Well folks, this is what bad engineering sounds like. This recording was made by connecting the analog line out from my Mac G4 MDD into my Mackie XD-2 ADC unit, turning up the gains and recording the result. Inside the steady state noise you can hear little chirps and such - that is the sound of me moving the mouse, switching applications, using the scroll wheel, loading a web page and whatnot. The *bzzzzzt* tone is what clicking and dragging a window sounds like. I have boosted the gain considerably to enhance the effect, however the noise is most noticeable during normal use. Needless to say I DON'T use this analog out to listen to music! The Mackie takes care of that. However, the Mackie does experience regular periodic dropouts\glitches in the audio and I wouldn't be surprised if it was due to this electrical noise. It's really nasty stuff. As far as I know Apple never officially acknowledged this problem back in the day, but simply tried to fob people off with some horseshit about getting an isolation transformer. Most of the brouhaha was over the screaming fans, but that part is fixed - I haven't a clue how to troubleshoot this noise issue. Who knows? Anyway, I just wanted to share what is easily the worst example of flawed electronics I've come across.
Click this link to hear it:
http://home.wi.rr.com/saruman/Mac-G4-MDD-Lineout-Noise.mp3A graphical representation of the above audio file:
