worse to the point where any brightness setting above 50% would create a constant buzzing. Found this thread and quickly concluded this is a design flaw. Reboxed it and sent it back. Not impressed, Apple. Will spend my hard earned money elsewhere.

I've had a 30 inch with an 2009 Mac Pro which has been totally silent up until today. As for brightness settings I have always keeped it calibrated.

Due to another fault Apple UK told me today to unplug everything from the Mac Pro them hold in the power buttom for 30 seconds.

Since reconnecting I can not get rid of this hum.

Seems to me that there are two different problems here. Some hear the buzzing/noise when brightness is on a low level (kind of like the buzzing of a lamp dimmer) and some get loud noise when turning up the brightness on the cinema display.

I have the latter problem (with my 27 inch) and I think it is the fan cooling the screen that is making the noise. Just like many of you the noise gets louder when I have a brightness level over 50 %. It sounds like the fan blades are going against something.

When starting up my MBP and the cinema display the noise is barely audible but after about 15 minutes (when the screen has warmed up) the noise gets pretty loud. The last week the noise has gotten worse and it starts to get loud faster after turning on the screen.

When I plug the mag safe into my MBP things get really out of hand and the noise gets really loud and irritating. Probably because the screen gets warmer when powering the MBP.

Does anyone have any thoughts on how to make sure what is the problem and how to fix it? Can somebody make a picture tutorial for opening up the screen and checking the fan/fans? I am not sure where to start or if I should just have it fixed. I am worried that it will cost me though.

Thank you.

Well, some development. I thought it was the fan making the sound but I have started to suspect that maybe the case is that the fans "intensity" somehow affects the speakers which amplifies the fan noise. (??) Could that happen? Or maybe it is not the fan at all and the electronics are affecting the speakers. Intresting indeed.

Today I put my ear to the vent on the back of the screen (behind the stand) to listnen to the noise and it came out very loud, even louder than under the screen.  So I thought, well it has to be the fan then because that is where it is located. But as I read another post here on the forums from Bleengrass (https://discussions.apple.com/message/23999708#23999708) it struck me that it is also where the subwoofer is located. And thus it led me to belive in the theory that it is the speakers I am hearing.

So now I am wondering what could cause this and how to fix it. I will go to the mac service store nearby this afternoon and hear what they have to say. I will report back!

Stay tuned.

Ok, the visit to apple service center helped me not very much as anticipated. Of course they wanted me to carry the display to the store so they could fix it and that would probably cost me around 2000 swedish kronor (about 300USD) so that is out of the question.

BUT!!

I have stumpled upon a very intruiging thread where a guy has uploaded a video of the noise his display is making and it is identical to the noise I am hearing from my display! I was very happy to find this. The solution though seems a bit complicated to me as a novice in electronics but it involves swapping some parts on the power supply board in the display and I am tempted to give it a try.

Check out the thread here:

http://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=23699

Intresting is it not?

I've had the same issue, and the most frustrating thing for me is that Apple's attitude is that this isn't a defect. I'm pretty sure none of us expect a display to make a buzzing noise as a standard part of the specs.

I've had the same also . Noise tzzzzz in my 27'' cinema display . Apple ????? No one have a idea ????????????

I'm in the site of apple no ? Thanks for feedback ...

I have two Apple Cinema Displays (both 20 inch) ... and one of them recently started making this humming noise. As I recently purchased a new 2014 R2-D2 Mac Pro [ which is much quieter than my previous BIG Silver Mac Pro ] ... that may be another reason as to why I have started noticing the hum so much.

Thanks to this thread ... I have managed to isolate the problem to the brightness level: On FULL brightness, there is no hum ... but as you reduce the brightness level, the hum gets louder and varies in intensity.

I tried the same thing on the second monitor and it also hums, but the hum is not as bad/loud as on the first monitor.

Hey woszwoz,

The same here. When I changed my PMG5 in 2010 for a quiet Mac Mini (C2D 2,66GHz) I also found my 20" ACD with the exact same behaviour - mine does the hum-thing like that:

Brightness on 5 (from 16) Points - no hum.

Brightness decreasing from  5 to zero: increasing hum.

Brightness increasing from 5 to 14: increasing hum.

Brightness on 15 and 16: no hum.

I searched the web and didn`t find deeper knowledge about this "feature". Someone wrote it could be the inverter. As far as I found out, it could be a pretty hard thing to repair that with "normal" technical skills.

Conclusion: I still love my display. It cost me round 750 € in 2005 and I planned to work with this one for the next 10-15 Years. It is pretty annoying that I now have to use it on only two or three brightness-positions, otherwise it gets on my nerves...!

Seriously, I wish, Apple would do a repair-program "for us 20-inch-users". So, please, Apple...! :-)

Until then: do the brightness-shuffle - altogether!

Chris