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SA8300HD High Pitch Noise

1K views 8 replies 4 participants last post by  neo1022 
#1 ·
My friend got got a Scientific Atalanta SA8300DVR from his cable co and I immediately noticed an irritating, directional, high pitch whine coming from the unit.


It reminds me of the sound old ball-bearing hard drives would make and I'm sure the source of the noise is the hard drive in the unit. Now, I'm pretty sensitive to high pitch noises, but I have been able to buy hard drives that do not make a noise like this.


So either, the unit is defective or SA has made a bad choice in its sourcing of hard drives. What do you think? Defective unit or would swapping the unit with the cable co just get us another whining unit?
 
#2 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by neo1022
My friend got got a Scientific Atalanta SA8300DVR from his cable co and I immediately noticed an irritating, directional, high pitch whine coming from the unit.


It reminds me of the sound old ball-bearing hard drives would make and I'm sure the source of the noise is the hard drive in the unit. Now, I'm pretty sensitive to high pitch noises, but I have been able to buy hard drives that do not make a noise like this.


So either, the unit is defective or SA has made a bad choice in its sourcing of hard drives. What do you think? Defective unit or would swapping the unit with the cable co just get us another whining unit?
I'm almost positive the hard drive is defective - this has been reported from time to time but it's not normal. Have it replaced before he gets too many shows recorded onto it . . . ;)
 
#3 ·
I asked my friend to sit down with his ear about 2 feet away from the side opening of the unit and he couldn't hear the noise. In the same position, when I was connecting AV cables, the noise drove me absolutely nuts. I also talked with his wife who said she has not noticed any high pitched noises from the unit.


So, I'm starting to doubt that the unit is defective. This may be a case of me being in the group of people that can hear really high frequencies (Like I can hear the high pitch sound that a CRT television makes) and SA using hard drives whose high frequencies are just a little too low.
 
#5 ·
I just thought I'd chime in and say that I have also noticed it recently on mine. Thinking about returning it to swapping it out. I am building a entertainment unit in the beginning of the year, between fan noise from the TV, the TIVO and now this watching TV has never been so annoying! I am very keen to noises like this as well.
 
#9 ·
Quite a while ago, my friend swapped his SA8300HD for another one because of my complaints about the noise. The new one had a very slightly lower pitch, but was still quite annoying. We decided to let things rest.


More recently, the cable company decided to activate HDCP on the HDMI port and there's some issue with the box and my friend's TV. Thinking the update might have corrupted the HDMI port, he swapped the box. The new one was nearly silent to me. The totally annoying high pitch sound was gone. Unfortunately, the component outputs weren't working right on the new box (and the HDMI port still wouldn't work with my friend's TV) so he swapped it out again. The fourth box also lacked the high pitch sound. Now I can go over there and watch a DVD without worrying about covering up his cable box.


So with 4 boxes, 2 had the annoying high pitch sound and 2 did not. If you've got SA8300HD box and it is making sounds that are driving you nuts, keep swapping it with your cable co. until you get one that works.
 
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