Retina MBP has static on the headphone output

I am experiencing intermittent static from the headphone connection on my Retina MBP. It's audible through a lot of music. The volume control in the system doesn't affect the volume of the static. The static will come and gone and is present about a third of the time. It will cease if the audio output goes to sleep (wuch as after audio has been paused for about 10 seconds.)

Unfortunately, I can't find any way to stop it. It doesn't seem related to software. It's not related to the headphones (tried them on other devices as well as other headphones.) There's nothing that I can do with the computer that changes the behavior or 'pattern' of the static. It's just brutally annoying no matter how you slice it.

I'm trying to remember to take my headphones to the Apple store to listen to their floor models. I'm afraid they'll have the same symptom since my previous 17" MacBook Pro also had this behavior. (And from searching on Google, so do many other Intel MacBooks.)

Any others with the same problem? Any ideas about what Apple would do, if anything? I wish there was a mod to fix it. Bloody annoying to pay $2,100 for a laptop and not be able to use headphones with it.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, Mac OS X (10.7.4), Base Model (8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD)

Posted on Oct 1, 2012 11:48 PM

19 replies

Nov 1, 2015 2:21 PM in response to BraytonAK

I am going to take a wild stab in the dark and say that the noise occurs because all the devices (sound / USB) are on the same bus as the Thunderbolt port and that the external dock is the thing with no noise suppression or a fault on the power feeds to the USB3 ports. The same USB3 hard disk gives no noise problem when run on the internal USB ports so there are filters in there somewhere!

I dare say that if I splashed out £1000 on an Apple external monitor with Thunderbolt I wouldn't have had the problem either and this is therefore "my fault" for being "cheap" and getting the OWC dock - LOL... I might ask OWC if there is a microcode update for the product or if this is a known issue though. If I hear anything useful I will report back although it's close to being off-topic for the OP.

I can't say whether it's possible even in theory for the Thunderbolt ports to have noise suppression - they do go right into the guts of the machine - but I would like to think they could have so, yes, Apple could have probably implemented a fix for OWCs design error. A more cynical person would say that it's not in their interest to do so from a sales perspective. I am more understanding and therefore I am sure they just forgot... 😐

BraytonAK Author

Level 1

33 points

Nov 1, 2015 3:49 PM in response to mister_saxon

Well, as FCC documents on devices always say, devices should not produce interference and must accept interference. I think the fault lies not in the Thunderbolt circuitry but that the audio circuitry is to blame because it's not properly shielded from outside interference. This mid evident by those using external 'sound cards' that don't have the same problem.

-RS

Level 1

4 points

Feb 8, 2016 1:53 AM in response to BraytonAK

I tried all of the suggestions none of which solved my problem unfortunately. I experimented with different power cables (the cable with an electrical plug on one end and an apple plug, which attaches to the apple charger, on the other end). Still no success. I tried different combinations of settings in the audio midi setup. No success.

What "finally" worked was plugging the charger into an electrical socket which didn't look like spaghetti junction. Problem solved. I suspect that the electrical socket extension that I was previously using is of substandard quality or doesn't control electrical interference very well. As a result, the current wasn't clean so to speak, and the apple charger was picking all of that up. I'm not an electrician so I could be very wrong, but from my knowledge of power adapters in A/V equipment, a clean power draw can improve picture and audio quality.

Anyway, the above is another suggestion for the fold.

HTH

hartfee

Level 1

4 points

Sep 22, 2016 9:51 AM in response to jazzytaxi

When I do this, it fixes the sound for a few seconds, then the static starts again. It slowly gets worse and worse until I can barely hear whatever audio is playing. This is without anything plugged in (no usb's, power cord, etc), and with or without headphones...

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Retina MBP has static on the headphone output