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Poor sound quality with iMac 24" -- lots of HISS

F

fbx

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 30, 2007
44
0
Running the iMac with Boot Camp and Win XP on 24" 2.4GHz Alum iMac, I get tons of hiss and swishy sounds when using iTunes (or any other player). Music sounds awful, as if recorded on a cheap cassette recorder from 30 yrs ago. These are high quality carefully recorded ECM jazz tunes.

When I play the same tunes in OSX and iTunes, no problems. Sound great.

I can't find anyone who has the same problem.
 
l33r0y said:
Re-install the windows sound drivers and check the mixer settings
Click to expand...


Do you mean the Boot Camp sound drivers? Or the Windows XP sound drivers from the Windows disk?

The way this would be done would be go to Device Manager in XP where I've got

Audio Codecs
Legacy Audio Drvers
Legacy Video Capture Devices
Media Control Devices
Realtek High Definition Audio
Video Codecs

and delete

Audio Codecs
Legacy Audio Drivers and
Realtek High Definition Audio

and then try to reinstall same rom Windows disk and Boot Camp 1.4 disk?
 
How are you connecting your computer to your audio system?

I just got a new/refurb imac and the analog outs seem a little noisy--probably due to grounding issues and this old house wiring.

If you have an audio system that accepts optical/toslink connectors, that could be a cheap way to get around the issue.

I've got a 12' mini to toslink optical cable winging its way to me until I pick up a firewire interface. I think I paid about $6.50 bucks. at my favorite online radioshack alternative.
 
fbx said:
Do you mean the Boot Camp sound drivers? Or the Windows XP sound drivers from the Windows disk?

The way this would be done would be go to Device Manager in XP where I've got

Audio Codecs
Legacy Audio Drvers
Legacy Video Capture Devices
Media Control Devices
Realtek High Definition Audio
Video Codecs

and delete

Audio Codecs
Legacy Audio Drivers and
Realtek High Definition Audio

and then try to reinstall same rom Windows disk and Boot Camp 1.4 disk?
Click to expand...


ONLY do the following:

1, Double click on Realtek High Definition Audio
2, Select DRIVER tab
3, Click UPDATE driver
4, Skip Windows Update
5, Select INSTALL FROM SPECIFIC LOCATION
6, Browse to location of BOOTCAMP sound driver
7, Restart when prompted.

There is no need to re-install anything else from your list above.
 
l33r0y said:
ONLY do the following:

1, Double click on Realtek High Definition Audio
2, Select DRIVER tab
3, Click UPDATE driver
4, Skip Windows Update
5, Select INSTALL FROM SPECIFIC LOCATION
6, Browse to location of BOOTCAMP sound driver
7, Restart when prompted.

There is no need to re-install anything else from your list above.
Click to expand...

Did that. No change. Interesting thing about this distortion is that it follows ever sound made in Win XP. The logon sound, the logoff sound, any warning sound -- it's always BONGBONG(sssh), where the parenthetical "sssh" is the "tail" of hiss/distortion I'm talking about. I just went to the Sounds and Audio Devices Properties and listened to some fo the program events sounds in Win XP. Each is followed by this swishing hissy sound of greater or lesser duration. The Win Shutdown sound has a longer "tail" while simpler Default Beep has a shorter hiss tail. Sounds sort of like white noise, compressor noise, crazy.
 
I think this is actually the realtek sound control. In the lower left control panel area (I'm not a windows person) there is the icon for the realtek control panel. It has all these horrid reverb settings. You basically need to set it to none as it comes with some effects already applied. Your problem sounds very similar to what I was hearing. Messing with control panel, and turning off teh effects seemed to work out pretty well.
 
I am having the same problem; a kind of swishy, hissy noise after each sound played in Windows. OS X sound is perfect.

I've tried resinstalling the Boot Camp driver, downloading and installing the latest driver from the RealTek site, and messing with the reverb in the control panel. Nothing has made any difference.

A weird thing I have noticed is that in XP if I plug headphones in the sound seems perfect through them. This would suggest a hardware issue with the internal speakers to me, rather than a driver issue. However, clearly this is not the case since the internal speakers sound superb in OS X.

Does anyone who has a glossy iMac (mine is 24" by the way) and is using Windows XP in Boot Camp *NOT* experience this problem?
 
barnarmo said:
I think this is actually the realtek sound control. In the lower left control panel area (I'm not a windows person) there is the icon for the realtek control panel. It has all these horrid reverb settings. You basically need to set it to none as it comes with some effects already applied. Your problem sounds very similar to what I was hearing. Messing with control panel, and turning off teh effects seemed to work out pretty well.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I believe this, too, but have been unable to correct it using the ridiculous green Realtek driver panel. Whatever setting I select, from NONE to any of the horrid effects, I always get the sssshh. after every sound the computer makes. This has become extremely annoying. I think I will try removing or disabling the Realtek driver and see if that helps. I'm afraid if I remove the driver I will get no sound at all.

I wonder if Realtek has a support msg board where this problem could be posted?
 
maverick808 said:
I am having the same problem; a kind of swishy, hissy noise after each sound played in Windows. OS X sound is perfect.

I've tried resinstalling the Boot Camp driver, downloading and installing the latest driver from the RealTek site, and messing with the reverb in the control panel. Nothing has made any difference.

A weird thing I have noticed is that in XP if I plug headphones in the sound seems perfect through them. This would suggest a hardware issue with the internal speakers to me, rather than a driver issue. However, clearly this is not the case since the internal speakers sound superb in OS X.

Does anyone who has a glossy iMac (mine is 24" by the way) and is using Windows XP in Boot Camp *NOT* experience this problem?
Click to expand...

I also have the 24" 2.4 Core 2 Duo Aluminum iMac. And I can't get away from this sound. You're actually the first person I've found who acknowledges the exact kind of problem I'm having.

May I ask did you try to uninstall the Realtek driver altogether? I'm wondering if this might be a solution?
 
fbx said:
I also have the 24" 2.4 Core 2 Duo Aluminum iMac. And I can't get away from this sound. You're actually the first person I've found who acknowledges the exact kind of problem I'm having.

May I ask did you try to uninstall the Realtek driver altogether? I'm wondering if this might be a solution?
Click to expand...

No I didn't try uninstalling altogether. What would be the point of that, as you'd then hear nothing?
 
Here's another test

I discovered that if you MUTE the speakers in Win XP (so that the circle with the red bar shows up on the task ar lower right), and then go to Sounds and Audio Devices Properties

START/CONTROL PANEL/ SOUNDS SPEECH AND AUDIO DEVICES/SOUNDS AND AUDIO DEVICES/SOUNDS tab

And test your various Windows sounds (by highlighting a program event in that list in lower half of panel and pressing the arrow to the left of browse) then you can hear just the swishing sound by itself, without the Windows sound.

In other words, the hiss/swish sound is coming through the speakers when the device is MUTED! I don't know how this is possible. But it IS THE REALTEK, cause if you bring up the realtek driver panel and start changing the stupid "Environments" the swish/hiss changes with each different setting, from "Stone Corridor" to "Bathroom" to "Sewer Pipe" etc.
 
maverick808 said:
No I didn't try uninstalling altogether. What would be the point of that, as you'd then hear nothing?
Click to expand...

Yep. Did that, that happened. What about using the driver from Boot Camp 1.3? Is that also a Realtek? I don't remember having this problem on my previous (white plastic 2.0MHz) iMac.

But wait, I think you are using the prior generation iMac, or someone on this thread is, I think.

What about going back to Boot Camp 1.3? Has anyone tried that?
 
Ru guys using the new iMac cuz Im buying it n this problem doesn't sound attractive! Realtek always had problems even on a Windows PC I've had the same problems for several years. The one thing that does work is uninstall all the sound apps on your device manager then download the driver from the realtek website and reinstall. This should temporarily fix ur sound problem.

Otherwise may b realtek has problems running on Bootcamp/Parallel since Realtek is quite crap!
 
I went checking for new drivers for the Realtek last night, looks like there might have been some new ones posted Monday. Can't confirm that this is the chipset in the new imac though.

realtek.com.tw
 
Just to add to the group, I also am having poor sound quality in Windows XP on the new aluminum 24" iMac. I was quite dismayed when I first ran into this issue, as I hadn't heard too many sounds in OSX and was assuming it was the speaker quality. I'm glad this isn't an isolated issue, and hopefully there will be some boot camp updates and/or RealTek updates to fix this.
 
Sadly, same deal here. Everything else works SO well in bootcamp... and XP absolutely flys. There is something... eery about seeing XP on my iMac.. but cool too.

I have tried pulling down the latest 1.75 drivers from realtek, uninstalling via the control panel the realtek that BC installs and installing the new one but same situation. I'm thinking about doing an uninstall and then just pointing XP at the driver folder when new hardware is found... I'll post back on how that does....
 
Well gave installing just the drivers (not running the full setup package) and same situation (but no annoying RT control panel running anymore though).

This is a bummer... hopefully will be fixed soon with a driver update.
 
Heh heh, another good reason to switch from Windows to Mac OS X. Even on a Mac Windows is drama. :eek:
 
I'm AMAZED - A solution to the noise!!!

Ok, I really did not believe the last post... that it could sound fine through headphones, so I pulled out my Klipsch 2.0 promedia's and... sure enough, the sound is PERFECT. CLEAN, CLEAR... absolutely no hiss, no flutter, nothing. Truly this is 'just as well' as the Klipsch's sound SO much better than the built in iMac speakers (even in X when they sound fine)...

So... not sure why this would be, but it is a solution without a doubt!!! :D
 
It's a work-around, but not a solution. I don't really need fantastic sound quality anymore, and part of the reason I wanted an iMac was to get rid of all desktop clutter. Adding my old speakers to my desktop adds about 6 different cables in different directions that I truly just don't want to have around anymore.

I've tried everything I can try so far regarding driver fixes, to no avail. Let's see an actual fix from Realtek/Apple regarding this.
 
hox said:
It's a work-around, but not a solution. I don't really need fantastic sound quality anymore, and part of the reason I wanted an iMac was to get rid of all desktop clutter. Adding my old speakers to my desktop adds about 6 different cables in different directions that I truly just don't want to have around anymore.

I've tried everything I can try so far regarding driver fixes, to no avail. Let's see an actual fix from Realtek/Apple regarding this.
Click to expand...

That was my initial intention with the iMac as well... clear off the desk of everything, etc. It is really strange that the sound would be fine using the external jack but have major issues coming through the internal speakers. Fortunately these speakers for the sound they make are not too big and being only a 2.0 setup are not a big cord mess, have been able to hide everything nicely.... so it's not cluttered things up too terribly. Definitely not a final solution, but it does take care of the only issue I had with running XP on the iMac. :)
 
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