On battery - VERY quiet hiss from my right speaker when volume at min. At max there’s also a whistle in the right but only if my ear is to the speaker, the left a very quiet hiss. Not an issue at all…
does it change depending on what firmware you use?
one common practice to do pwm audio on the Pico is to run the channels at a high frequency which then gets modulated by tweaking the cycle, so at all times it could be putting out noise if the firmware doesn’t turn that off while it’s not outputting any sound