Audio Systems: receiver hum, jack pin, apple engineers

Question
I bought a monster cable to connect my ipod to my stereo.  When I play the music from the ipod, some of the songs are distorted.  In troubleshooting the connections, I also noticed that my receiver is delivering a low hum through the speakers when the power is on.  When I play a cd, the sound is fine.  I am wondering if this hum is normal, and whether there is a chance the cable I got is bad?

Thanks.

Answer
Dear Mike,

In my experience, hum of this sort originates with the solidity of the connection. Make sure that the mini-jack pin that is inserted into the universal dock's line out is inserted all the way, sits solidly, and doesn't wiggle/jiggle once seated.

This assumes that you are indeed using the universal dock. If you try and use the headphone/earbud connection, you'll most likely--not in all cases--get a hum because headphone connections are calibrated differently from line level connections. You'll get all sorts of odd behavior including hum and distortion. Further, Apple is renowned (or notorious, depending on your point of view) for engineering its products so they can't be used except as intended. So, Apple engineers may have calibrated the headphone connection to deliberately distort or hum if you try and use it as a line out. That way you have to buy the dock. Engineering meets marketing meets product sales. Welcome to Commerce 101.

Good luck. And thanks for choosing allexperts.com!

Kindest regards,

Kevin