LOUD hissing in headphones - Page 3

I have tried a couple very high-end headphones (including a pair so high-end that there are only a few hundred made as limited editions), and the hiss is even more noticable through them. On my cheap, $5.99 pair of Jenson earphones, the noise is less noticable, but still very much their and irritating even behind other sounds.

I have two other notebook PCs, and here at the offices in Creation Museum, I've tried a dozen different notebook models from a few different manufacturers. They all had no hiss.

I'm not going for audiophile quality, just acceptable quality. And right now, the loud hiss is totally unacceptable for any notebook more than $1,000.

This is a widely reported problem. I've read other places that the same Clevo notebook (rebranded through VoodooPC, Hypersonic, and others) has the problem. But in those places, they have speculated interference with the surrounding components. But if that's the case, then I would expect to hear the same hiss through the microphone jack (changed through Audio Manager for headphone output), which is RIGHT NEXT TO the headphone jack. But that jack and the two jacks on the back have no noticable hiss.

Isn't it reasonable to expect a $2,400+ computer to have at least acceptable audio through it's headphone jack? Especially when $400 PCs from Wal-Mart or ten-year-old laptops produce acceptable audio.