Sudden drop in sound quality on tiny desktop pc

  • Thread starter Jondot
  • 6 comments
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United Kingdom
Kent, UK
GTP_Jondot
With my laptop pretty much dead in the water until pcworld answer their phone calls, i have turned to my 3 year old tiny desktop for a substitute. I like decent sound quality, so, as i did with my laptop, plugged it into my hifi with a 3.5mm jack to two phono/rca leads. This worked fine for a while, but i noticed today that i am experiencing a sudden drop in sound quality.
I played a song on itunes, and realised tha it was dreadful quality. Worrying it was my hifi (3 years old and still going strong), i tried playing a cd, and was blown away by the great quality. So it wasn't my hifi speakers, phew! I then tried plugging my ipod into the 3.5mm jack (a headphone sized connector if you were wondering), put my hifi on aux, an listened. Again, great sound quality. I then got the same song playing on both pc and ipod, and switched between. The pc was dreadful quality in comparison. To see if it was my pc reacting to the cable, i plugged a few differant sets of headphones in. They were all dreadful quality on the pc, and great on the ipod.
So, i thought my sound card had had it.
Then i played a movie file in windows media player, and the sound was fine.
I then wondered if it ws itunes, and played the same song in both itunes and windows media player. When i played it in itunes, it mysteriously stopped being such dreadful quality.

How curious - a sudden drop in quality, and then back to normal again within a few minutes. Ahhhhh!!!

Why is it doing this, and should i get a new sound card?

Thanks in advance

Jon
 
You hve a TINY computer, HAHAHAHAHHAHA! I had one too, lasted 4 pitiful and frustrating years.

How longs you compter been inactive? Might need some spring cleaning.
 
ExigeExcel
You hve a TINY computer, HAHAHAHAHHAHA! I had one too, lasted 4 pitiful and frustrating years.

How longs you compter been inactive? Might need some spring cleaning.

It was inactive from november 2004 to march 2005, it's fine now, i just wondered why it was doing it then
 
Jmac279
What type of file is causing the problems ? Could be a bad decoder on WMP ...
It was itunes (apple) that was giving bad sound, but everything else was bad too, including the sounds on msn messenger. I think the sound card had a temperary issue for some reason - the whole pc was bad, until i opened up wmp and played a movie
 
ExigeExcel
You hve a TINY computer, HAHAHAHAHHAHA! I had one too, lasted 4 pitiful and frustrating years.

Strangely enough mine's been ok so far, other than this, and it not liking ms dos applications suddenly
 
Maybe something is loose on your soundcard........or its covered in dust......give it a clean and maybe push it into the PCI slot abit because it maybe loose......it could also be that the jack holes need a clean.....if its 3 years old I would not be suprised that it needs abit of fiddling around to sort it.......I doubt its a software issue because the quality would not just come and go like that......
 
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