Am I the only one with a blip/pop noise?!

maybe you didn't have the first 2 long enough to notice i know mine will occasionally stop doing it then when I reboot it will start doing it again

That's another frustration a lot of MBP customers are having around this issue. Apple is not dealing with this and informing it's customers whats going on. That's why I so strongly urge people to return their machines and if they have blogs or the ability to publicize the problem and make some real 'popping noises' then PLEASE do so. People often underestimate the power of publicity. If anyone knows anyone that can really get the word out and publicize this issue then please direct them to this thread and they have their research.

It seems there are some machines that clearly do NOT exhibit the issue but I think they are few and far between and possibly can intermittently start making the noise after having been quite for a while. On other threads dealing with this issue I've had people tell me that the have new MBPs with no popping sound, and yet again, this is a delicate sound that is hard to hear amongst ambient noise. Yet in quite environs it cuts the air and is very distracting to many people.

Heres a post I made on March 16th:

In the course of 10 days I went through three (3) brand new out-of-the-box MBP's.
My #1 MBP had the obnoxious blip noise. I returned it a few days later for a new one.
My #2 MBP had >NO blips<, and TRUST ME I was listening closely for them.
Unfortunately #2 had a dead key on it and I was told the latest versions of MBP's take several weeks for replacement parts to become available so I swapped it for yet a third and...
My #3 MBP... had the blip noise all over again.

I have no idea if the quite #TWO machine (NOT making the blip/pong noise) would have eventually started making noise as has been reported by some people here. I kept it for a few days (hoping the sticky key would correct) and the pop-noise was never there.
Looks like the majority of the MBP's for the last several months have suffered this problem with the occasional odd machine being the (out of the box) exception.

RETURN YOUR MALFUNCTIONING MPB'S, GET REFUNDS, know that these laptops have a glitch that a lot of people simply don't notice because of ambient/room noise. They are not supposed to run with this distracting noise on them.

Ted

Message was edited by: Greenbot

Digwitch are you still on the thread?
What happened to your video??
I can't even find your original post for it, only my and others posts referring to it.
Did they suspend it??
We need it!!!

To Greenbot, digitalwitch and others that have an issue with the HDD parking "plink" (I believe there is a separate, more serious LB problem with the static and popping from the left speaker) here's my take on the issue:

Original drive was a Fujitsu 120GB - no plink sound, normal hard drive seek / read / write sounds.
Upgraded yesterday with a Seagate 5400.4 250GB (OEM from computer shop) and plink is there. Though, I don't notice it most of the time because of the HVAC environment that work in.

Here's the CRUCIAL PART: I've got four (yes, 4) 2.5" IDE and S-ATA drives in enclosures. I've experienced that only Seagate's newer drives that employ perpendicular read / write make plinking sounds. First encountered this with a Seagate 80GB. Thought it was going to fail and it still hasn't. Annoying? Yes. However, the 5400.4 that I'm now running off of is rated for 600,000 head parks.

This sound is not specific to MBPs, and is apparently the result of newer higher capacity notebook drive designs - people are listing this sound from Hitachi, Fujitsu and Seagate drives. I haven't hear the sounds from my 80GB Hitachi or Fujitsu drives, and will investigate my Fujitsu 120GB, but I don't recall any odd sounds. I don't have any WDs; too many drive failures, so I can't comment on those. Again, I've had this "plinking" occur on external 2.5" drives as well and seems to be built into the HDD as part of their device power management.

Also installed a Seagate 5400.4 250GB into a friend's MB yesterday (same make, model at the same time) and it exhibits the same sound.

While you might like to hold Apple accountable, the the MB(P)s are designed to heat and power consumption specs provided by HDD manufacturers. HDD manufacturers, in turn, can advertise specs like 2W consumption by parking heads to reduce power use. Apple buys according to what will meet their needs (hence Apple's shift to Intel because of Performance per Watt). If Seagate, for example, can't provide a low-watt product, Apple will go to someone who can. Everyone's looking for an advantage.

If Apple does as people suggest and creates a firmware update to eliminate HDD head parking, three (or more) things will happen:

1. Increased HDD power consumption, that leads to increased heat, which leads to higher fan use which leads to reduced batter life (times 2!). Which, needless to say, people will scream and yell and gnash their teeth about.

2. HD manufacturers would not warranty the drives they sell to Apple because Apple as, in effect, re-written the drive firmware. That'll lead to more expensive AppleCare. Remember the days of $450 AppleCare for PowerBooks? I do. It's under $300 now. Let's keep it there.

3. If your MB(P) gets knocked while you're running HDAPM, or whatever, and you end up smacking the drive head against the platter, who's really going to feel it? You, who has lost the HD and all of your data and your time to rebuild a working machine, or Apple, who might replace the drive under warranty (they might not as you're running HDAPM, and warranty does not cover things like drops, and the G-sensor is supposed to prevent data loss by working with the APM to stop the drive and park the heads, but it's being over-ridden by HDAPM...).

In the end, it's your call - Try to get Apple to replace your machine if you can't live with the plink, just remember it's typical of low power drives (at least Seagate ones that I can confirm). Also, remember to treat the service rep with the dignity you expect of others - I've seen the kind of bad karma that comes back to people who think yelling and screaming will get them "their way". And what they got makes me smile. 🙂

Cheers.

Message was edited by: willlightman

This article is about the MacBook Air, but could it be the same thing?

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307514

I dont really see the need why a harddrive needs to make such a sharp hollow pop to park. Its a really ear piercing sound, and ive never heard a computer ever ever make this sort of sound. Its really unnecessary and should definately be looked into. Its not just seagate drives, as i said I have a fijitsu.

We need to keep this thread on topic - audio trouble. The audio weirdness is widespread, probably on almost all MacBook Pros with a Santa Rosa motherboard (i.e. everything produced since June last year). It needs a firmware update I am sure, and I fear there is probably also a hardware issue. The hard drive plink is normal on many laptop hard drives. My MBP has a Fujitsu and yes, it plinks -- just as the Toshiba on my TiBook from a few years ago did, but thankfully not as loudly.

decisivemoment wrote:
We need to keep this thread on topic - audio trouble. The audio weirdness is widespread, probably on almost all MacBook Pros with a Santa Rosa motherboard (i.e. everything produced since June last year). It needs a firmware update I am sure, and I fear there is probably also a hardware issue. The hard drive plink is normal on many laptop hard drives. My MBP has a Fujitsu and yes, it plinks -- just as the Toshiba on my TiBook from a few years ago did, but thankfully not as loudly.

The thread is about both problems, but as you can clearly see, people are more disturbed about the harddrive plonking, which *is not normal* like you make it out to be.

I too have the same noise in the audio out when activating software or muting the audio out though, and am worried about that as well. This might be the reason why I return the MBP for service, but the harddrive problem is serious as well. Again; the noise and frequency of it is not normal and NEEDS to be adressed.

decisivemoment wrote:
We need to keep this thread on topic - audio trouble. The audio weirdness is widespread, probably on almost all MacBook Pros with a Santa Rosa motherboard (i.e. everything produced since June last year). It needs a firmware update I am sure, and I fear there is probably also a hardware issue. The hard drive plink is normal on many laptop hard drives. My MBP has a Fujitsu and yes, it plinks -- just as the Toshiba on my TiBook from a few years ago did, but thankfully not as loudly.

Erm, yeah, actually if you read the very first post (and the majority of the thread), you'll see this topic is about the harddrive POPPING sound from the heads parking, not audio issues.

Willlightman writes: --- Apple buys according to what will meet their needs (hence Apple's shift to Intel because of Performance per Watt). If Seagate, for example, can't provide a low-watt product, Apple will go to someone who can. Everyone's looking for an advantage.----

Willlightman,
That 'advantage' you speak of I feel is safe to assume more of a 'bottom line' concern, than a 'customer satisfaction' one. (obviously some customers are ok with it but this thread certainly denotes an issue)

I have owned several Apple laptops over the past years (going back to the PowerBook G3 Lombard and used them all in various capacities including filmmaking, sound editing etc. None of them have had this problem at this scale. I'm not much of a techie, as it sounds like you are, but much of your explanation goes over my head.

Without Apple ponying up an explanation yet still being willing to refunding people's money I see this as a typical, corporate attitude that goes something like: "We need to let this 'blip' noise stand for now and we'll be ok to get away with this 'tech-hiccup' for as long as we can before the technology improves and we can improve/fix it because not a lot of people will ever notice this little blip noise"

After $3000.00 spent on a laptop it's unacceptable for it to make this distracting noise and I still feel strongly it's a problem Apple is responsible to handle however they may decide to to that. I believe this problem will disappear one day, but until then I won't be purchasing their laptop products and encourage others to make that consideration.

Faster, bigger, cooler hard drives need to finish being invented before their sold in Apple stores.

Thanks.

Message was edited by: Greenbot

Message was edited by: Greenbot

blip

Thought the new Mac OS X update would take care of this problem guess not!

what is strange here is that this time after the 10.5.3 update
the blip did not come back (I mute it with hdapm) like it happened for the 10.5.2;
good for me 😉

POP!!!

Has anyone resolved this problem? I just noticed the same pop/clicking noise (it sounds like the noise an ipod makes when you turn the wheel). I received this MacBook Pro as a present just 2 days ago and have not downloaded/installed anything major yet. After reading different forums and how it could lead to HD failure, I'm getting scared. Anyone have a MBP with the ticking noise and it's still working fine?