Mighty Mouse causes electrical noise on headphone socket of Intel iMac!

Well I use (for some time now) a Kensignton optical trackball.

Now, I realize it's not Apple's Mighty Mouse, but it is optical, and I've never had any buzzing/whining or other distortion that would typify electrical interference.

Have you tried the Mighty Mouse on a different port - just to try it (both on the keyboard and directly on the Mac).

Try restarting the Mac, Repair its Permissions, and maybe zap the PRAM.

If those measures don't help, maybe call Apple Support.

i will check it on my machine which ships today.

you might want to try getting a logitech lazer mouse. they are quite expensive, but they come with a nice holder/charger and the rechargeable battery is very good. only have to charge it every three weeks etc

it's also got multi-configurable buttons and it's really, really fast and precise!

just thought you might want to know. it made the headphone noise go away on my powermac g4.

I have tried with headphones to test, yes - no distortion at all - none.

I likely will never even unpack the Mighty Mouse, so no haven't tried that yet, and may never.

Repairing Permissions is a quick step that resolves a number of issues. I don't necessarily think that's going to cure the sound issue, but it's among the first steps I perform when I have any trouble myself.

Zapping the Pram instructions are here.

From the KBase article:

" Resetting PRAM and NVRAM

1. Shut down the computer.
2. Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command, Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
3. Turn on the computer.
4. Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys. You must press this key combination before the gray screen appears.
5. Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
6. Release the keys.

Your computer's PRAM and the NVRAM are reset to the default values. The clock settings may be reset to a default date on some models."

Although, referencing steps 3 and 4, I still follow the step of pressing and holding the keys before I ever touch the power button, then keep them held for 4 start-up chimes.

I understand the volume, and what it very-likely sounds like - I've heard electrical distortion before.

To reiterate, I use an Optical Kensington Trackball. I've had it for some time now. No issues with sound intrusion at all.

martianrobot I am experiencing the same problem on my brand new imac (bought yesterday). For me the static noise and high frequency sound is louder when the mighty mouse is plugged directly to the computer. I tried plugging my old wireless kensington mouse and the noise disappeared, although I would prefer using the mighty mouse.

I am experiencing this same problem and it's nearly driving me to the point of insanity! I'm even considering buying a $150 USB headphone amp to fix the problem.

Here are my symptoms:

Plugging the Apple Mighty Mouse into any USB port on the computer leads to a noticable electrical hum or buzzing noise in headphones connected to the line-out port on the iMac. The sound is barely noticable on my Grado SR80s, but very noticable on my Shure E2Cs. When the lazer turns on in the mouse, the sound becomes far more high pitched. The mouse does not seem to affect sound output on my USB Soundsticks.

As I said, I tried every USB port on the computer. (Both ports on Keyboard, and all combinations of keyboard and mouse on the three USB ports on back.) None seemed to affect this problem, though it did seem worst when the mouse was plugged in on back rather than on the keyboard. I have not tried a USB hub, but since the USB ports on the keyboard don't help, I figure it wouldn't work either.

I tried repairing permissions and verify disk--didn't do anything.

I love the Mighty Mouse, but since I work a lot with headphones, I may need to switch back to my one-button bluetooth mouse. Hopefully somebody can help with this problem.

Intel iMac 17" Mac OS X (10.4.5)

I have logged the problem with the helpline, they are sending a new mighty mouse. It seems like a mouse issue as the £2.99 asda(walmart)job used, doesn't cause the problem.

Dont expect the new m/mouse to fix it.

regards

troll

Here's another unhappy camper, I have the same issue. After spending an hour being shuffled around the Apple chat session and live phone suppport. I was told "we're no longer allowed to send out replacement mice for this issue, you need to go to your local Mac Store and order a replacement" ???! Is this going to be the future of "support" ? We cant help you, go wait 4 hours for a genius appointment?

Buying an expensive replacement mouse is not a solution, I already bought an expensive computer so i wouldnt have these problems ( i thought)

Here are some clues that havent been mentioned yet on the list, maybe someone out there can find a solution faster than Apple's engineers....

Noise is independent of volume setting on iMac
MightyMouse plugged into adjacent iBook, no noise on iBook OR on iMac!
Boot into safe mode - noise goes away!

It sure seems like a hardware issue.

Hello, I bought an iMac 20" today and ran into the same problem...and found this conversation (and the original thread) with a search for "iMac headphone jack noisy".

The problem is painfully audible on a pair of Etymotic Research headphones that I have on loan from a friend. These are designed to fit into your ears with earplugs that seal off the rest of outside sound, so it's practically like having an oscilloscope plugged into your head. Though the Mighty Mouse certainly aggravates the problem with the varying pitches of whine, I have to say it's just a noisy jack when compared with other devices I've plugged the headphones into.

For instance, my Powerbook G4 has some noise on the headphone jack but it's a soft hiss. There is no variation introduced by plugging in the mighty mouse.

However, on both the iMac and PowerBook G4 it appears that the electrical gain on the noise in the headphone circuit is completely independent of the volume level. This is not true of the iPod, where if you turn the volume all the way down while no song is playing the jack goes dead quiet. If I'm right that the volume is being done entirely with software on the computers, then I have become curious as to whether there is any way to control the electrical gain of the headphone jack.

Without such a hardware-level gain control in the iMac or G4, then if your headphones don't take much power to drive...the relative volume of the noise will be greater. So you can make this less noticeable with bigger headphones. I can't hear any of this noise when I'm listening on a pair of bulky AKG studio monitors (which are not particularly shabby in terms of frequency response or audio quality, though the maximum listening volume isn't very good without a headphone amplifier).

More expense, and hassle, just to work around a
problem that should have been noticed and rectified
before Apple released these computers to their eager
public.

In Fight Club, the main character faces the grim truth about how his automobile company handles recalls. The financial formula wasn't to recall a car just because they knew it had a fatal flaw, they recalled when the cost of dealing with lawsuits would exceed the cost of performing a recall. A lot of people in business think that way, and it's sad to suspect Apple is in that camp.

Still, engineering decisions are made within certain specifications and tolerances, and influenced by issues like price. So I accept that Apple cannot anticipate every audiophile application, and that there's a limit to the quality level the consumer interface can ship with. If someone wants better, they can buy a firewire or USB audio interface with higher-quality design.

The frustrating bit is that the only guideline we are given from Apple to expect on quality is "excellent", "engineered", and "pinnacle of design". Speaker manufacturers publish graphs showing the response of their system, which you can then test your unit against. Where is the noise limit specification for the headphone jack? Are we all stuck making individual appeals?

Since this problem depends on the headphones, you've got to prove that the headphones you're using are reasonable. Perhaps see if iPod headphones have the problem?

(Sadly I no longer have iPod headphones with which to test...)

Vainly crossing fingers for a fix.

At least at this point, it can pay off to speak up. My PowerBook mentioned above just had its logic board replaced in order to address a terrible whine that happened when the CPU was drawing a middle range of power. I couldn't really reproduce the horrible cases very easily until I finally found others who managed to figure out that the defect was so bad that some systems could play a nearly full volume musical scale on the analog circuitry of the power supply:

http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits.ars/2006/3/4/3059

Once I could demonstrate it, they fixed it. But the problem had been there since I bought the machine, and made it nearly unusable at times.

iMac 20" Core Duo Mac OS X (10.4.6) 2.0 GHz, 512MB RAM

There seems to be two threads on this subject , perhaps someone with better forum skills than me can tie them together. Anyway to follow up an earlier posting. In my case a replacement was exactly the same as the first ie alternating buzz/whine noise. The cheap alternative I tried was a no make optical mouse which did cure the noise but wasn,t a very nice thing to use. I have bought a wired laser mouse which is not only silent snd comfortable but very fast. So I now have two mighty mice? and one spare keyboard because apple decided they would rather hit my cc than send return labels so ups would collect the faulty items.

I actually said they would do that on one of the keyboard problem threads, why are these companies so predictible?

Still apart from this additonal expense £100 and loosing the £ sign from the mac everything is working pretty well now.

Troll

There seems to be two threads on this subject ,
perhaps someone with better forum skills than me can
tie them together.

As of now, I've found three threads:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2274331&#2274331
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1751797&#1751797

(and this one)
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2289474#2289474

It would definitely be preferable if there was some kind of forum wrangling pulling these things together along w/a post of the official stance from Apple.

iMac 20" Core Duo Mac OS X (10.4.6) 2.0 GHz, 512MB RAM

Based on the idea that the lower noise in the PowerBook and iPod might be a function of running off of "clean" DC battery power, I wondered what would happen if the iMac were running off a battery. So I tried running it off of a UPS that I unplugged (which should provide rather clean power).

There was no audible improvement from doing so.

Does the noise get worse when you drag a window for instance
Or when holding down the mouse button
i use a motu audio interface and do not have the problem using this.
But I do remember the problem using the in built sound. And i think a bluetooth mouse gets rid of it as far as i remember.
A bluetooth mighty mouse should be issued to all suffering from this as a consolation by Apple then perhaps we can forgive them ( yes i know they do not exist but it would be great if they did )
I did not get on with the bluetooth mouse myself it is clumpy and not so accurate and also the lack of scroll wheel is not good. A fix would be good for the sound issue but I think it is probably an inherent fault and would mean apple redesigning the motherboards