Distorted Audio

Hey,

Whenever I play and audio file (ie MP3) with VLC player or WMP, I have no problems. However, when I try any type of audio/video file (ie AVI, MPG) the sound is suddenly garbled or distorted (but still understandable). I'm running XP and had a PCI Sound Blaster Live card. I've since removed it and tried the audio through the onboard sound card, but with the same problems. I've tried updating drivers (both manually and through Windows Update) and installing several codecs for WMP, but still no luck. Since it is happening with both media players and both sound cards and all of my software appears to be up to date and running with out any issues, I'm kind of stuck.

Any ideas? I have a feeling I'm missing something simple. Please help!!!!


Thanks!

i guess you should use klite codec which will help you for playing files like avi and mpg. or else try re-installing the audio driver again as it will help you to gain your clear and smooth sound back.
there may be chance that your sound card may turned down

Thanks, but as I mentioned, I've tried several codecs (including K-lite) and also reinstalled and updated my drivers, but with no luck. Any other suggestions?

To resolve this behavior, enable Direct Memory Access (DMA) for your CD-ROM device. When you enable DMA, data is transferred directly to and from memory without passing through the Central Processing Unit (CPU).

Someone else on a different forum suggested this. First off, the files I'm playing are on my harddrive, not a CD... not sure if that makes a difference.

Anyway, they sent me to a program that was supposed to fix this problem (winhlp.com/node/10). I ran it, it stated it reset the Master Primary IDE and Master and Slave Secondary IDE. I rebooted and still no change. I double checked the IDE in Device Manager and My Secondary Device 1 IDE was still showing PIO. I manually changed this to DMA and rebooted. It stayed as DMA, but the audio was still messed.

Am I doing something wrong? Most of this is well over my head, but I feel I'm missing something simple. Any suggestions?


Thanks!

Anyone? Please help!

Well just being curious have you tried different speakers that your normal one?
Just see if you have same audio quality when you attach yours friends speakers to your machine!

Yeah, I've tried it through my stereo aux and it's the same. I've also heard it could have been a result of using a usb wireless adapter for internet, but I've uninstalled that and tried it, but everything was the same. I'm running out of things to try.

Also, my CPU is only running at 15% or so when the video is playing, so that can't be the problem either.

I've never had this problem before, so it's very frustrating. Everything else runs beautifully... just not the audio from video files.

Ok, so I think I narrowed it down to a problem with my video card (Radeon 9250 PCI) and it's drivers. I uninstalled the drivers I had downloaded from ATI and rebooted. Using the basic video drivers on Windows, I played the video file and the sound was perfect... obviously the video wasn't though. As soon as I install the drivers again, it reverts back to the same problem.

I've tried a couple different driver releases that I found (ver 8.31, ver 8.252 -- from Catalyst 6.11 and 6.5), but nothing worked.

Any other ideas? Does anyone know where I could download an even older version? Is there a chance that it might solve to problem?