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Unibody MBP Headphone Port Feedback

J

joesenior91

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 19, 2007
67
0
So i'm looking to shift my itunes library to an external hard drive, along with all my films so i can then stream 'em all to my apple tv and free up some much needed disk space.

My one concern is that when i plug in my HD and have my speakers plugged into the headphone jack i get some staticky feedback presumably caused by the current in the USB port interfering with the current in the headphone jack. This I can bear normally, but if my iTunes library was on the HDD then it'd be constant and i couldn't be doing with that.

My question is, is this normal? do i have a dodgy Mac or is it the drive (it's ine a cheap external case i bought for a spare drive i had knocking about) I'm using harman kardon soundsticks, and there's no way i'm giving up these babies. love them to bits.

Cheers, Joe
 
nope, only when the drive's connected. The static's quiet when the drive's powered off, but when it's on it's quite bad.
 
Hmm, I don't seem to get the static you are talking about...although I'm not powering a HD, but I am powering the USB on my monitor that is powering my iPhone dock and my keyboard.

I would see if you can call Apple about it. You might have a funky USB port or entire logic board for that matter. It seems to be pulling a lot of power through the USB, but then again, that could be used to power the HD. Is the drive powered by USB or does it have its own wall plug?
 
Definitely sounds like electrical/magnetic interference.

Could be a few things...

-Poorly shielded hard drive enclosure
-Poorly shielded USB cable for hard drive
-Poorly shielded power cable for hard drive (if it has external power)
-Poorly shielded speaker cable.

See a pattern developing? :D

Each of these issues can be corrected by using better wiring/enclosures or possibly by moving the speakers around. If the interference is starting right at the ports, I'd say get a better/longer USB cable for the enclosure and move it away from the computer/speakers.
 
it is powered and so are the speakers

i'll have a go moving things about and that, also i'll try with some headphones and report back.

cheers guys.
 
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