Just got a new Zen Mirco, but I think there may be somthing wrong

Question

I just picked one up today, and I love it, but I have one question.
Whenever I begin to play a song, for about the first four or fi've seconds there's a quiet but noticable high-pitched squealing sound through the headphones in the background. For the rest of the song, though, all I hear is the music. I believe this has somthing to do with the hard dri've, because I can hear it when I am uploading files to the player/ Does anybody else have this problem?
I know that there have been some problems with a squealing sound when the backlight is on, but this problem occurs even with the backlight turned off.
I've tried a few different pairs of headphones and still have the same problem. I don't hear the sound when the headphones are unplugged, so it's not the unit itself making the noise.
Firmware Version .02.05, if it matters, but I'm pretty sure it a physical issue, not a software one.
Any help would be great!Message Edited by Sportyboard on 07-08-2005 :30 PM

Answer 1

I experience the same thing, but not during playback but before a song gets played. The noise (very soft; I have made some experiments, and some people cannot even hear it; I myself have very keen hearing) always runs parallel to increased HD action (e.g. getting all the song info on a 50-song playlist, when I inspect the playlist).
My bet would be that some of the voltage peaks of the HD running high are induced into the line that carries the music signal for the headphone socket. In my case, the noise does not bother me because it's very shortli'ved and only happens anyway when nothing is playing (at least I can only hear it in those cases).
I could imagine though, given all the problems with power the ZM has (have a look at my site below), that there may be some Micros that exhibit this noise more intensely than others, as it must be hardware-dependent, and hardware is never EXACTLY equal (e.g. soldering) on any two devices.
Cheers,
Jan.