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Apple, great job fixing the 4850 problems, now fix the speaker popping!

Yes, I agree with who that the A2s is not the best computer speakers. Since the term "best speakers" is almost a "black hole" topic, let me rephrase it for jmpage2. A2 is the best cost effective speaker for its price. :)

However, please, please, do not talk about Bose in related to "best speakers" in audiophile category. You will get flamed very badly if this is one of those audiophile forums. ;)

I used to have a Bose Companion 3 speaker set and now I've gotten more into the audio, I've switched to listening to good headphones (currently Shure SE530, Senn HD650, and Grado SR80) and a set of Audio Engine A2s. Though I can't say they are the best, but since I listen to headphones more, they are good enough for near field listening. I'll also recommend it to anyone who need some nice computer speakers at a good deal, either the A2s or A5s (optional Subwoofer).

@jmpage2: I have my new iMac 3.06 + ATI hooked up to a set of A2s as well. But not directly, I use a optical DAC in the middle (Benchmark DAC1 HDR). And I have no pops what so ever. Maybe it is because when it wakes from sleep as it "powers up" some electricity flows into the speaker mini jack which creates the pop? I'm not a pro on this, but just a suggestion (don't even know if that suggestion is viable...lol) :rolleyes:
 
hh83917 said:
Yes, I agree with who that the A2s is not the best computer speakers.
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Agreed, not sure why he is gobbling these pedestrian reviews sites up, when guys here have actual hands-on engineering knowledge of the audio industry.

Also, if you can invest several thousands into equipment, Bose is similar to Alienware in that yes it will be very very overpriced, but the quality is much higher than brands with comparable prices. Not the absolute "BEST" solution because we are not talking that price range, but I'm sure you'd agree that Bose kicks the daylights out of A2s and leaves room to spare.
 
24usedtorock said:
Agreed, not sure why he is gobbling these pedestrian reviews sites up, when guys here have actual hands-on engineering knowledge of the audio industry.

Also, if you can invest several thousands into equipment, Bose is similar to Alienware in that yes it will be very very overpriced, but the quality is much higher than brands with comparable prices. Not the absolute "BEST" solution because we are not talking that price range, but I'm sure you'd agree that Bose kicks the daylights out of A2s and leaves room to spare.
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Will you please just get the heck out of the conversation? Did you even read the rest of what he said? He said that the A2s are hands down the best PC speakers for the money. The "pedestrian" reviews that you are referring to are from some of the top reviewers of this equipment. We should simply believe you that Bose sounds better because "you" say so. Maybe you should get over yourself.

The A2s were developed over the course of a year with custom built cabinetry, custom built drivers (not off the shelf), etc. I'm sure though that they are overpriced "trinkets" compared to the cheap plastic cabinet Bose systems you love with their cheesy "acoustimass" pseudo surround sound and other audio circuitry tricks designed to mask how weak they actually sound.

Go on believing what Bose is shoveling because they have put more $$ into marketing their product than into developing something that actually sounds good.
 
24usedtorock said:
One word for you - - - Bose.
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smiley-rofl.gif

I just pissed myself.
 
Antipop seems to have worked

jmpage2 said:
I don't want to load 3rd party software onto my box to fix a problem that Apple should be fixing.

I'm hoping at least a few other owners with this issue will chime in.
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Well, about the popping noise . . .

I have a Blackbook late 2007 (Santa Rosa) model and I was getting the popping noise too when I had external speakers plugged into my audio jack. Every time I would launch any audio program (iTunes, RealPlayer, etc.) or visit a webpage that had audio, I would get a loud popping sound both before the audio played and about 15 to 30 seconds after the audio stopped. It was REALLY annoying.

I wasn't sure what caused the popping noise at first though because A.) I have really cheap Edifier computer speakers (with 2 LR and 1 subwoofer) which cost like $20 or $25 bucks, B.) Almost every time my fridge compressor kicked on or I turned on my compact fluorescent light, I would get the loud popping noise, and C.) I've read numerous posts about the sound card on some of the MACs having this problem. I don't want to go out and buy expensive speakers and all my electrical sockets in my studio apartment are on the same circuit, so I can't really do anything about A or B.

So, I figured downloading that program you mentioned (Antipop 1.0.2) might solve problem C. So far, it seems to have worked. I visited a couple websites with audio, and no popping sound. I fired up iTunes and RealPlayer and then quit the programs after playing some music, no popping sound. Actually, my fridge compressor just came on a minute ago, and there was no popping sound either, which I kinda expected there would be.

Anyway, Antipop seems to have fixed the problem, so I'm happy for now.
 
I'm getting the pop too on my brand new 24" iMac (2.93, 4850). I have a Logitech Z-5500 system connected via optical. I've downloaded and installed Antipop - we'll see if that solves the problem. If anything, I think Antipop should (based on its description) solve the problem I had with my old iMac and the Logitech system, that of the Logitech failing to recognize the incoming audio after a period of time. I'd have to cycle through the inputs to get it to recognize the optical audio coming from the Mac. Irritating.

Note: it's sad that you have to resort to 3rd party fixes for something this fundamental - Apple should have addressed this issue long ago as there seem to be plenty of people complaining about it.
 
jmpage2 said:
Go on believing what Bose is shoveling because they have put more $$ into marketing their product than into developing something that actually sounds good.
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He probably connects his kickin' Bose system with some sweet Monster Cable. :D
 
Anti-Pop did not solve the problem for me. I suspect because the sound hardware might be different between the MB and MBP and the iMac. I also hear that Monster Cable is extremely popular with the big fans of Bose audio.
 
hh83917 said:
@jmpage2: I have my new iMac 3.06 + ATI hooked up to a set of A2s as well. But not directly, I use a optical DAC in the middle (Benchmark DAC1 HDR). And I have no pops what so ever. Maybe it is because when it wakes from sleep as it "powers up" some electricity flows into the speaker mini jack which creates the pop? I'm not a pro on this, but just a suggestion (don't even know if that suggestion is viable...lol) :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

I suspect that with the optical connection this is less of an issue. If I understand correctly the issue happens because when the Mac goes to sleep it puts the hardware for audio into a low power state.

When the Mac wakes up, the next time the audio hardware is asked to do some work it will load up the level on the output resulting in the popping.

Interestingly enough this never happens when the same iMac sleeps under Windows 7, so I suspect that this is a driver/control issue that is completely fixable on the Mac, if only Apple gave 2 cents about it.
 
jmpage2 said:
so I suspect that this is a driver/control issue that is completely fixable on the Mac, if only Apple gave 2 cents about it.
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As many have posted already there is a fix for this. If the fact that Apple did not come up with the fix bothers you (jmpage2) so much that you still live with this issue that is your prerogative/problem. For others who are just picking up this thread the fix is out there and has been for some time now. Search and ye shall find.
 
itommyboy said:
As many have posted already there is a fix for this. If the fact that Apple did not come up with the fix bothers you (jmpage2) so much that you still live with this issue that is your prerogative/problem. For others who are just picking up this thread the fix is out there and has been for some time now. Search and ye shall find.
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Maybe you missed the part of the thread where I commented that I loaded anti-pop and it did not resolve the issue.
 
itommyboy said:
Oh I see - yes I did miss that. Then I revert back to my other argument - it's your speakersssssss! ;)
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Ya, all three sets of speakers that I've tried, plus my headphones. That surely must be what's going on, especially when the above same speakers do not have the problem when the sound hardware is controlled under Windows. :rolleyes:
 
I dont have a external spekar but I can hear now internal speaker popping problem. I prepaired to dvd with iDvd and I used theme and push the play button first sound is great but when i choose video on theme and click starting popping...
 
I just plugged in my external speakers, they are a middle of the line Altec Lancing set with sub and they are having a poping sound whenever the computer wakes up from sleep and sounds is needed for the first time. Nothing aweful but there is a pop.

These are the same speakers I used for years with my old Dell and I never had this problem.

It seams pretty clear to me that it isn't the spakers but something with the computer.
 
jmpage2 said:
I suspect that with the optical connection this is less of an issue. If I understand correctly the issue happens because when the Mac goes to sleep it puts the hardware for audio into a low power state.

When the Mac wakes up, the next time the audio hardware is asked to do some work it will load up the level on the output resulting in the popping.

Interestingly enough this never happens when the same iMac sleeps under Windows 7, so I suspect that this is a driver/control issue that is completely fixable on the Mac, if only Apple gave 2 cents about it.
Click to expand...

Since I have the same set of speakers as you do, I unplugged my external dac and did some testing myself and had the same issue. It seems so pop after you do not play any sound for a few minutes and press the volume increase/decrease to "wake" the internal dac.

I did some searching for you and found some old threads regarding to the old 10.4.0 Intel iMac speaking popping issues in the apple support forums.
Link: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1018120
Link: http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20090105202150184

I've tried replacing AppleHDA.kext file with version 1.6.2 (from OS X 10.5.6) and still get the popping sound. Then I tried to reverse to version 1.5.7 (from maybe 10.5.5 or maybe earlier), but apparently that does not support the new 2009 iMac. So, I've concluded that there is no fix for the new iMac '09 now with the audio popping issue through software, unless Apple issues one.

The only solution is probably the external dac solution. Here's a list from head-fi.org of all the dacs, cheap to expensive: http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f46/all-dacs-money-can-buy-pt-2-a-325941/

Hope this helps. :)
 
Thanks for the advice. If Apple has not fixed this in over 2 years it's unlikely that they have any plans to fix it unless customers really get vocal about it.

Does anyone know what kind of DAC is in the Mac? I wouldn't want to spend a lot of money on a DAC and degrade the sound quality, but I also don't want to spend a lot of money on something I shouldn't have to fix in the first place.
 
jmpage2 said:
Thanks for the advice. If Apple has not fixed this in over 2 years it's unlikely that they have any plans to fix it unless customers really get vocal about it.

Does anyone know what kind of DAC is in the Mac? I wouldn't want to spend a lot of money on a DAC and degrade the sound quality, but I also don't want to spend a lot of money on something I shouldn't have to fix in the first place.
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I think it's agreed that the built in DACs in most computers (including our precious Macs) are not very good. Even the cheap ones will probably improve the sound quality on your Mac.
 
This constantly happens to me. My computer is hooked up to logitech x540 5.1 via 3.5 and every time they are about to make a sound its a LOUD pop. Its hella anoying! Say someone just logged into ichat....POP (so loud) and then I hear the notification subtle swoosh sound effect. I'll be trying the fix tomorrow.
 
Weird!

So, tried it twice on the G5, once where the sleep was initiated with iTunes playing music, and one where iTunes was closed (not even on the dock [I think it is called?]). At anyrate, on the wake where iTunes was playing there was a very faint pop, much like when you plug in speakers into a running computer. The one where iTunes was closed, there was no pop sound.

Does it affect me? Not particularly, but it was an interesting experiment.
 
I just tried the anti-pop software. I found it to work only when the iMac is on. For example, it prevents the audio from going to sleep when you don't play audio for a while. However, the software does not prevent the audio pop when waking from Sleep.

@jmpage2: The internal dac on the iMac wasn't very good. It's basically some intel built-in "high definition audio" chip like all the boards, laptops with built-in audio chip. I don't think there's anything special about the macs' built-in dac other than the convenience of the built-in optical in/out in the mini-jacks. You can probably just get any USB or optical dac and it will solve the popping problem. Just make sure it will work with Mac, because I think the Creative sound blaster dacs doesn't. There's a simple and fairly cheap one from Griffin Technology called iMic Link. I think that will get the job done. It require no drivers to install on macs and a pretty good deal for the price. Just return it if you don't like it.

Or we can all just wait for Apple to issue a fix. But, I think they only issue the fix once to fix such problems on OS X 10.4.0. They didn't issue another after that for ie. 10.5.6. Or maybe they think snow leopard is coming out and they probably just don't bother to.
 
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