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doctor pangloss

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 30, 2004
161
0
Thailand
My 40G Ipod makes a intermittent screeching type sound. Some times it goes for days not making it and other times it will do severals times in succession. I use is mostly in the car hooked to a belkin power cable and use the Itrip device.
 

cfd

macrumors member
Nov 29, 2004
73
0
By any chance do you have the iTrip stations in the playlist you are listening to? This will produce the sound you are hearing everytime.

I am assuming that the screeching sound is coming from the speakers.
 

nagromme

macrumors G5
May 2, 2002
12,546
1,196
A couple iTrip tips:

1. Choose a low station--87.7 or 87.9, if available.

2. Lower/remove your car's external antenna.

Either one works great for me even in urban areas. I've never needed to do both at once.

It could also be electrical interference from some part of your car... my iTrip lets me hear my turn signals! But that's just little pops.
 

Westside guy

macrumors 603
Oct 15, 2003
6,340
4,158
The soggy side of the Pacific NW
doctor pangloss said:
My 40G Ipod makes a intermittent screeching type sound. Some times it goes for days not making it and other times it will do severals times in succession. I use is mostly in the car hooked to a belkin power cable and use the Itrip device.

It is possible that the solder connection for the headphone port has cracked. this is fairly common for small electronic devices in general, since the manufacturers save money by not securing the port with anything other than the solder. Try plugging in some headphones, listen to some music and fiddle gently with the headphone jack - if you can make the problem happen, that's the culprit.

The only solution is to get it repaired. If it's under warranty I'd suggest calling Apple first, before fiddling around with it at all.
 

Frank (Atlanta)

macrumors regular
Oct 29, 2004
145
0
Not trying to be alarmist, but if the above items don't work you might want to check if you have the "audio defect" - see ipodlounge.com. I checked my iPod photo & don't have this problem.

From your description - sounds like the prior posts will address the issue; however, if the problem persists, check-out ipodlounge.com (just search for "audio defect" - it's in the articles section).

Good luck,
Frank
 

crees!

macrumors 68020
Jun 14, 2003
2,015
241
MD/VA/DC
Oddities

Let me chime in on this because I myself am disappointed and find this interesting at the same time. Hopefully I can explain it clearly because it is just weird. Please bear with.

I just received a replacement 40Gig 3G iPod 2 days ago. I never had this problem before with previous iPods, yes, plural. At the beginning of songs I get this terrible static sound overlaying the playing music. It lasts for about 5 seconds (which is the time the backlight timer is set to). But get this, it only happens to certain songs and it happens with each song in that entire album. Other records play just fine. I have deleted the songs/albums and copied them back. Still I get the static. My purchased music plays perfect, no static. Other music whether imported, downloaded, whatever plays normal too.. just some albums are wacky.

So here's gotcha number two. It's only coming out of the stereo audio jack. If the iPod is hooked up via Firewire to a computer it plays the music just fine - no static. The original music on my computer plays fine too. As I've said this has never happened before with ANY of my music.

I use just the iTrip and occasionally with headphones. So I plugged a different set of headphones in and the static wasn't as bad. More of a tick, but still noticeable. Plugged the iTrip back in and the full blown static came back.

I think somehow this correlates to the backlight timer (I haven't tried it with it off yet). But how it said only the first 5 seconds or so of a song are full of static...hehe, well get this. Once the static stops and you then shuffle through the menu the static comes back, but in sync with your navigation. For example, a song's playing and you have all your artists in the menu. Scroll down one artist, static - static stops - scroll more - static - static stops.. etc. But this is only with certain albums and it's driving me nuts trying to figure it out! I'm still in the process of trying to narrow things down like if it's a certain audio format / bit rate but like I said, nothing has changed with the music when it played flawlessly before and via Firewire it plays fine. It's just the audio jack that's funky.

Maybe this caused more confusion or shed some light? I don't know.

Happy New Year!
 

Littleodie914

macrumors 68000
Jun 9, 2004
1,813
8
Rochester, NY
Frank (Atlanta) said:
Not trying to be alarmist, but if the above items don't work you might want to check if you have the "audio defect" - see ipodlounge.com. I checked my iPod photo & don't have this problem.

From your description - sounds like the prior posts will address the issue; however, if the problem persists, check-out ipodlounge.com (just search for "audio defect" - it's in the articles section).

Good luck,
Frank
Yep... Hate to suggest something like that, but that's what I thought of when you mentioned the static problems. How long have you had it? If longer than a year, did you purchase the AppleCare? This type of thing is a pretty well-known defect, and Apple shouldn't have any trouble repairing it.
 
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