Hiss and low volume.

[mallen]

I just received a Mp3 player (1.8" 2gb metal) yesterday and it works but there is a lot of "hiss" (noise) when you play music (and watch videos) and the volume is much lower then the other two players I purchased a few weeks ago. If you set the volume to less in 50% you can hardly hear the music and you hear mostly "hiss" (noise). I've tried other headphones and loaded the same songs as on the other players with the same results so I know that it's the player and not the headphones nor the music. This new model has a built-in speaker and you can also hear this noise coming from it. Does this sound like a defective player or just something to do with this model. It does seem built a little better then the last ones I purchased because the ends now are screwed on instead of glued and the buttons seem better with the center one now being mark with the play/stop signs instead of just the players color. Thanks for any info!!!! Mark

[Que]

Sounds like a defect, can you get a replacement? If reluctant to send it back, you could open it and look for a short or bad or even forgotten solder spot. The speaker might be shorting (by touching something, put a piece of tape on top of it). There is a change once disassembled, the player works fine, in that case you have to tape some spots preventing the board touching metal parts of the case (might be through the screws), as this helped some with sound failure.

[lattesurf]

mallen , as Que suggested, likely it is a hardware problem. It is likely that a filter capacitor is damaged or going to be damaged soon.

It is quite difficult to troubleshoot hardware issues as a component maybe damaged, but it looks perfectly fine on the surface. So a replacement with the seller would be a better option.

[Ecosse-Zander-52]

I have a similar problem to with my nano clone - the hissing only accurs when the player is loading - for example pushing a button to navigate a menu, a new menu loading, tracks loading and playing). Kind of similar to how a hard drive makes noise when it is being written and read to. I dont think this is an error or fault as such, more likely just poor quality internal components.

[lattesurf]

Ecosse-Zander-52 , your problem is basically caused by the limitation of processor's capability. The processor chip is unable to handle too much work, so whilst playing music and navigating around, some music processing power is used on navigating. Thus causing insufficient music decoding and all the unwanted sounds happen.

[mallen]

Well, I purchased another one...same make and model as the other one and it too has the same issue so I guess it's just the way this particular model is. It's really not that bad but compared to the other models I have, the sound just isn't as good as those. I think it may just be the way this one is design since it has a built in speaker where the others didn't. I can post a pic if anybody would like to know what this one looks like. Thanks to all that have responded!!!