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colin.hroberts

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 6, 2009
2
0
Hey everyone,
I've been a mac user for about 5 years and have worked with them pretty extensively so i'm not a newbie, but I have been having the craziest issue i've ever come across on a mac start about a week ago with my very own and here it is:
Like it says above I'm using a 2.4GHz macbook with 2Gb of RAM bought in 2007. Starting about 2 weeks ago, I find that when i'm using speakers or headphones (ie: NOT the in-built speakers) that there is faint techno music playing the background. I do like techno music but it's no song that I recognize from my library, and it seems to be about a 10 second loop. It was first one song, then i restarted my computer and it was ok for about a week and now it's back with a DIFFERENT loop (still electronic?) certainly certainly a wtf kind of issue. Has anyone ever come across anything like this before? It has nothing to do with the volume of the speakers/headphones. They still go loud and I can still hear what i'm actually watching/listening to just fine, but then there's this techno off in the distance. OR if i'm not listening/watching anything and turn the volume up all the way on either the speakers or headphones i'm able to hear the music relatively clearly but it still sounds muddled and far off. Any advice would be awesome. Thanks!
 

colin.hroberts

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 6, 2009
2
0
no good thought thought...the only dashboard widgets i have are translators, system monitors and world clocks....And even those I barely used. I thought that widgets were awesome in like the first week of leopard and now i barely ever use dashboard. hahah
 

jodelli

macrumors 65816
Jan 6, 2008
1,219
4
Windsor, ON, Canada
I remember a few years ago at our store the external speakers plugged into the office PC picked up a weak audio signal from somewhere.

My theory was that the length of the speaker wire matched a multiple or fraction of a certain radio wavelength.

Could be wrong though.
 

Makosuke

macrumors 604
Aug 15, 2001
6,661
1,242
The Cool Part of CA, USA
First of all, there was someone with exactly the issue you're describing on here a month or so ago, and it turned out to be a forgotten Dashboard widget that was playing a music loop and was most of the way off the screen.

You say that it went away for a week after you restarted and you rarely use Dashboard--are you SURE that it didn't start happening again when you activated Dashboard for the first time after that restart? If it were a widget, it would lay dormant after a reboot until you activate Dashboard for the first time, at which point it'll start playing and continue even when Dashboard is hidden, which is certainly what you're describing. That would also explain the new loop after the reboot, though the same could be true of anything that was launching on its own.

This would of course be easy enough to test, just to rule it out.

Assuming it isn't a widget, to get this straight, you're saying that it is very quiet but DOES respond to some degree to volume changes on the Mac? If it were completely independent of volume, then it would have to be an external signal getting picked up by the wires, which though it sounds like a long shot isn't entirely impossible. If, however, it does respond to the volume it seems pretty likely that it's something being generated by the Mac (does muting the Mac make it go silent?). Also, are you positive it's not present from the internal speakers? Maybe it's just so quiet you can't hear it over the fan from the internals?

Try bringing up Activity Monitor and look for anything that you don't recognize eating more than 0% of the CPU--that might point you to the culprit (in fact, it almost certainly will if it's internal, since if it's playing music it's got to be using CPU to do it.
 

midorosan

macrumors newbie
Apr 30, 2007
14
0
phantom music

I too had this problem with my iMac and only by coming here did I resolve it. It was indeed a dashboard issue related to a flash plugin in Safari. I took your advice to track it in AM and there it was, I quit it and relaunched safari whereupon it started again. I removed anything flash related in the safari extensions and now I have peace perfect peace.
Thank you so much:)
 
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