For a couple of days, I could change the screen brightness on my laptop and it worked fine; the lowest setting had a slight pulsing of the back light but I could live with it.
Then all of a sudden, if the screen brightness isn’t on high, there is a very audible buzz coming from the screen.
I am controlling the brightness via ACPI, sony vaio F11.
The buzz is not there in Win7 and happens regardless of whether the speaker’s are on or muted although I think the noise is coming from the screen, not the speakers.
If I hit the physical “Display Off” switch which turns the backlight off, there is not a buzz.
For a couple of days, I could change the screen brightness on my laptop and it worked fine; the lowest setting had a slight pulsing of the back light but I could live with it.
Then all of a sudden, if the screen brightness isn’t on high, there is a very audible buzz coming from the screen.
I am controlling the brightness via ACPI, sony vaio F11.
The buzz is not there in Win7 and happens regardless of whether the speaker’s are on or muted although I think the noise is coming from the screen, not the speakers.
If I hit the physical “Display Off” switch which turns the backlight off, there is not a buzz.
This would be the kind of thing that would be very hard to help on unless someone had fixed the exact same problem on the very same computer. I can say that noise can be mechanical, like a transformer metal core vibrating or electronic as in picked up by your speaker audio. Sound level and muting controls may not have any effect on the noise due to the noise coming in past these controls since everything is very close together. Problem can be due to driver differences between Windows and Linux and a by chance change in something on the PC. I would ask if you have had any sort of updates or banged the computer around by accident? The issue may be hardware related and something that could be fixed, except for what problem are you reporting? For instance, at work our Laptops are covered under warranty and a service contract. I could say anything is wrong and end up with a different laptop, which may or may not be any better. So, can you live with the problem or should you take it in for repair? Have you tried an update lately, perhaps for video? These are just some guesses.
Thank You,
I haven’t updated anything, that is why its so weird. Just normal use. And the computer hasn’t moved in a couple of days. What gets me is that it is not there in Windows just Linux, and since it’s a Windows laptop, I doubt Sony would repair (if its a physical problem) on warranty.
If there is a difference in drivers (which seems strange since the buzz was not there for days) which drivers? Graphics? Backlight?
@bsilvereagle, take a look at this link from googling: sony vaio linux noise buzz
New Sony VAIO F Series Encountering Buzzing Or High Pitched Whine Issue?
You are not alone, and IIRC there are suggestions there, and other links with that google. 
That was a huge problem the month before I bought my laptop, it is supposedly fixed. But its worth a shot.
I dug around yast to no avail, dug around “Personalize Desktop” and found a place for sound input without anywhere to change options, and I turned the mic (all 4 columns) to 0 in alsamixer. Is there a master kill switch for the microphone jack?
On my lenovo ThinkPad, I have alsamixer input (capture) channels for Mic Boost, Mic Boost 1, Capture (can mute), and Digital. The hardware has a built-in mike, and external mike jack socket. I also have a mike mute button beside the notebook’s keyboard, but it doesn’t work with linux kernel (yet). I have only setup the built-in mike so far.
On 02/01/2011 01:36 AM, bsilvereagle wrote:
> Is there a master kill switch for the microphone jack?
there is a picture of a universal one here: http://goo.gl/RdFaO 
–
DenverD
CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD
[NNTP posted w/openSUSE 11.3, KDE4.5.5, Thunderbird3.0.11, nVidia
173.14.28 3D, Athlon 64 3000+]
“It is far easier to read, understand and follow the instructions than
to undo the problems caused by not.” DD 23 Jan 11
DenverD I have the feeling you’ve been waiting and waiting to post that.
consused, I turned all of those channels down to zero but I don’t have a mute option.
It still gets me that it only happens in suse. Would the two drivers be feeding different resistance to the backlight?
Just to be clear with mute capability on my capture channel, it’s only available in alsamixer’s All or Capture views (F4 or F5). You would see “CAPTURE” displayed (in red) between the bottom of the column and the numbers row for L<>R setting. Pressing the space bar once, changes that to “-------” (in white).
I can’t answer your question re how the acpi driver sets backlight. BTW, from a terminal you can also manage backlight with the command (as normal user) xbacklight, and xbacklight --help will give you the options. It’s an alternative to using the DE or laptop function keys.
If Sony did allegedly fix the buzz mentioned in the links, you should try to find out from them how they did it. Was it a BIOS/firmware update? If the laptop came with Windows pre-installed, and a driver needed fixing, it’s extremely likely that a corresponding linux driver hasn’t had the fix. In which case, a bug report needs to be submitted to bugzilla asap.
On 02/03/2011 02:36 AM, bsilvereagle wrote:
>
> DenverD I have the feeling you’ve been waiting and waiting to post that.
i know that problems like that that you face are SO dang frustrating
that just a little comic relief can sometimes keep folks from throwing
their hardware out the window!
ok, to your problem: you wrote “That was a huge problem the month
before I bought my laptop”, but couldn’t yours have been in a box, on
a shelf or in shipment before the fix was introduced into the assembly
line?
i think ‘consused’ advice to reach out to Sony and try to learn what
they did to fix the problem—my recommendation, do NOT mention Linux,
if you do they will use that as an excuse to NOT help you…
if yours is still in warranty i’d contact Sony warranty folks and tell
them that sometimes you have this horrible buzz from the screen blah
blah…
if they say bring/send it in then i’d do a backup of all your data to
a safe off machine location, then remove all traces of Linux…give
that Win**** the whole drive again and send it to them to fix…
be SURE to say it does not always happen! otherwise they will turn it
on, hear nothing, marked it fixed and send it back!
good luck.
by the way, i’ve been around here most of three years trying to help
folks–and, if there is one thing i’ve learned is if i want to buy a
laptop for Linux i will not buy a Sony…they look cool, but they are
not the easiest to use withLinux*.
the easiest way to have a smooth running Linux is to buy a machine
with linux on it from the seller…
ymmv
–
DenverD
CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD
[NNTP posted w/openSUSE 11.3, KDE4.5.5, Thunderbird3.0.11, nVidia
173.14.28 3D, Athlon 64 3000+]
“It is far easier to read, understand and follow the instructions than
to undo the problems caused by not.” DD 23 Jan 11
I can’t stand hitting “Reply to Thread” when I should be hitting “Post Quick Reply”
I appreciated the humor
It turns out it was both a driver and hardware problem, but the bad hardwire is not in my April build. The sony rep suggested a BIOS update (which I think I’ve done already) and a driver re-install for Windows. So it may be a driver issue. I’ll install later.
My alsamixer F4[Capture] has two columns “Front Mic Boost” and “Mic Boost” which are both 0<>0. There isn’t a mute option. Pressing the space bar doesn’t do anything.
And I enjoy learning about how Linux works by fixing things. However, since Sony has changed its production to China instead of Japan things have been shaky with them.
Well I already had the most up-to-date BIOS so that is not the problem. Back to the waiting game.
Thanks for the feedback. I don’t know how long it may take for any fix to reach the ALSA kernel driver, and it may need a user with the same Sony laptop model to file a bug report on their particular distro’s bugzilla.
I’m no longer sure how reliable the different alsamixer views are? In F4 (Capture) I have three channels: Mic Boost 1, Capture, and Digital. However Mic Boost is in F3 (Playback). Hmm, originally (standard 11.3) it was more like yours, but with failures on the internal Mike. It works without those failures, but with a change of “Chip” designation in alsamixer, since I upgraded just the kernel. I get the impression that ALSA is a rat’s nest under the hood, but in the end still manages to deliver sound worthy of the hardware it supports. 
I’m really iffy about losing my main station for a couple of weeks so I’m going to file the bug report, possibly reinstall 11.3 or try and find another way to change the backlight (other than acpi) and if I’ve got nothing in a month, send it in.
Thanks for the advice.