Re: [gentoo-user] Advice Needed: Conexant HD-Audio noisy audio

[Alecks Gates <alecks.g@gmail.com>]

On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 11:28 AM, Ignas Anikevicius
<anikevicius@gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> It's been quite a while since I noticed this annoying behaviour, but I
> could not find any information what might cause this. So the problem is
> that at lower volumes my HD-Audio with Conexant becomes very noisy and
> this is regardless of the sound system or speakers/headphones I use.
>
> The noise can be described, as high pitched, sandy texture noise
> heard during more expressive parts of the music or speech.
>
> I experience this on two Thinkpads (x200s and x200) and it very evident
> when I connected external speakers, they produced a lot of this noise,
> or maybe I just could hear it better, because of the frequency response
> of the speakers.
>
> Does anybody have some similar issues?
>
> My current audio setup:
>
>    * PulseAudio (but the problem is experienced with ALSA as well)
>    * MPD for music playing
>    * Conexant and other related modules compiled in, power-saving
>      features enabled.
>
> What I have tried to eliminate the noise:
>
>    * Various levels of Master,PCM,Headphone channels via Alsamixer
>    * Increase the sample rate in MPD settings.
>
> The noise can be clearly head when I Have the following setting on my
> Alsamixer:
>
>    * Master ~50
>    * PCM 100
>    * Headphone 100
>
> Does anybody has any thoughts on why am I experiencing this?
>
> Thanks a lot,
> Ignas A.
>

I would check the inputs in alsamixer and play around with them.  I
had a problem similar to this for many months and it was due to some
funny input volume I didn't need, so I muted it.