Odd distortion while playing music in any music player on Win 7 PC

I am not sure if the title accurately tells what my issue is. I hope I can explain it.

When listening to music on my PC, it does not matter if I use Winamp, Songbird, Quicktime, Windows Media Player, or any other software. Every so often, there appears some sort of distortion, like the drive that the music is on slows down. I dont know if it is the driver or what. Its hard to explain. You have to hear it. I dont think its the mp3 file itself, cause I could play a song and it will be perfect, but then the next time I play it, it will distort. It is really driving my nuts cause I can't find the reason for it.

Anybody out here got any ideas? even crazy ones? Thanks.

Cardnut

Please follow the http://www.sevenforums.com/crashes-debugging/96879-blue-screen-death-bsod-posting-instructions.html to provide us with application and system logs that can indicate application conflicts, application errors, system corruption, or system critical errors to help us determine if any of these are causing problems with your music playing.

Since it's a glitch in streaming audio through the system I'd say it's very probable it's a latency issue.

Cardnut, would you care to run DPC Latency Checker and read the information on that web page as it's quite pertinent to you.

The utility is freeware and runs on all flavours of Windows

Thanks for all the info. I downloaded the BSOD file and ran it. I am not sure how to execute the perfmon/report. I also ran the latency program. I keep my music on my eternal hard drive, and the messages I got said that the latency itwas detecting might be caused by that. It suggested I disable/enable each device. I am going to try that. I am also going to see if moving my music to my C drive might improve it.

If you can tell me how to perform the perfmon/report I will run that.

cardnut

cardnut said:

Thanks for all the info. I downloaded the BSOD file and ran it. I am not sure how to execute the perfmon/report. I also ran the latency program. I keep my music on my eternal hard drive, and the messages I got said that the latency itwas detecting might be caused by that. It suggested I disable/enable each device. I am going to try that. I am also going to see if moving my music to my C drive might improve it.

If you can tell me how to perform the perfmon/report I will run that.

cardnut

Click to expand...

Start Menu -> Type perfmon /report into Search programs and files -> Hit Enter -> save as HTML file once it finishes running

Thanks. typed perfmon / report and I got a message that it was an invalid parm. I entered perfmon and the performance monitor did pop up. Not sure what to do at this point.

No space between the / and report. May be why it did not recognize it.

Thanks. I ran the perfmon report. I have zipped the BSOD folder and added the perfmon report. I did move my music folder from my external hard drive to my C drive. I re-ran the latency report and this time I did not get any bad reports. All it told me was that all the devices on my system could handle streaming audio and video.

Here is the additional info:

OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
Version 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name STEVEBOWERS-PC
System Manufacturer HP-Pavilion
System Model AZ209AV-ABA p6380t
System Type x64-based PC
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9300 @ 2.50GHz, 2499 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. 5.16, 1/13/2010
SMBIOS Version 2.5
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7601.17514"
User Name SteveBowers-PC\Steve Bowers
Time Zone Central Standard Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 8.00 GB
Available Physical Memory 4.91 GB
Total Virtual Memory 16.0 GB
Available Virtual Memory 12.3 GB
Page File Space 8.00 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys

Please let me know if there is anything else you may need.


Cardnut

See some minor application errors: Skype toolbar causes some conflicts in Internet Explorer. HP Advisor throws critical fatal errors on startup (critical and fatal to HP, not to your system, so probably not a big deal). You can uninstall both if you do not use them, but if you use them, I wouldn't worry about the errors as they are probably not severely affecting the computer performance.

GEARAspiWDM.sys causes some system errors due to the driver being incompatible with your system. This driver is typically related to CD/DVD software. If such software is giving you problems, you may want to look into it further. Otherwise, it is not a big deal. You have some other system errors due to Homegroup, so if you use Homegroup, we can look into this as well. If not, the errors are probably due to not using Homegroup. There are also some network related errors that may be due to McAfee blocking things, so probably not important.

As I said, mostly minor things. Nothing that stands out as a possible cause of your problems. It may have just been the streaming across the external connection.

If your latency test reached yellow or red-lining more than once in say, ten minutes, then it's telling you something's not quite right with your drivers..

Get any red-lining above four on the scale and you will almost certainly have trouble with video, and possibly audio too... freezes will happen over split second intervals, slight drop outs or stuttering are common, perhaps accompanied by white noise or a brief click or whine...

Thanks for taking a look at it. I do use Skype, but I never use the toolbar at all. HP Advisor I use every so often. My system have a blu-ray player in it. I have been trying to find some PC software that will let me play blu-ray discs. I have no issue playing regular CDs or DVDs.

I moved all my music to my C drive, and so far I have not heard any distortion.

Is there anyway to improve streaming from an external connection?

Thanks again.

Qdos - I looked at all my devices and everything says that the drivers are working normally. How can I tell if one is bad?

Just follow the advice in the diagnostic freeware...

Thanks Qdos. I appreciate it.