Noisy (whistling) Sony or over-sensitive owner?

[Andrew McP]

My week old KV28LS35 has what I thought was "just" a somewhat noisier than average HT whistle, and I hoped I'd get used to it.

Well, I'm not getting used to it... it's like having tinnitus while watching TV! I thought it might just be me being oversensitive, but this morning I realised this whistle's spilling over into the sound output.

Basically when I wear decent headphones (which partially masks out the external whistle), turn the volume right down, and toggle the mute button, it's clear there's a fixed background level of whistle (between 12 and 15KHz) in the sound output. This component to the overall whistle disappears when the sound's muted, and doesn't get louder when I turn up the volume. Obviously turning up the volume makes the whistle less obvious, but it's very hard for me to ignore nonetheless.

The question is, does this sound like a real fault, or does it mean I'm Mr Freaky Ears? My fear at the moment is that the supplier will send an ancient engineer with less sensitive hearing who'll just shrug and say it's fine. Of course I can just play the stroppy git and get it swapped, but if the problems' my ears, not the set, then I could be playing this swapping game for a long time.

Any thoughts before I start embarrassing myself on the phone to Empiredirect?

 

[Nobber22]

Sounds like a dodgy set to me. Nothing scientific here, but how about getting a few mates over to watch something, but DON'T mention the whistle. Then see if any of them notices. If they do, your ears are in the clear and the set definitely needs a look-see from an engineer.

 

[Andrew McP]

Good idea, the not telling them thing. Mind you, I guess I should just have the courage of my convictions... if I haven't got used to it after a week I'm not going to!

 

[Andrew McP]

An update.

Found (only) one friend who can hear what I'm hearing, so at least I'm not alone. Both of us can hear bats too FWIW.

Anyway, engineer came, heard nowt (as expected) and suggested that while they could spray the coil etc of the set to reduce any hardware whistling, he didn't think that would help the audio whistle that's also bugging me... especially if they couldn't hear the problem to compare before and after. There was me thinking they might have fairly advanced diagnostic kit. Dream on! )

His suggestion was get it swapped. So I'm doing my traditional umming and ahhing as I try to decide whether I stick with the devil I know... can't stand the thought of swapping it and finding the same or other problems!

A temporary solution is listening to the TV with my less Hi-Fi (and thus less enjoyable) radio headphones. These don't transmit the audio whistle, and shield me from most of the hardware whistle. So... er....

So I should be more decisive, or watch less TV ;o)