Solved! VGA > LCD TV buzz... not the usual suspects

[ron2112]

Hello!

I have a problem that I've researched to death, and I've yet to find anyone with my specific set of symptoms.

I have a Dell Inspiron laptop plugged into my LCD TV via a VGA cable, and the audio feeding in via 1/8th" cable. And as you might expect, I have a buzzing problem. But there's a twist.

When I unplug the VGA cable, the buzz goes away, as you'd expect. When I unplug the audio cable, the buzz persists. Unplugging the laptop, as I've seen recommended elsewhere, does nothing; the buzz persists.

If, however, I start playing anything with audio on the laptop -- Winamp, a Youtube video, etc. -- the buzz drops out completely and the audio is perfectly fine. I stop the audio, and about two seconds later the buzz returns.

Obviously this is not a worst-case scenario; at least I can listen to things! But it's a minor annoyance to have to mute the TV any time I'm using the computer and not listening to anything.

Any ideas? I just slapped four big honkin' ferrite cores on the VGA cable and it didn't do a thing, so that's out.

Thanks!
ron

 

[ron2112]

So now that I've typed all that out and read it back to myself, I'm wondering if there's a way to keep a live signal on the audio cable at all times? I failed to mention that if I pause the audio, the buzz remains silent. So that suggests there's still a voltage of some kind being fed to the TV which continues to override the buzz. If I could keep that voltage on the line at all times... apart from keeping Winamp open and paused, I suppose.

Does that make any sense at all? Would such a thing be possible?

ron

 

[ron2112]

Well, I guess I just needed to post about it and I managed to work it out! I'm going to keep this post here in case someone has the same issue in the future.

In the Inspiron, I opened up the Realtek HD Audio Manager. Down in the lower right corner is a little battery button - that's Power Management. Go in there, tell it to power down only when on battery. Boom, no more buzz ever!

That was fun.

Ron