Help No Audio Only Hiss

[Stone City Raider]

Alcatel 5054N
Android version 5.1.1
I use this device as a dedicated media player. It has no service with a carrier, only Wi-Fi. It's rooted. I've used it as such for the better part of a year now with no issues to speak of. Mostly I use Black Player EX to play music on it through my sound system and that's it. A few nights back, after powering up, where there once was music, an ominous loud hiss had taken its place. I tried Netflix, YouTube with the same result; video but no audio, save the loud hiss. With no apps running, it will, every so often, randomly hiss for a few moments before returning to silence, which gave me the mistaken impression that the device was somehow picking up shortwave radio signals. This behavior is mirrored whether connected to headphones, the stereo, or nothing at all. I've searched the farthest nether-reaches of this world wide web to no avail. This is my last ditch effort before giving up and tossing it into the spare parts bin.
Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[svim]

Have you tried starting up your Alcatel in its Safe Mode? If your sound issues are happening while running in Safe Mode that might indicate a hardware issue, if not there's probably some app that's the culprit. Since things were fine and just recently that hiss problem started occurring, think back to when the problem started and if there's an app you installed around that same time.
https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-33016
You might also want to try wiping the system cache partition. The system cache is different than general app caches and it resides on its own separate partition so this won't affect any of your personal data.
https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-33038

 

[NickoPrime]

As already mentioned before, try Safe Mode to know if the issue is caused by an app.
If the hiss is still there then your speakers are dead, unless you modified system files or settings like build.prop and such?
Wipe the Music FX app cache and data and reboot normally to see if it works.

 

[Stone City Raider]

I'm embarrassed to say I wasn't even aware that the Android os had a safe mode. Unfortunately, the hiss followed me there too. It can't be the speakers or anything in the signal chain following the Alcatel since the issue is duplicated whether using the onboard speaker, or external monitoring (bluetooth and line level both). So my guess is, as Svim suggested, that whatever little micro-preamp, D-A, processor-thingy precedes the onboard speaker amplifier of the Alcatel, that component, overcome with guilt, has quite probably perished by its own hand rather than spend one more day contributing to the playback of my widely disliked music library (everyone's a critic).
While I am out one dedicated mp3 player, I realize I now have the ideal platform for my silent movie collection. So it's not all bad.
Thanks for your assistance.

 

[svim]

Before you relegate your Alcatel to no-sound tasks, I'd still suggest trying to wipe the system cache partition. If there's no improvement after that, there's always the option to do a Factory Reset. Just be absolutely sure you have backups of all your personal data -- email/calendar/contacts to your online email service, SMS, photos and videos, saved documents, etc. before doing the Reset.
https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-29491
And if after all that you're still getting that hiss and static noise, you can reflash the stock ROM (essentially reloading the Android operating system).
https://forum.xda-developers.com/android/general/rom-alcatel-one-touch-fierce-xl-5054-t3385169