Win7 audio distortion

[evilsofa]

UPDATE: PROBLEM SOLVED. See below.

I have some audio distortion on my Windows 7 PC that I have been unable to get rid of. The most obvious place I have been able to hear the distortion is during a particular sound on a particular music track:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ji-IAdjOe4

Fast forward to 3:30 or so. From 3:34 to 3:36 is a medium-high pitched tone; during that tone I get crackling sounds on the Windows 7 PC, whether I listen to the Youtube video or listen to the mp3 in iTunes 10.6.3. When I use the same headphones to listen to the same mp3 on my iPhone, or use the same headphones to listen to the same Youtube video on my Mac Mini running Mac OS X 10.6, the distortion is gone.

I'm running Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium fully updated on an ASUS P8P67 Pro 3.1 motherboard with the latest Realtek High Definition Audio Driver: R2.70 (6.0.1.6710). This audio driver was released at the end of August 2012 and older versions have the same issue.

I have all enhancement settings turned off in the audio drivers. No equalizers, no environment, no loudness, no room correction, nothing enabled in DTS, all sound effects disabled, speaker configuration set to Stereo. Same thing happens with headphones plugged into rear audio jack or front panel audio jack.

Going to the Sound Control Panel (or the Realtek HD Audio Manager) and changing the default sample rate and bit depth from 24 bit 48000 Hz to 24 bit 44100 Hz has no effect on this distortion.

Any ideas?

 

[kalston]

Win 7 audio (or Vista's) isn't all that good and this seems perfectly normal to me - I can notice distortion too sometimes when using Directsound on 7 (distortion that I don't get with WASAPI and ASIO or with DS on XP).

Because of this I configure my audio and video players to always use ASIO or WASAPI in Win 7 (Directsound is fine in XP though). Youtube is the worst benchmark for audio quality though, people upload compressed audio and it gets further compressed by Youtube so obviously it's going to sound bad.

You can try this hotfix btw http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2653312 that helped a lot for me as the worst distortion happened when resampling.

 

[grandfatman]

Have you got an external amplifier? Such as your audio output plugged into a stereo or a headphone amp etc? Look at your gain structure, If your audio is all the way up on your pc, turn it down a little and turn the amp up, then your not clipping your amp on input (which can damage amps and speakers, sqaure waves and all)

 

[evilsofa]

kalston, that particular video sounds good with no distortion on my Mac, and sounds bad with distortion on my Win 7 PC, so it's not an issue with the source, even if it's a Youtube video. The hotfix is for if I were still using 24 bit 48000 KHz; I'm using 24 bit 44100 KHz so no resampling should be happening (unless I were playing a DVD, which I never do).

grandfatman: no external amplifier. It's a pair of good IEMs plugged directly into the PC. PC audio is set to 80%, because it is otherwise too quiet.

 

[XenIneX]

Does it do it at all volumes? Also, does it do it when you go into the mixer and reduce the volume of just your web browser?

 

[Snufykat]

Front panel or in the back?

 

[grandfatman]

Could there be an issue with your IEM's? Blown drivers maybe?

 

[evilsofa]

I applied the hotfix and the behavior didn't change.

XenlneX: the distortion stops happening if I turn it down enough, but unfortunately that level is too quiet for me to listen to. Same thing if I just reduce the volume for Adobe Flash (when playing on YouTube) or iTunes.

Snufykat: both, as I mentioned in my OP.

grandfatman: the same IEMs at the same volume playing the same song on my iPhone and my Mac do not have any distortion. This only happens on my Win 7 PC.

 

[XenIneX]

Sounds like a gain setting is cranked up too high somewhere. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about the specifics of the Windows 7 audio stack to know the likely culprits off the top of my head


What I'd end up doing if it were me:

Load up an Ubuntu LiveCD and see if the audio is still screwed up. If yes, then it's a hardware problem. Deal with as appropriate.

If it works in Linux, grab a discreet sound card or USB DAC I have lying around somewhere, throw it into the machine, and see if I still got the clipping on it.

If no, then that means the problem in the drivers. Uninstall the audio drivers, then use Regedit to strip out any detrius left over, which would hopefully clear out any misadjusted gain settings. Then, reinstall drivers.

If the clipping still occurs on a different audio device, then likely something in the audio stack is jacked, and it'd take far more time to track down than the problem's worth. At that point, I'd probably go for the nuclear option and reinstall the OS.

 

[evilsofa]

PROBLEM SOLVED.

Finally nailed this sucker. To make a long story short and omit lots of cursing and swearing, my PC case is an Antec P180B and has a front panel header that is AC97 instead of HD Audio.

I needed to set both my BIOS and the audio drivers to use AC97 instead of HD Audio. The result of doing that is that the output is much louder at the same volume. I was having to crank the volume way up high to hear it at normal levels, and this was making audio clip at much lower levels than it should have.

This corrects an issue I've been having over the last 5 years with my last three motherboards playing audio too quietly that I've never been able to figure out until now.

My Win 7 PC now sounds the same as my Mac and my iPhone. If I turn the Mac or the iPhone way up beyond what I can bear (and hold the IEMs away from my ear so I don't damage my hearing) they do crackle the same as the Win 7 PC was at much lower levels.

Incidentally, what I read about AC97 is: "AC'97 supports 96 kHz in 20-bit stereo resolution and 48 kHz in 20-bit stereo for multichannel recording and playback." This makes me think I should set sample rate and bit depth to 16 bit 44100 Hz, and it does sound fine that way. Does anybody really hear any difference with higher settings?