I’m seeing the same persistent static issue coming from the headphone jack with Ubuntu 20.04 on Batch 6 (December 2021). The static stops whenever the sound driver enters powersave mode and the static starts again as soon as I try to play any audio. No other issues with the laptop. For my situation I can be sure it’s not caused by any electromagnetic interference external to the laptop case (i.e. no interference from a power cord or anything like that), but maybe there is interference within.
It requires a mildly high sensitivity set of headphones to hear it. Using airplane-quality headphones makes everything really quiet, including the static, and allows increasing the volume a lot, enough to overpower the static. But with high quality headphones, the volume must always be kept fairly low, and the static is unbearable.
I’m also experiencing this both on battery and when charging. Every time audio plays there’s a high pitched chirp, then static until power saving turns it off. It’s really annoying when receiving frequent message notifications. Turning power saving off makes the chirps only happen at startup but the static is still very distracting.
Since I see quite a few are facing similar issues, we ask that you please create a support ticket here: Framework | Support so we can track this issue and do what we can to assist you! If you have tried any troubleshooting yourself, please do let us know so we can gather as much information as possible!
Batch 6 - received last week - bios 3.07
I am also having the issue described by others here. With my headphones plugged into the laptops 3.5mm jack, an electronic beep when powersaving switches the audio interface on and off, and I get a constant noise floor when the interface is on. My headphones are quite sensitive (32 ohm) so it’s especially annoying.
I’m on firmware 3.06, os: manjaro - kernel 5.15.7, no powersaving software installed (tlp, powersave-daemon, etc explicitly uninstalled)
I opened a support ticket so we’ll see where that goes!
Just a quick blurp, but I have not had any noise issues with the headphone jack since upgrading to Windows 11 and using BIOS 3.06 (now 3.07). I’m back on Windows 10, but before I did that I was on Ubuntu 20.04 using Sway and I had no issue with the audio jack.
I have a gen 1 mainboard using the realtek audio so that might be a factor. I believe my wife’s Framework is from batch 5, and she is using the other audio chip used on later gen mainboards. I haven’t noticed any audio noise on that audio jack either.
Not super conclusive I know, but hopefully that helps nonetheless.
Just to keep up the info - I have the same headphone jack issue - Win10 pro, i5 not sure what batch mine is - an early one anyway (how do I know what batch it is?).
I have the same issue. Batch 6 laptop received yesterday, running windows 10, bios 3.07 and the most recent framework drivers. The computer otherwise seems to work well apart from a slightly irritating buzzing sound from the fan at low frequencies.
+1 for this on Ubuntu 21.04, I’ve tried all the common answers and haven’t found anything. Killing pulseaudio gets rid of the hissing/static, but then obviously also kills any actual sound.
Since there’s been no official public comment from Framework about this issue, I’ll share an email thread I had recently with Framework support about this issue.
I have a batch 6 laptop (two batch 6 laptops now since they sent me a new one that also has this issue)
Mods, if there’s something in the TOS that prohibits sharing this correspondence, sorry about that. I checked and didn’t see anything.
That doesn’t look too promising… I don’t consider myself an audiophile by any means but the hissing sound is impossible not to notice on my unit.
I don’t know what the power implications would be of keeping the codec on whenever something is connected to the headphone jack to avoid the regular on/off beeping sound, but even if the beeping disappeared, the hissing on its own is rather distracting.
I’ve been struggling with this issue for a while, but just found something that fixed my issue. I’m not hearing crackling on one side only, so there may be more than one issue at play for those on this chain. My issue was very pronounced when people were speaking, so seems to be similar to what @jeshikat was experiencing. For context, I’m using the Realtek ALC295 chipset.
I found a solution from Robert Joynt here: Comment #17 : Bug #1648183 : Bugs : alsa-driver package : Ubuntu, but I’ll list the steps here as well. For me the issue was fixed immediately after running the script included here. It’s not the most straightforward fix as you need to re-run the fix on every boot (can be automated using cron though).
I have found another bug with the headphone jack. the output will be garbled when the following things happen.
the laptop is running on battery
when the chrome extension ultimate Volume Booster is active
I discovered this watching a podcast that is usually a bit quite. i put the volume booster to 200% and it worked fine when plugged into wall power. but when i unplugged the power cable the headphone output became garbled. i then opened a new tab so the extension wouldn’t be active and the output was fine. i turned up the volume on the laptop and it was fine. but then i turned on the extension but kept it at 100% (no boosting) and the output was garbled with no power cable.
I ran into a similar problem in my main rig a while ago. it was running a 4690k and the volume booster extensions would be garbled. i then upgraded it to the i7 4790k (for other reasons) and the volume booster extensions didn’t have a garbled output anymore.
idk if this a problem with chrome, windows, audio drivers or something else. it probably would take more effort than it was worth to fix this specific issue.
Noise from electrical interference is a very common issue with headphone (or aux out) audio jacks on any kind of laptop or PC.
One possible solution for this general type of issue would be to buy some kind of compact external DAC or DAC/AMP. It will show up in your OS as a sound device (and thus could also be called an “external sound card”). The really cheap ones are often just called “USB audio adapters”, or something like that. There are many, many different options out there to choose from, including some extremely compact and extremely cheap ones, all the way up to some insanely expensive ones, and the different options they have can vary a lot.
Even a very cheap one might eliminate a problem like this, and any half-decent one will very likely eliminate this issue, and might also give you some additional features which are helpful to you. What kind you should get also depends upon what kind of headphones you’re running. They come in many shapes and sizes, under many different brand names. Audiophiles really like these kinds of things, but trying to figure out which one is best for you can potentially become very time consuming what with all of the different options out there.
Depending on your needs, these types of things can be very useful even if there is nothing wrong with your onboard audio or headphone jack.
It seems that my issue was specific to a pair of headset I was using. I recently bought a different headset and it works flawlessly. That leads me to think there is something about certain headsets and the 3.5mm jack that they use perhaps? I am on Windows 11 with all the latest drivers as well as the latest firmware from Framework.
An update from my issues I wrote about in October:
I had an issue with my SSD where I unfortunately had to reinstall Windows (and all the drivers) completely.
Some combination of the switch from BIOS 3.02 to 3.07, the newest driver package, and a fresh copy of Windows 10 seems to have fixed the issue for me. No crackling, and I could swear that the audio quality is better in general. No hardware changes other than a new SSD, same headphones.
Like many of the users in this thread, I hear a little sound on my headphones when the chip enters or leaves power saving mode. I’m willing to disable power save to as Passerine described above, but only when I have headphones plugged in (since there’s no problem when the sound’s coming out of the speakers). Here’s how I implemented this hack on Arch Linux:
First, I installed acipd (sudo pacman -S acpid) and removed the default acpid configuration, since I don’t need it (sudo rm /etc/acpi/handler.sh /etc/acpi/events/anything).
Next, I created two new files in /etc/acpi/events defining rules to toggle the power save state when headphones are inserted/removed:
Once these files were in place, I made sure the acpid service was enabled and running (sudo systemctl enable --now acpid).
This seems like a problem I’d expect to be fixed in firmware, but until then, this is an acceptable compromise for me - no squeaks when I have headphones plugged in, better battery life when I’m just on speakers.
I haven’t (knock on wood) experienced this problem for a while now. Unfortunately, I’m not sure what resolved the issue, as I haven’t applied any meaningful software updates (as far as I know or remember). I did move a few months ago. Perhaps the issue really is due to interference, as some have suggested.
I am also experiencing this issue, I did not use anything with audio for a few days after getting my framework, but I noticed it as soon as I did. There is an electronic “beep” that occurs when the sound chip powers up followed by a strong/sharp background hiss, loud enough to bury some finer detail. This persists for as long as audio is playing plus around ten seconds before the chip powers down with another beep. All of these sounds are always the same volume and changing the volume in the OS does not affect them. This happens on Ubuntu 20.04.4, Linux Mint 20.3 and Windows 10; it happens on battery and ac power and is unaffected by which expansion cards are installed or which headphones are being used.
(Batch 8 DIY)
