High pitch tone when plugged into 3.5mm headphone jack - Windows 10 - iMac 2017

Question

High pitch tone when plugged into 3.5mm headphone jack - Windows 10 - iMac 2017

Hey team.

Thank you for your help here.

I have recently reinstalled Windows 10 Home on my 2017 iMac 27".

I have macOS Big Sur 11.5 installed at the time of the Boot Camp installation of Windows. The installation of Windows performed successfully, and the Boot Camp drivers were installed correctly too - apart from the sound driver it seems.

Whenever I attempt to use audio through my headphones port, I hear a shrill high-pitch tone. For example, if I have my speakers plugged into my iMac via a 3.5mm audio jack, and change the volume of the headphones output from the taskbar, Windows should emit a pleasant chord sound to test the audio volume. For me, it instead emits a high-pitch tone for a few seconds, and then it ceases. It's as though any sound that is meant to come from the audio output is a consistent high-pitch tone. The volume controls don't change the loudness of the tone.

The sound issue isn't apparent when the headphones are unplugged. Audio sounds just fine through the iMac's normal speakers.

I have attempted to reinstall the audio driver numerous time to remedy this issue.

Neither replacing the audio driver with the Windows default "High Definition Audio Device" driver, nor selecting the manufacturers driver from the Boot Camp Support download from within Boot Camp Assistant on macOS for my 2017 iMac seems to work. The audio driver that came with my Boot Camp Support download which appears to be supported for my model of iMac is "Cirrus Logic CS8409 (AB 16)", version 6.6001.3.38.

I have also installed the updated version of this driver from Cirrus Logic's website to see whether this may fix the issue. The name of the driver that Windows selected is the same, however the version number is 6.6001.4.2. This version of the driver has the same issue for the headphone jack only.

Could anyone please suggest to me any other avenues I can try?

I had a Windows 10 installation on this Mac working just find a few months ago, and then I removed the installation with Boot Camp Assistant in macOS once I had no need for Windows. Back then, I had no audio issues at all.

Very strange.

iMac 27″ 5K, macOS 11.5

Posted on Aug 2, 2021 2:13 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Andrew Strugnell Author

Level 1

8 points

Aug 2, 2021 7:18 PM in response to Loner T

Hey Loner T, thank you for your response!

That's a great suggestion - I'll give this a crack and let you know about its result.

I continued to dig deeper by scouring the web, and I came across this article:

https://betanews.com/2021/05/15/kb5000842-update-high-pitched-sound-windows-10/

It appears that this is a known issue as a result of a recent Windows 10 update. While the article mentions that it affects some 5.1 surround sound setups, the description matches my scenario with a stereo setup. I've gone ahead through the laborious task of wiping the partition, setting it up and reinstalling Windows 10 again through Boot Camp Assistant. I've steered clear of the 'optional' Windows updates this time, and so far I have been having success with the audio from the 3.5mm headphones jack.

For the sake of testing I'll hold out on resetting the SMC for my iMac (by unplugging from the wall for 20 seconds, and then plugging back in again). If the issue crops up again, I'll do the reset and share the result with you here.

I hope this helps someone out there.

So far, so good.

Fingers crossed!

Andrew.

Reply

Answer 2

Aug 2, 2021 8:58 PM in response to Loner T

Hey LonerT.

Thank you for sharing the link to the audio resolution for the Windows update below. It's good to see that this was resolved.

The high pitch tone returned for me this afternoon, so I have followed your advice to reset the SMC of my iMac. I've reset the NVRAM to boot. Thankfully this has resolved the high pitch tone issue. Thank you.

I'll share any further findings should the issue return again.

And my apologies for being trigger-happy on the Solved status, I should have given that honour to your recommendation above.

Cheers,

Andrew.

Reply