Laptop/Notebook audio solutions / headphone outputs are generally poor for several reasons. Here are a few:
Cost – in an effort to keep total unit costs down, most notebook makers use low-grade, low-cost components in the audio section. There are very few exceptions to this rule. Consumers, by and large, expect that each generation of PC should be more powerful and more feature-laden than the previous models…while at the same time, being cheaper. Cheap components & outsourced labor are the inevitable result of this market reality. Microsoft does lay forth some minimum requirements regarding audio quality (PC9x…actually I’m not sure if these are still enforced), but the requirements are not all that stringent, and certainly don’t go very far in ensuring a quality audio solution on a PC.
Fairly low consumer expectations regarding notebook PC audio quality – This is a broad generalization, but most users simply don’t expect much from their notebooks in terms of audio quality. If they can hear reasonably clear sound coming out of the (often tiny) speakers, and the headphone jack sounds “ok”, it’s pretty much good enough for most users. Most users understand that the audio isn’t going to be world-class coming out of the notebook, and thus set their expectations accordingly. If audio quality was a top-3, super-important purchase criteria for the majority of users, you’d see a more concerned focus in this area from the top tier PC makers…but frankly, it isn’t…so they don’t.
It’s tough to get clean audio out of a notebook. - Consider that a notebook audio solution is a challenge to nail down from an engineering standpoint. The big issue is finding layout space to create a dedicated analog ground plane, and to route signals cleanly & away from the noisy, high-speed digital sections. Notebook motherboard PCB’s are literally JAM PACKED from side-to-side & top-to-bottom with signal routing, and generally are 6 layers deep, with many that are 8 or even 10 layers of signal routing deep. The fact that the audio solutions on these notebooks sound even remotely decent is a miracle frankly. Connect a set of powered speakers to almost any notebook headphone jack & crank up those powered speakers (no music playing)…99% of the time your will hear at least some system noise, especially if you do certain things like Ethernet transfers, USB transfers, hard disk activity, move the cursor with the touchpad…stuff like that. It’s nearly impossible to avoid really. And the reality is, the audio section is often an afterthought when laying out a motherboard. Almost every other sub-system on the board is deemed “more critical” from a layout perspective. Audio is often filled in late in the game & left with the challenge of making the best of it with the space that’s left over. Sad, but true.
Peace,
Graz
. It seems to happen no matter what i have open and so on. My Question is; what are the ways to fix it, if any?
