god damn it

October 17, 2005 6:42 PM

Why is the audio on my computer oscillating at some weird and vagrant frequency?

I started getting only one channel on my sound system, so I went under and done fiddled with the wiring, and after thats audio plays at some weird rythm wherein it sounds really jumpy and cut up like a bad stream. It's gotten worse over the past 24 hours. Are the machines finally revolting?

posted by trinarian to Pets & Animals (3 answers total)

My first guess is because you "fiddled with the wiring." :)

1st - unseat and reseat whatever you fiddled with...

Can you isolate it? -- do you get the same behavior with all your audio inputs? (CD drive playing directly out the built-in headphone jack), line-in through your sound card, from a variety of audio apps, streamed over the web...

Or is it all sounds (OS sounds, etc.)?

What OS? what kind of computer?

(in other words, if you want detailed answers, put some details in your question)
posted by misterbrandt at 7:27 PM on October 17, 2005

i think your sound card may be partially fried ... is it included in your motherboard? ... i'm sure if you replaced the card, it would be better

(you did have the power off when you were fiddling with the wiring, right?)
posted by pyramid termite at 9:04 PM on October 17, 2005

Can't remember if this was in another thread, but try turning the "CD Player" volume down/off. I've seen in a number of cases that it will get interference from the IDE chain and send it to your soundcard, ending up with infuriated computer user. You'll hear an audio representation of your hard drive spinning up and reading. It is unnerving.
posted by kuperman at 5:37 AM on October 18, 2005