Bad Sound Quality


HackModford said:
Any ideas anyone? My pandora is practically useless as this.
I'll takes it! :D
Seriously, without actually poking at the system, I'm out of ideas. :(
You may just have to wait until someone sends one to Notaz to debug.
 
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I'm almost willing to send it to notaz but I can't... I waited two years ;)

How many people in all have this problem? If it's so few seems as if it's a HW issue. Warranty should cover this right?
 
I have two other thoughts that may help debug the problem: headphone quality, and lineout quality. The lineout would require a TV out cable though. There should be some prototype cables at least, right? If EvilDragon or Craigix don't have a Pandora with this weird sound issue, maybe they can loan you one of the prototype cables so you can test.
Maybe you can just ask for an exchange, get a new one in exchange for busted one while OPT figure out what's so special about your old one.
 
I have this problem but I've already had to send one back, really going to be gutting if I have to do it again.
 
I'm not afraid do open it up and do a little soldering. Unless they want to just send me the cable. Or if opening it up ruins my warranty. :p

Another thing I'd like to try is to use my iMic USB soundcard to see if that fixes the problem. Could someone give me a quick dirty hotfix with that file needed to use midi cables and the such to test this out?
 
No, it's not a hardware fix.
One of my customers sent one with that problem back to me and as soon as it arrives it goes via UPS to notaz :)
Hopefully he'll find something.
 
While you're watching ED... what about using an imic to further debug the problem? And I wasn't talking about HW mods I was just wanting to test the Lineout like WizardStan suggested.
 
I have the same problem with the crackling. I figure it's software though as some apps work perfectly when it comes to sound (pandora panic for example).
 
That is what scares me... because it doesn't matter for me... audio is bad audio. :(
 
The puzzle solving nerd in me is kind of hoping I get one with the sound problem so I can see it first hand and try to fix it. But then I remember that I want a good Pandora. :p
(I tease, sorry)
 
I do have some sound distortion... I keep playing with the mixer level for volume and it's reduced the frequency of the distorted sound.
I do think is is a software problem and will be fixable in the near future! :)
 
so I managed to get the pandora to recognize the imic by using a hub. Sadly when I have it set as the soundcard I get no audio. If I unplug the device goes back to internal speakers...
any suggestions?
 
Hmm, plugging in a USB sound card in linux should just make it a secondary sound card, not disable the primary sound card, unless there's some odd configuration here.

The "second" sound card won't work with any programs by default, of course. You'd have to specifically select it or configure ALSA to make it the primary (not sure how this is done without having to edit config files and reload a bunch of stuff, to be honest. Kinda sucks if you only need it changed temporarily.).
 
Doesn't the pandora uses pulseaudio ?? That would make it much easier to moove the sound over to the USB soundcard (or using both at the same time)
 
Mine works great 95% of the time but the other 5% it has a glitch in the sound which may last for a second or two. Occasionally on MAME it gets very glitchy for longer periods and only pausing the emulator and unpausing helps it out.
 
Well I wouldn't mind changeing it permanently since it would be better than what I got... (theoretically of course)
 
^mine has the same output problems regardless what it feed through (speakers, earphones, cans etc)
 
x68000 said:
^mine has the same output problems regardless what it feed through (speakers, earphones, cans etc)

That's a completeley different thing. That's ALSA doing buffer underruns when CPU Usage is too high (which happens with MAME, for example).
That's something that needs to be fixed with software.

The other problem we were talking about here is that sometimes (or almost always on some units) the sound initialization seems to fail and only noise comes out.
IF a game runs, it runs fine - and if the noise appears, it stays like that.
 
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