Oh The Squeal......

A

Alco_P-A

Member
of it all. I bought some external speakers for my laptop to get some real loud loco sounds. The only problem is the high pitch squeal when I plug them into the external audio jack. It stops when I turn the speakers off or unplug them from the pc. So what causes this. I tried a different set of speakers and they do the same thing also. I also moved the speakers away from the pc with no luck. Just wondering?
:eek:
 
I encountered this once at work. A women brought in her laptop because at start up(the Windows loading screen) The internal speakers would just blast a god awful screeching. In your case it may just be a missing driver or something simple like that. However sadly this laptop was canned and scavenged for parts. Even after the HD was reformatted and the OS reinstalled the speakers still flipped out. SO it could be an enormous amount of things...mobo failing etc.
 
Sounds like "feed back". can you turn off the laptop speaker so only the external speakers work? That should stop the squeal.
 
It is feedback, but it is caused by the microphone, not other speakers. What happens is that the microphone is picking up noise and that gets fed to the speakers which sends it back through the microphone and gets amplified again. This cycle is the squeal you hear.

The best way to stop it (especially in a laptop) is to mute the microphone unless you need it. If you're on a desktop with an external microphone, just move it around until the feedback stops.

You can also minimize or stop the feedback by reducing the microphone gain (volume control applet).

Bill
 
The squeal will start when I fire up the laptop and windows vista starts up and then it will quit. Then if i'm not running 2010 it's comes and goes. If I'm running 2010 then it's all the time.
 
I looked in the control panel and diden't see anything about turning off the mic but it does talk about turning on one in recording. I muted the volume,course nothing. The squeal does adjust by the external volume knob on the speakers itself.
 
Then I'd say you have something wrong internally with your laptop. The sound appears to be triggered by the loading of the drivers at boot up. Once booted, the howl comes and goes. Under XP, there used to be a check box in the mixer panel application of Control Panel that you could check to give your laptop a big boost in output for use in a noisy area

If the control afforded by the driver was cutting in and out it could trigger the howl. You mention that you use the speaker volume control. Does that mean you have powered speakers? If they are, the extra amplification added to what you already have in the laptop could cause it too. Do you have a set of un-amplified speakers you could try?

@Westside: I hadn't thought of that. Speakers can act as a microphone if plugged into the wrong jack. Something to check.

Bill
 
I got two external audio jacks. Tried them both with same results. Squeal. The speakers are logitech and both sets plug into an outlet. One is a $15.00 set,the other is a $75.00 set w/a seperate bass speaker. It seems to do it more when running Trainz. The squeal will start and then a poping sound,then squeal is gone until it starts again. Each time the squeal starts I get the same effect over and over.
Alco_P-A
bigboytrainsandhobbies.com
 
Are you getting silence except when Trainz is running? That would be really strange.

Did someone mention powered speakers? If they are on a different electric circuit than the laptop, there could be a mismatch. Back in the days of hifi sets, if various components were plugged into different power circuits, there could be a ground mismatch which sometimes resulted in hum or other noise.

Have you tried reporting this on a hardware forum? Perhaps Logitech could help.
 
The squeal comes and goes whenever I use external speakers. No squeal with just the internal speakers. So if a bad audio chip why not squeal with or without speakers? Thanks..
 
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