Strange noise in headphones when no sound is played

Question

There is a strange noise from my headphones on Lenovo T440. The sound is like when you tune your radio, but you get a wrong frequency and you hear unpleasant noise. The noise starts when Ubuntu 14.04 boots up and ends after a shutdown. It is coming out only through my headphones, there is no noise through the speakers.

The strange thing is that the noise disappears when any sound is played or if I enter sound preferences. But when a sound is stopped, it appears again after 10 seconds or less. Also, the noise goes way down (or maybe even disappears) if I put in my laptop charger and stop the music.

No matter how I change my volume level, the noise level is the same. It seems like the output is not disabled after sound stops.

sudo aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: HDMI [HDA Intel HDMI], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: HDMI [HDA Intel HDMI], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: HDMI [HDA Intel HDMI], device 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC292 Analog [ALC292 Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Answer 1

Got the same problem on Dell XPS15 (9550, 2015 model in Xenial). Solved it in alsamixer and muting the loopback channel.

$ alsamixer

Navigating to loopback (all the way to the right, with → key) and setting it to Disabled using the ↑ key.

• No reboot needed;
• No root needed;
• Is permanent as far as I noticed.

Answer 2

I had the same problem on Dell Inspiron 3542 running Ubuntu 14.04.2

The problems appears to be in the audio powersave feature.

The noise stops when I open the sound settings, or when I play audio/video. The noise starts again when I stop playing audio/video and close sound settings.

This solution worked for me: Edit the file

$ sudo nano /usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/intel-audio-powersave

change the line

INTEL_AUDIO_POWERSAVE=${INTEL_AUDIO_POWERSAVE:-true}

to

INTEL_AUDIO_POWERSAVE=false

Reboot.

I faced no further noise after this.

Answer 3

I had the same issue. I believe it is the noise that your microphone picks up.

Go into Sound Settings, under the Input tab, check Mute box near Settings for <microphone_name> Microphone (Not the Mute checkbox at the top).

That should do the trick.

Answer 4

It's possibly your audio interface going into power save.

If following commands clear the issue until you reboot or change the power supply it has got something to do with power save:

echo 0 | sudo tee /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save_controller
echo 0 | sudo tee /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save

Answer 5

Do you have tlp activated?

If so edit /etc/default/tlp and set the power save option values to 0

SOUND_POWER_SAVE_ON_AC=0
SOUND_POWER_SAVE_ON_BAT=0

this did the trick for me

Answer 6

I had the exact the same problem and none of above method worked for me.

My laptop is ASUS ROG-G501JW and the sound card is Realtek.

I found the solution in this thread: White and hissing noise in headphones, not present in Windows.

Setting this line in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf fixed all of my problems:

options snd-hda-intel model=dell-headset-multi

Answer 7

I disabled all inputs and loopback in alsamixer, disabled all power state related features as described but still there is noise in headphones.

I tried to install windows to see if there is a problem and there was not.

Noise is not affected by any amplification factor of any output or input. It is not affected by any input or if there is played any sound or not. It is pure constant white noise.

Ubuntu 16.04, 4.4.0-83-generic, Dell precision m5800, Realtek ALC3226

00:03.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor HD Audio Controller (rev 06)
    Subsystem: Dell Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor HD Audio Controller
    Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 32
    Memory at f7e34000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
    Capabilities: <access denied>
    Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
    Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)
    Subsystem: Dell 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset High Definition Audio Controller
    Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 31
    Memory at f7e30000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
    Capabilities: <access denied>
    Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
    Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel

In options /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf i currenttly have(i tried dell-headset-multi and hp equivalent):

...
snd-hda-intel model=generic
...

In ubuntu audio manager it is not showing any power on output. When i mute output noise gets 10x more silent.

Does anyone know about anything what I did not tried?

Answer 8

I've had this problem on Dell 3542 with Ubuntu 16.04 GNOME and it started happening after I installed TLP for power saving. So after I saw here that the problem is related to power saving I simply uninstalled TLP and the problem was gone.

Answer 9

I had this problem on Asus X200ca with ElementaryOS Loki (Ubuntu 16.04) and other linux distro that I had used. I fixed issue with

• run alsamixer (not in sudo mode)
• Navigate to Auto-mute Mode (using right arrow)
• Change it to enable (using up arrow)

Now I don't have the problem again.

Answer 10

I found an unusual cause for my excessive background noise... my Civilization 5 (run via Steam) was not exiting properly. The background noise I was hearing was from the game. I used "htop" to find and kill all Civilization processes and sure enough, the noise decreased every time I killed off a process from the game.

So not an Ubuntu nor audio problem; it was in fact one particular app (that never exits right anyway).