Realtek ALC887 sound issue

Timbo 100 · 30 May 2014

Hi all,
Im having a bit of trouble with sound on my PC system. There seems to be a bit of distortion when i play music through either my head phones and through my hifi system via the mini jacks on the rear panel and the front. Its very bad when I listen to Coldplay Clocks (the piano rift at the start). Through both WMP and Itunes. When I attach my iphone to my stereo and stream the music from the pc it is floorless. Also when I play music via my tv throught the HDMI it is distorted too.
Has any one experienced this before and know a solution?
Thanks in advance.

fireberd · 31 May 2014

If is the same with both HDMI and the PC's speakers (sound card) that suggests something other than the sound devices. HDMI audio is generated by the Video Card, separately from the PC's sound card (whatever that is, you didn't list it in your specs).

Is this file the only one that is distorted? or is ANY music played on the PC distorted? If its "any" music is it full fidelity wav sound files or MP3 files (which are something less than full fidelity).

Timbo 100 · 31 May 2014

Thanks for your response Fireberd,
Im using the onboard sound. The bad sound quality is on everything even the ping sound when I adjust the volume slider. Today I installed a sound blaster card that I had spare and it also sounds the same.
May be it is a trial and error with removing graphics card ect.

fireberd · 01 Jun 2014

With the SoundBlaster sound card getting the same sounds, that eliminates the PC's sound card as a problem.

BUT, it doesn't eliminate the PC power supply. Unfortunately, the only way to test a power supply is to replace it with a known good power supply. With the test sounds also being bad, my "guess" would be a power supply problem.

Timbo 100 · 02 Jun 2014

Ok, this is weird. I changed the psu to my back up psu and there was no change, so I started to look in to the audio drivers again and installed the older version for my mobo on the Asus website then did a sound test through my audio system. Previously I was experiencing poor quality through both wmp and itunes, now wmp sounds great and itunes is the same poor sound quality as before. I have tested both hdmi to tv (which then goes to my amp) and directly to my amp from pc with the same results.
Any ideas? I would prefer to use itunes as i can control it with my remote phone app.
Thank for you help btw

fireberd · 03 Jun 2014

have you tried reinstalling iTunes?

Timbo 100 · 08 Jun 2014

All sorted now. The remedy was installing the older sound driver. The reason that particular song still sounded bad must of been because the album was converted from wmp file to mp3 as it was imported into Itunes. Its not good to convert a compressed file to another.
Thanks for your help