[wplug] sound trouble w/ laptop

[coldfire]

> There are two potential (and not mutually exclusive) sources of this
> problem.  The first is that there is usually little, if any, acoustic and
> electrical isolation in laptop sound cards.  This makes it prone to all
> sorts of interference from the cpu and disks.

this has never been a problem before.  i've never heard the interference
at this high of a level.  i can't recall when the problem began however.

> Secondly, you didn't
> mention whether or not your 1/8th"-RCA adaptor has an impedance matching
> resistor.  If not, then when you take a signal from the headphone out and
> connect it to a line-level device, you've got to boost the output get any
> kind of audible signal, and you amplify any distortion along with it.

when connecting two devices (headphone out to line in) wouldn't it be more
ideal to lower the level to prevent the distortion of the audio signal?
the line-out and line-in don't require a very strong signal (i thought).
for example, if you plug the headphones into a line-out jack, the signal
is barely audible.

> Plus, your signal is at the wrong impedance, which only adds more noise.
> You can get an adaptor that has an impedance-matching resistor built in,
> and that should do something, but the bottom line is that laptop sound
> cards generally aren't that great.
> -dgm

just to repeat myself (from earlier in this msg), i've never had this much
interference.  which leads me to believe that something is improperly
grounded, not grounded, or just fried.



coldie