Dissappointing Audio / Advanced Mini Dock / Z61p

[sglaser]

My Bose Quiet Comfort II headphones pick up lots of noise when plugged into the headphone jack of the advanced mini dock. They work fine when plugged into the laptop headphone jack.

The noise is quite noticeable when doing certain video operations (e.g. using the mouse to make a window wider).

This makes the headphone jack on the dock essentially useless for me.

Note that these headphones are pretty sensitive to noise (they pick up noise from cell phones as well) but the dock should not be doing this either.

The dock has the power brick, an Ethernet, a Logitech USB wireless mouse dongle and the headphones plugged in at the time. The laptop has nothing other than the dock plugged in.

[GomJabbar]

Any chance the wireless mouse dongle is creating the noise?

[sglaser]

Could be, but when I switch the headphones to the laptop, with the mouse still in use, there is no noise.

I'll try it without the mouse on Monday.

I suspect it's Video noise since the noise increases when I'm moving / resizing windows but doesn't appear when I'm doing other mouse heavy activities.

The headphone jack is pretty close to the video connector on that dock. It could also be inadequate shielding of the analog audio signal in the dock connector.

[sglaser]

Checked again. Advanced Mini Dock II (Type 2504).

Significant noise exists whenever doing anything that involves "work" with the video (moving, widening, shrinking windows, even minor clicks due to typing). I'm now guessing it's processor noise since there's a faint background burst of noise at regular rates (every second or so). even when the screen is not changing.

Problem exists with nothing plugged in to the dock other than power and headphones. Problem exists with no change when the headphone cable is routed from the back to the front on the left, right or over the top of the dock (i.e. I don't think it's the headphone wire picking up noise).

Problem does NOT exist if the headphone is plugged into the laptop directly.

I'll bring my headphones home and check tonight using my other dock (Advanced Dock II Type 2503).

[sglaser]

Tried it at home with the larger Advanced Dock (Type 2503 with PCI Express and Ultrabay slots).

Same issue. The headphone jack is way over on the right for this dock. Nothing was plugged in other than headphones and power. Same clicking and background noise bursts every second or so.

As before, switching to the laptop jack cured the problem.

Note: In all cases, the builtin WiFi and Bluetooth were OFF.

I was not able to check the digital audio output on the larger dock since nothing with a digital audio input was available.

[msafi]

Sorry that I have to resurrect this old thread, but I have the same problem with ThinkPad T410 and Mini Dock Series 3. When plugged to the docking station, there's noise. But when plugged to the laptop, it's good.

Did you find a solution?

I'm thinking that the docking station should have drivers that help the hardware perform better, but it doesn't...

[sglaser]

Never found a solution.

I now telecommute and am no longer in cubical land and thus I no longer need the headphones.