Almond+ Making Strange Sounds

[brianf2]

I have had my Almond+ for a couple of months now and it has performed quite well.  I am running the latest firmware.  My concern is that when the room is totally quiet I can hear an electronic hissing sound coming from the router.  It concerns me that it could be unhealthy.  It is not a buzzing sound, but almost like a wooshing sound.  I know there is no fan in the unit, so I am not sure what is causing this noise.  Maybe some kind of digital interference.

Has anyone else experienced this? 

Brian

[LGNilsson]

It's a known issue and there are already a few posts about it in the forums. It's generally referred to as coil whine and apart from being annoying, it doesn't cause any problems. It happens because of a component issue, but we can't test for it during production and it's a fairly common issue with things like PC power supplies, graphics cards and sometimes motherboard too. What happens is that at certain loads, the coil on a choke starts to vibrate every do slightly, causing the noise. This happens when data is transferred on the 2.4GHz Wi-Fi network, but as I mentioned, it doesn't cause any problems.

[brantflick]

My unit also has this issue.  I sent an email to support to inquire about insulating the unit in some way or getting a replacement.  I was told that I can get a replacement if I ask, but I'd rather not go through the trouble.  The issue, when it happens, is certainly obnoxious, but it only happens on occasion when using WiFi and not at all consistently.  Can I put some insulating tape or something on the coil to make the vibrations less noticeable?  I don't want to void any sort of warranty, obviously, but since you guys are dealing with a lot of stuff a simple "patch" for this would be ideal in my opinion.

[LGNilsson]

Sadly there's no way to fix this except for replacing the component,
It's a sealed component that looks something like this: