Strange noise in headphones when no sound is played

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

Solution 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.

Solution 2:

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

Solution 3:

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.

Solution 4:

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.

Solution 5:

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