Annoying 10.6.5 (?) Audio issue

Hmm,
I usually use an audio interface via fw, but that's out for repair so I'm using 1/8" headphone out to
a pair of JBL amplified speakers. Whenever I want to listen to audio (itunes, browser, system-any audio instantiated thing) I hear a a small click before the audio starts. After audio stops playing for about 20 seconds I hear another click (i'm presuming this is the audio server kicking on and off).Changing bit rate and kh doesn't fix this, and it's there through USB audio as well (if i switch to a USB device).
It's pretty annoying. If you have this issue and you didn't notice it before- I'm sorry- you will from now on...
Anyhow - its there a way to fix it? It's the kind of click you get when you change clock or bit rates between devices.

Intel iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.5)

Posted on Dec 8, 2010 12:14 PM

Reply
3 replies

Dec 15, 2010 11:43 AM in response to Benjamin Lowengard1

this is the crappy audio card in newer macs that turns off when you are not sending audio through. The way to stop the clicking is probably to have some program, like quicktime player, always looping a slient audio file in the background so the audio device thinks there is always an audio stream even if it is all zeros. Or play a real soundfile, but just turn the volume all the way down. I know its silly, but will probably work.

My macbook pro, at least, also has a terrible signal-to-noise ratio and digital gain, so turning down the volume turns down the audio coming out but NOT the background noise of converters/line amplifiers. This is awful with headphones when i'm editing audio on the road, so i keep the gain at full and use a little $7 radioshack passive-attenuator to bring the volume down for headphones and it sounds a whole lot better.

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Annoying 10.6.5 (?) Audio issue

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