RE: Distorted sound from WMP 11


It would have probably been a lot more helpful if I had included my OS with
my specs. I'll have to ammend that little piece of text but I am using Win
XP Pro SP3.

And I found a graphic equalizer in WMP that helps me cut down on some of the
distortion but I think I have narrowed down the problem to what has already
been mentioned. I am sending way to much signal to my monitor speakers but I
don't seem to have a lot of choice in that MS didn't anticipate my
configuration and therefore, didn't provide an option for "monitor mounted
speakers on the primary stereo channel and a premium 2-channel subwofer
system hooked up to the second jack on my card. I have never used the
"third" jack on the card as I don't have 7.1 surround speakers but the card
is suppose to handle that.

I'll just have to keep playing with the settings until I get something that
sounds good. I like using WMP mainly because it seems to load faster.
Probably because MS gives it some preference.

I am still trying to figure out which speaker settings work best. IN the
"Devices" section, if I select the only sound card installed, my, "SB Audigy
2 ZS Audio [B800]", WMP seems to crash. I have to select the only other
option which is "Default sound device" and WMP seems to run okay. On top of
that, I have been playing with using the "Quadrophonic Speakers" setting and
the "Surround Speakers" setting to try and get the appropriate signals to the
right place.

It seems like such a hastle to do what I feel like should be a simple and
default system setup. I think a lot of people would prefer a similar setup
where they can hear basic sound information over their monitor speakers and
if they want good music, they just turn on their premium speakers to hear it.
It shouldn't be this hard to get good sound. Especially when aftermarket
software seems to find a way to utilize my settings to produce an excellent
sound.




"Vincent" wrote:

A simple check is to open the properties of the playback device in the sound
panel.
Check the ‘Enhancement’ tab, disabling all DSP might be an enhancement.
Also check the ‘configure’ button and check the speakers setings.

You might try an audio editing program and check if the recordings are
clipping.


--

http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com



"Derf McKensy" wrote:

This is a complicated question that I hope has a simple answer. My computer
is five years old now but I am hesitant to replace it just yet for several
reasons. The biggest being money but also because I built this thing five
years ago and it can still stand up to a lot of the over-the-counter PCs
available today. But I've always had some issues installing my sound card.
If I try to install some old Roxio software for burning DVDs and CDs, I get
some terrible errors and reboots as I keep getting popups that say my
sound-device in not fucntioning or is not installed. Yet, when I go to the
device manager, it is there and seems happy.

This happened before when MS came out with WMP 9&10. Each time, I try to
use the MS WMP but after so many errors, I often give up and just use the
Creative Media Player for all my music because it works well without issues.
So, consiquently, most of the scads of music, (all legal music), was recorded
or ripped with the Creative Player. The problem occurs when I try to use WMP
to play the music I ripped with tthe Creative Player. It sounds very
distorted as if there is way too much bass and sometimes, it just crashes in
the middle of the songs.

So I tried downloading and installing the very latest drivers for my sound
card and I think that has helped with the crashing issue, at least so far.
But I still have the distorted music problem. I have gone into all the
options that I could find and reset everything to the defaults. I can't
think of anything else I can do yet so that's why I'm searching for help.

I like MS software but I'm a cheap-scape so I have some really old stuff I
bought as a student for the better price like MS Office 2000 & Visual Studio
6.0. I would like to use WMP exclusively but I need it to work or at least
sound better.

Here are the specs for my five-year-old box...

Genuine Intel D875PBZ w/OB gigabit LAN
native SATA 150 support
DR400 RAM w/800 MHz bus speed
3.2E Prescott w/1 MB sec cache & Hyper-Threading
(2) Hitachi Deskstar 80/8/7500 SATA drives
running in a RAID-0 array
2 GBs Corsair Extreme 2.5 CAS RAM
SoundBlaster Audigy-2 ZS Gamer edition
8x AGP Asus V9570 FX5700 128 MB video
DH20A4P optical DVD burner
.

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