High pitched speaker noise

mpj1317 · 01-30-03, 02:37 PM

I happened to use my Dell Axim in an extremely quiet room the other morning and notice that whenever my Axim is on, there is a high pitched hum coming from the speaker. It is there regardless on whether the volume is muted or not. Is this the case on all Axim's or is mine the exception? Any feedback would be appreciated.

-Mike J.

Mike C · 01-30-03, 03:01 PM

Several users have reported buzzing and humming, but for what it's worth, mine is perfectly quiet.

Mattman · 01-30-03, 07:08 PM

This is exactly what I was talking about in another post just today. I described it as the same noise you hear from a TV or monitor, but louder. It's been that way since I received the Axim. I can notice it at arm's length, no matter what the speaker volume or microphone gain setting are at.

In addition to this electrical, buzzing, humming, high pitched annoying noise, the recording and playback quality is absolutely pathetic. Granted, one will not receive THX quality sound, and I am not expecting that. But I am expecting low volume sound without severe distortion. I wonder if the two symptoms are connected to one problem.

Mike C · 01-30-03, 07:14 PM

That made me think of something funny. I thought the microphone was down there with the speaker for a long time, and it wasn't until I saw some disassembled views that I realized the mic was at the top of the unit. The results are better if you speak into the real microphone.

Snickerpuss · 01-30-03, 07:16 PM

1 of the Axim selling points for me was the voice recording. I have tried tinkering with the mic & sound volume but have had no luck. It still sounds krappy. When I play music it sounds all right but the voice playback stinks. If anyone has tweaked a good record setting please let me know.

Cheers!

01-30-03, 08:35 PM

The high pitch noise is caused by the backlit within the screen itself. All handheld devices have this problem (except sidelit devices).

To test it out turn the backlight setting on your screen to the lowest setting (which isn't off); and put your ear to screen of the Axim. You should notice that the noise is lowered significantly.

As for speaker problems: do a soft reset; after alot of prorams are used and alot files go through media player I find the sound quality goes down. All is solved with a soft reset.

There is a technical answer for why the devices do this; but I never really cared to ask. Possible electro-magnetism?

Another issue: when the device is supposedly on mute. You might still hear a sound after tapping the screen to select a menu (somewhat like a speaker blip). Only way I found to solve this is to turn off all the audio settings.

Mattman · 01-30-03, 08:48 PM

Turned the brightness all the way down and the high pitched whine is still there. It has no effect with the noise. I don't think what I am hearing is considered normal. I would expect to hear something if I put it up to my ear, but like I stated before, this is quite noticable at arm's length.

02-02-03, 09:46 PM

I get the same buzzing sound you are descibing. I did not notice for the first two weeks of use, don't know if it was there and did not notice or whether it just began. In either case, nothing seems to help and now that I know it is there it is annoying

I am going to try turning down the brightness and see if that changes thngs. Any other ideas?

Jim C · 02-05-03, 06:22 PM

The voice recording quality of my Axim is absolutely awful, also. Is anyone else's good? I was thinking maybe I had a hardware problem but saw other folks commenting on the poor voice recording audio quality.

nonoFR · 02-05-03, 06:34 PM

I have never heard any weird noise on my axim (I received it a week ago so it's fairly new) but reading this topic made me put my hear against the speaker and YES I hear the weird continuous bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
but at 5cm far from the speaker I don't hear anything... I'll keep an hear on it to see if it increases ...