Problem:
Do you experience a “noisy” sound or some sort of “clicking”, “popping” or even “hissing” from your headphones if connected directly to the headphone jack ? Especially highly sensitive headphones (low impedance) that run rather loud even at low volume settings can be prone to show these effects, since the soundcard’s signal/noise (S/N) is usually worst at low volume settings.

I had particular problems with my Macbook Pro in combination with some Sennheiser headphones. The Powerbook I used before was “better” handling these headphones. Anyway, let’s look at a simple solution which might help you as well …

Solution:
You select around 80% volume on you computer and externally turn the volume down to an acceptable volume level using an external headphone extension cord with volume control. By doing so, the S/N of the audio signal is maximised and you get surprising clear and clean sound quality. I was actually blown away with this solution and the results it produces. I have never ever experienced such a clean audio out from a computer. I even considered a high grade external DAC (Digital/Analogue Converter) because this issue drove me so mad.

So if you do care about audio quality just a little bit (I am not an Audiophile), you might want to try this very very cheap and simple solution and buy a headphone extension cord with integrated volume control which costs around 5£. Good luck !