Mac Mini Cd Spinning Noise

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Mac Mini Cd Spinning Noise

Yesterday I noticed that when I insert an audio cd into the mini to hear some music, the cd pushes the cd speed way up making the spinning wind noise very audible in the background when listening to the music. This becomes even more outspoken when listening at af low volume.

I tried playing the same cd in my MBP and it would appear that the MBP keeps the cd speed much lover. That, or the Superdrive in the MBP simple makes less noise than the combodrive in the mac mini.

As I have my mini set up as my living room media center it's quite annoying to have to listen to a constant wind noise when listening to an ordinary audio cd.

When playing DVD's the drive doesn't make any spinning noise.

Can anyone confirm the strange behaviour, or even better, come up with a remedy.

Mac Mini 1,66 Core Duo, MacBook Pro 17" Core Duo Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on Jan 18, 2007 1:07 AM

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Answer 1

Jan 18, 2007 3:23 AM in response to morten_fresh

morten_fresh-

Greetings and welcome to the Apple boards.

Is this on all CD's or just the one's that you burn?

Luck-

-DaddyPaycheck

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Answer 2

morten_fresh Author

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Jan 19, 2007 2:35 AM in response to DaddyPaycheck

I haven't tested with burned cd's.

This speed increase happens everytime Itunes plays a regular audio cd.

I find it really strange. The only reasonable explanation is the the MBP's drive somehow isolates spinning noise better than the drive in the mini. On the other hand i find that unbelievable as no apparent spinning noise can be heard from the MBP when playing audio cd's.

To me it appears as if the mac mini simply spins the cd faster than the MBP. Again something that would make absolutely no sense. 🙂

Well, as I only use my mac mini as a media center, it would be really cool if I could restrict the rotation spped of the drive. Like I could tell it spin no more the 4x.

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Answer 3

Jan 19, 2007 9:48 AM in response to morten_fresh

morten_fresh-

It is possible that something internal to the optical drive has offset and now the disc wobbles or something. Do you have iTunes import the cd while playing? That will cause quite a bit more activity noise from the drive itself.

It could be that the CD spin hole is not perfectly centered (happens a lot with cheap media) and the CD is vibrating more than it should.

A DVD should only play at 1X and would not be as prone to the wobble.

Try launching from your original install disk and run the Apple Hardware Test and see if that returns anything yummy.

Luck-

-DaddyPaycheck

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