Broken audio from my PC

[Guest]

I have headphones and a set of speakers connected to my PC, the speakers have a wall plug.
When I play this song, it sounds like this. It happens to other songs as well, but this is the best example since it starts with really low freqs.

I've never heard this before until now, it's been having this problem for a couple of days now. When I reboot my computer it's gone for just a while, but it always returns.
I'm also using the blue audio port (reassigned) for my speakers, the green one for my headphones.


Please help

[SpaceGhostC2C]

The issue it's just the initial noise? I couldn't tell if the end of the recording is faithful to your other link or it's distorted too.

 

Happens both in headphones and speakers?

[Guest]

1 minute ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

The issue it's just the initial noise? I couldn't tell if the end of the recording is faithful to your other link or it's distorted too.

 

Happens both in headphones and speakers?

It's about the noise, yeah. And yes, both headphones and speakers.

 

EDIT: I reinstalled the drivers yesterday from the Realtek website, but the problem is still there.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

2 minutes ago, JelleDekkers said:

It's about the noise, yeah. And yes, both headphones and speakers.

 

EDIT: I reinstalled the drivers yesterday from the Realtek website, but the problem is still there.

One thing that comes to my mind is electrical noise, but why didn't it happen before? Something is slightly failing in the motherboard? Maybe you plugged something else to your system recently (anything, to the PSU or to any motherboard port)? Maybe the onboard audio isn't fully isolated from those other components.

 

The noise itself sounds like a saturated speaker to me. Does your motherboard have a built-in amp that could be failing? I'm not sure it could go in the direction of saturating the speakers (it would have to over-amplify the bass for that to happen, if I'm correct?) My first reaction would be to use the Realtek driver's equalizer (if it doesn't have one, the player's one) to check if the phenomenon is sensitive to increasing/decreasing low frequencies, but then again, I'm not sure what would I learn from it.

A degradation in the contact between speakers/headphones and motherboard, perhaps? Can you test the connector by using front panel audio instead of the motherboard's I/O jacks to discard that?

 

Yes, I'm playing the blind who leads the blind  

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

One thing that comes to my mind is electrical noise, but why didn't it happen before? Something is slightly failing in the motherboard? Maybe you plugged something else to your system recently (anything, to the PSU or to any motherboard port)? Maybe the onboard audio isn't fully isolated from those other components.

 

The noise itself sounds like a saturated speaker to me. Does your motherboard have a built-in amp that could be failing? I'm not sure it could go in the direction of saturating the speakers (it would have to over-amplify the bass for that to happen, if I'm correct?) My first reaction would be to use the Realtek driver's equalizer (if it doesn't have one, the player's one) to check if the phenomenon is sensitive to increasing/decreasing low frequencies, but then again, I'm not sure what would I learn from it.

A degradation in the contact between speakers/headphones and motherboard, perhaps? Can you test the connector by using front panel audio instead of the motherboard's I/O jacks to discard that?

 

Yes, I'm playing the blind who leads the blind  

The computer has been exactly the same for weeks, it just started days ago. I tried my in-ears on the front port, same problem there.
Idk about an amp, but my motherboard is the MSI H97M-G43. The problem occurs on all audio levels.

When I turn off audio equalization, the noise is gone. Huh.

[AshleyAshes]

You're clipping the bass.  The signal is being amplified by some process or another, be it digital during process or analog during amplification on output, and it's being boosted beyond the range of either the audio chip or the speakers. 

 

See this image here, how the signal gets clipped and the waveform becomes 'flat' as it reaches the signal limit?  Yeah, that's what's happening.

 

[Guest]

51 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

You're clipping the bass.  The signal is being amplified by some process or another, be it digital during process or analog during amplification on output, and it's being boosted beyond the range of either the audio chip or the speakers. 

 

See this image here, how the signal gets clipped and the waveform becomes 'flat' as it reaches the signal limit?  Yeah, that's what's happening.

 

So is it a hardware or a software issue? I can't find anything out of the ordinary in Windows sound options.

[AshleyAshes]

Just now, JelleDekkers said:

So is it a hardware or a software issue? I can't find anything out of the ordinary in Windows sound options.

Dunno.  It's not something 'broken' per-say, its that amplification is happening somewhere.  It could be software, where somewhere in your audio drivers audio is being boosted.  FYI, you say the equalization causes it and a typical equalization curve boosts the low and high frequencies, so more bassy songs could have their lower frequency ranges being clipped inside the audio chip as it's processed.  Something else in the driver settings could be boosting it. It could also be analog amplification, where there is added power to amplify the audio for the speakers.  This can also be a problem if you're feeding audio to a different amplifier.  If you are boosting the signal somehow and then feeding it into a powered speaker set, that speaker set would also have it's own analog amplification.  This is why 'line out' exists, it provides an amplified signal.

 

It could also JUST be the music.  You take a song with a powerful bass, and you feed it tough a system that does some amplification, the bass ranges get clipped and it sounds like crap.

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

Dunno.  It's not something 'broken' per-say, its that amplification is happening somewhere.  It could be software, where somewhere in your audio drivers audio is being boosted.  FYI, you say the equalization causes it and a typical equalization curve boosts the low and high frequencies, so more bassy songs could have their lower frequency ranges being clipped inside the audio chip as it's processed.  Something else in the driver settings could be boosting it. It could also be analog amplification, where there is added power to amplify the audio for the speakers.  This can also be a problem if you're feeding audio to a different amplifier.  If you are boosting the signal somehow and then feeding it into a powered speaker set, that speaker set would also have it's own analog amplification.  This is why 'line out' exists, it provides an amplified signal.

 

It could also JUST be the music.  You take a song with a powerful bass, and you feed it tough a system that does some amplification, the bass ranges get clipped and it sounds like crap.

I'm pretty sure it's not the music. Even basic Windows sounds (like alert sounds) are clipping.
I honestly don't know where it could be amplified. The setup is exactly the same as months ago, but yet it's not working correctly.

EDIT: Could it be Realtek drivers conflicting/glitching/bugging with the W10 Anniversary Update?