Why are my favorite bands suddenly breathing helium?
May 24, 2011 8:52 PM Subscribe
Why has this WinXP machine recently started to play Youtube videos back at roughly 10% faster than the proper speed?
I occasionally use a shared Win XP SP3 computer in an office setting, after hours. I like to put a little music on via Youtube while I work. Recently, I noticed that the music sounded odd: a little higher-pitched, slightly faster than the versions stored in my brain. I checked, and my watch tells me that the videos are completing 1:00 of content in only about 0:55 of actual playback time, give or take. (The anomaly seems steady and consistent, but it's hard to time it accurately using my wristwatch.)
The time warp occurs on Chrome10, Firefox 4 and IE9 alike; my Flash player installation is current, and I don't have any sophisticated audio mixer software installed. The machine has well-maintained virus protection software, receives MS software updates on schedule, and I don't know of any recently installed software that might correlate to the problem. The computer's system clock is keeping accurate time, though it's possible there's a time server on the LAN that's correcting it.
Google is failing me, and except for this machine my daily life is all Linux and OSX now, so I'm a little rusty on Windows troubleshooting. I thought I'd take a chance and see if anyone else out there has any experience with this problem, or any idea what might be going on?
I occasionally use a shared Win XP SP3 computer in an office setting, after hours. I like to put a little music on via Youtube while I work. Recently, I noticed that the music sounded odd: a little higher-pitched, slightly faster than the versions stored in my brain. I checked, and my watch tells me that the videos are completing 1:00 of content in only about 0:55 of actual playback time, give or take. (The anomaly seems steady and consistent, but it's hard to time it accurately using my wristwatch.)
The time warp occurs on Chrome10, Firefox 4 and IE9 alike; my Flash player installation is current, and I don't have any sophisticated audio mixer software installed. The machine has well-maintained virus protection software, receives MS software updates on schedule, and I don't know of any recently installed software that might correlate to the problem. The computer's system clock is keeping accurate time, though it's possible there's a time server on the LAN that's correcting it.
Google is failing me, and except for this machine my daily life is all Linux and OSX now, so I'm a little rusty on Windows troubleshooting. I thought I'd take a chance and see if anyone else out there has any experience with this problem, or any idea what might be going on?
Best answer: maybe someone "fixed" the soundcard by configuring it for 48kHz rather than 44.1kHz...a difference of about 10%.
posted by rhizome at 9:00 PM on May 24, 2011
posted by rhizome at 9:00 PM on May 24, 2011
rhizome is probably right, this sounds like an audio clock problem.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 9:14 PM on May 24, 2011
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 9:14 PM on May 24, 2011
Response by poster: Vimeo exhibits a similar speedup, and playback in Windows MP of audio without video shows the effect too. So rhizome's hypothesis sounds good.
Looking around for a place to configure audio clock speed, I don't see it in the Control Panel/Device Manager/Sound area. Is it likely to be a BIOS setting?
posted by richyoung at 9:35 PM on May 24, 2011
Looking around for a place to configure audio clock speed, I don't see it in the Control Panel/Device Manager/Sound area. Is it likely to be a BIOS setting?
posted by richyoung at 9:35 PM on May 24, 2011
Are you completely sure that you don't have something like the Realtek Advanced Audio control panel item available? Lots of corporate workstations do, because it comes along for the ride when you install sound drivers. Look for it in the system tray and/or control panel. If it's there, make sure its Karaoke setting is on 0.
posted by flabdablet at 9:41 PM on May 24, 2011
posted by flabdablet at 9:41 PM on May 24, 2011
By the way, I'm suggesting this because in my experience it's the most common cause for mis-tuned sound on the Windows boxes I manage at school.
posted by flabdablet at 9:42 PM on May 24, 2011
posted by flabdablet at 9:42 PM on May 24, 2011
Response by poster: Hmm, resolved but I'm not sure why. Never found the audio clock adjustment, but Adobe asked to update Flash again after a reboot (despite assuring me that I was current when I checked manually....) Post-update, the sound is correct once more. Thanks for the help, everyone.
posted by richyoung at 9:59 PM on May 24, 2011
posted by richyoung at 9:59 PM on May 24, 2011
It probably just reset all the config stuff to defaults. It's actually usually a sign of a badly-behaved installer, but in this case it's a good reset, or in the best case scenario, the installer detected invalid settings and changed bad ones back.
posted by rhizome at 7:12 PM on May 25, 2011
posted by rhizome at 7:12 PM on May 25, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
If it does, does it happen with all videos? Try downloading a video using one of those handy YouTube-downloader sites and play the file locally to see how it works.
posted by Senza Volto at 8:56 PM on May 24, 2011