I bought a Sony electronic clock for one of our bedrooms. No sooner had I plugged it in did I notice a low frequency humming noise. It took me a while to figure out that the annoying noise was indeed coming from the clock (I had to convince myself that it wasn’t tinnitus or that my mind wasn’t playing tricks). I tried to ignore it for a while, indeed when the TV was on, or if there was other ruckus, one could not hear it. But it became unbearable when one lay in bed awake, or when one tried to put one’s child to sleep. I asked my wife if it bothered her, to which she responded with “not as much as you”.
I searched amazon reviews to see if it was a defective piece, turns out a lot of people suffered this problem, so it wasn’t just me.
But what could be causing this? I opened up the case (directions on ifixit.com) to discover, unsurprisingly, that the annoying noise got even louder. Naturally one expects moving parts to make noise – which an electronic clock doesn’t have. Or does it?
Crystal oscillators oscillate at high frequencies and can thus produce that annoying humming noise. I will leave the discussion of the crystal oscillators at that, since it is beyond the scope of this article.
My workaround was to simply put some “hot snot” on the oscillators so they won’t “flap around in the breeze“. In other words, I put some hot glue on the oscillations so that the oscillator package won’t vibrate, and it also helped with noise dampening. When I powered the clock on, the noise had completely disappeared. I was once again happy.
Shame on Sony for producing this defective product.
Author’s note: These “quick and dirty” articles are written to help a forlorn and shipwrecked brother. It is hoped that any spelling or grammatical errors will be generously overlooked by the gracious reader.
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