Is it normal that when the drive inside the Karma spins up I can hear it through the headphones?

It's definately through the headphones as I can still hear it even if I cover the Karma with a jumper or something. Also I can't hear it if I take the headphones out.

It's a faint whine noise as the drive spins up and then I can hear a very quiet buzz whilst the drive is still spinning. Once it spins down then the noises are gone. Set the Karma volume to 0 and skip forward a couple of tracks to make it buffer off the HD and you should be able to hear it easily.