Anyone else have audio distortion?

I ordered a new MacBook Pro 17" 3.06Ghz one week ago, I noticed the evident audio distortion with a pair of headphones, especially on solo piano songs. I couldn't play with the Ivory piano software instrument which I used to play with my 3 years old MacBook Pro without any distortion problems!

Apple changed me the computer with a new one but I recieved it today and the distortion is still there!
I hope it's a software problem they can solve sometime soon. If it's a hardware issue it's quite a bit of bad luck I got two faulty MacBooks, isn't it?

Found out today that the problem still existed once hooking up to a mixer thru a direct box...****! The updates didn't help. I also installed snow leopard...no luck. It MUST be hardware related...marching back into apple store after their store renovation with a mixer and a pair of MDR-7506's....

hey guys, I have a similar problem with audio. I have an aluminium macbook and iv noticed a kind of static that is evident once i plug in my headphones. Iv noticed that i can hear the static when i make my laptop play a short sound. I have also noticed that i can make it un-audiable if i connect headphones with volume control on them and turn the volume down on the headphones. Also, Ive noticed that my built in speakers dont cut out the audio straight away when i connect my headphones. There is a lag of a couple of seconds before the sound transfers...
it seems like everyone is having this kind of problem but this was not evident on my previous laptop (one of the first generation black macbooks) so it seems like its just a problem with the aluminium versions... has anyone had audio problems on the pros? or the new macbooks (not aluminium ones)?

I just purchased a MacBook Pro 3.06GHz and have been running Logic Studio. I monitor on both a MOTU 896HD funneled out to a pair of KRK V8's. I also monitor from a pair of SONY MDR-7506 headphones plugged directly into the MacBook's headphone jack. I am also having great difficulty getting the SONY headphones to produce a loud enough sound without a bunch of strange digital distortion artifacts accompanying. However, today I tried plugging my iPod earbuds into the MacBook's headphone out and found the volume to be much louder and no distortion (though the frequency response of these is extremely limited). This leads me to conclude that the MacBook's on-board converter-amp-headphonejack architecture is overloaded by the sonic/power demands of the SONY headphones. My conclusion is that I need to buy a small portable I/O that can handle the power boost required to drive a high-quality headphone. Anyopne have any experience with this? Suggestions for I/Os ???

Man that could be. I use HD25. I set Audio to 48 khz/24 bit and managed to get rid of the low level artefacts and noise but the high level distortion is still there. But i don't care anymore. I guess its the hardware. Can't do nothing against it anyway. There's no warranty left. @ home i will use a usb interface. On the run i'll use the onboard thing.

I have a MacPro (desktop model) and I have recently been also getting audio distortion for about a month. I am using Logic Pro with a Mackie Onyx Satellite, Motu Midi Express 128, Mackie Mixer, PC88 keyboard, Alesis PowerAmp. Everything has been fine up until over a month ago when I started to get distortion in everything: Itunes, Keyboard output, Finale (music editing software),LogicPro output. I troubleshot the speakers, power amp, etc. I called Apple Support and they suggested I take the cpu into an Apple Store. I did that and they ran some diagnostics but it showed no problem. I talked to several vendor's tech support concerning their equipment and one felt that it was a communication problem between the firewire of the cpu and audio interface (Mackie Onyx). I purchased another firewire card..... still the same distortion. The next thing to 'change' is the audio interface.

Occasionaly when I re-boot, the distortion goes away and if I use Itunes or play the keyboard all is well..... until I use Logic Pro or Finale. I am starting to believe that it is software related and that some software is changing a setting causing the distortion.

I posted this already in another thread but would like to add my experience to this one, too.

I came here because recently I experienced similar issues. The sound was distorted over headphones.

I have a theory for this. I used the function (in iTunes) where the sounds gets improved. After that with low volume level and even louder the sound was distorted.

I followed the advise in this topic to change the bitrate with the Audio-MIDI-Setup Utility. You can start it with spotlight. There in the Format category stood 2channel - 16 bit. I changed it to 2channel - 32 bit. After that the sound is great again, even at very low volumne. My theory is, that iTunes changed it to 16 bit.

I'm very happy with that. I had the fear that the audio output is broken.