4 ms·

Remotely related, my screen makes a noise, somewhere between static and a whine, while displaying certain text files. Minimizing or closing the editor stops the

• Arrath 3y ago
  I too have one screen that makes a noise, akin to coil whine, only when a certain spreadsheet is open and the window expanded past a threshold of the screen's real estate. Naturally, its the speadsheet that I use most often in my duties.
• Paul-Craft 3y ago
  Perhaps a silly question, but does turning it off and back on again also resolve the problem? I can occasionally hear such noises from monitors, and have always thought it was some kind of interaction with the phase of the AC power and some kind of internal physics of the monitor. Generally, turning it off and back on again fixes it for me.
  • gumby 3y ago
    In the old CRT days that could be plausible, but in these days of lcds and switching power supplies it seems less likely. But as this article describes, you never know!
    • Paul-Craft 3y ago
      Indeed, do you never know. I don't honestly think turning it off and back on would do anything, either. I also don't have one of those chairs, nor do I want to buy one and use it to test the theory. But, turning it off and back on again is a simple and easy thing to do that should be reasonably safe for the equipment. There is, after all, a reason why power cycling equipment is often a first step to diagnosing and/or fixing weird problems. :)
    • TeMPOraL 3y ago
      > But as this article describes, you never know! When we were teenagers, my friend used to call it "waving a dead chicken". He coined this term to describe the way he would resurrect dead inkjet printers that even I gave up on - by disassembling and reassembling them until they started to work again, while being perfectly open that he has no idea how it could fix the problem, just that in practice it often did. While this was just a funny term and pretty absurd approach for fixing things (even though it worked!), I took away from it an important realization: the scope of possible causes of a weird, randomly-occuring problem is much larger than I'd normally assume. Over the years, I learned to identify some "outside context" things for computers - ESD, thermals, UV exposure, RF interference, voltage spikes in power lines, devices being almost but not quite connected. Because of that, when in a bind, "waving a dead chicken" may just be called for - in forms of e.g. percussive maintenance (hitting the thing with a wrench), moving things around, switching cables, disassembling, etc.
  • etiam 3y ago
    I realize now I have never thought to keep track of a sample which triggers the phenomenon, and I can't really find time to probe for one right now. I'm not entirely certain, but as I recall it switching it off and back on again is not effective against this issue. I've tried, no doubt, but the only thing noted which seems to have an effect (while the screen is active) is removing the text from display.
• jareklupinski 3y ago
  sometimes when manipulating 3D CAD models, I can get a similar noise from my graphics card / monitor at certain orientations of the model sweeping back and forth as I rotate it I have a feeling that grey #A5A5A5 is row-hammering something
  • TeMPOraL 3y ago
    Same here; my PC GPU would make a high-pitched whine in certain conditions, most often encountered in a CAD program when I was rotating things around. I assumed it's the dark-grey coordinate system / grid on lighter-grey background making some kind of digital equivalent of Moiré patterns on the traces in the GPU card, that happen to generate an audible frequency.
    • formerly_proven 3y ago
      It could be the view is rendered on mouse event, which would mean rendering with fluctuating 125/250/500/1000 fps during view movements.
• halgir 3y ago
  Similar story, my computer makes a small whine when I move the mouse cursor. Not the screen or speakers, the actual PC. With both wired and wireless mice.
• formerly_proven 3y ago
  I'm pretty sure this is some kind of electrostriction-like effect because these noises come from the panel itself.
• copperx 3y ago
  This was common in the CRT days. Monitors had a high pitched when you were on a GUI, but got quieter when you switched to the TTY.
• lucb1e 3y ago
  Spreadsheets are what do it for me. Haven't noticed it on anything else. Only whole-screen spreadsheets. Opening the start menu (covers maybe 1/5th of the screen width and half the height, so 10% overall I'd guess) is already enough to break the pattern. At 110% or 90% zoom it does not happen at all, it needs to be the default zoom level. It's also noticeably less if there are colored cells. You can dial the screen's volume by making the libreoffice window partially transparent (I have that bound to scrolling on the title bar). This is on an Acer 1920x1080 (~23"?) screen from around 2009.
• sgtnoodle 3y ago
  Indeed. It's the frequency of pixel changes causing ripples in voltage rails, subsequently causing inductors in switching voltage regulators to physically resonate at audible frequencies. There's specific test images you can find online, designed to maximally stress voltage rails in LCDs. Lower end monitors can actually get enough voltage ripple that the image quality visibly degrades.
• matsemann 3y ago
  That's a fun bug report to receive and having to debug: Customer complains about display screaming when viewing last quarter report.
• Kirby64 3y ago
  Is this a Samsung G-series (G7/G9)? I returned a G7 that would make a high pitched noise and also dim the entire screen when certain patterns displayed. It also did this very strange 'interlacing' behavior which was apparently a known problem with Samsung monitors. Maybe something similar for you.
  • etiam 3y ago
    In my case it's an LG monitor from the early 2010s (IPS). Now that you mention it, there might be a slight flicker and dimming effect on mine as well when it happens, but if so, not very salient compared to the noise.