Sound Problems

[Lindir The Green]

This computer is having major problems with playing music. Sound effects seem to work fine, but maybe 2/3 of the music I try to play sounds really garbled, with the volume of certain things dropping and the left and right speakers / headphones not playing in synchronization.

But the other 1/3 is fine.

The CDs that a bought from a store work fine, but the CDs that I bought from iTunes don't. And those songs work the same whether they are being played from a CD or whether I ripped them and am playing them from the HD.

Some .S3M files sound fine, but some don't, and I don't think any of my .IT files sound un-garbled. And again, it doesn't matter which format I convert it to, or which software I use to play it. What seems to matter is the original format.

I know that the files themselves are uncorrupted, because they play well on other computers and other CD players. Also, when I play something that sounds garbled, and record it in Audacity, and then play it back, it sounds much better.

So... Does anyone have an idea of what the problem is, and how I might go about fixing it? It seems to be a problem to do with the sound card, but I reinstalled the drivers and if anything it got worse. I hope it's not a problem with the actual card, because it's a SoundMax Digital Audio system integrated with the motherboard (I think...)

[Caydr]

See if your music plays fine in VLC media player. If it does, then you have a codec problem or the software you normally use to play music is borked in some way.

[Lindir The Green]

It does not play fine in the VLC media player.

Which means...? That it's a sound card problem?

I guess I need a new sound card then, because the driver re-installation didn't fix it.

[rattle]

Does it only happen with certain khz, bitrates, etc.?

[Lindir The Green]

Whoohoo it spontaniously fixed itself!

Wonder why...