Monday, October 12, 2015
Audio weirdness
Both of the local TV webcasts have the same fuzzy audio. Sounds like a lower-freq narrowband noise, along with muffled highs.
First thought, of course, was my own elderly tinnitized ears. But FM radio comes in clearly, same as usual**, and I don't hear the narrowband hiss when the computer sound isn't coming through.
Checking further: It's not my computer. Videos on disk, played through GOM, are normal. It's not just the two local stations. Seems to be everything I try on Youtube AND on Korea's Daum TV service, AND Max Keiser on RT.
IE does the same as Firefox, so it's not a corrupted driver for Firefox alone.
So it's either a Windows sound driver common to both browsers, or something wrong with Comcast. The latter seems sort of unlikely; if the overall signal is distorted, I'd think it would affect data and video as well as audio?
**One possible clue: Both local NPR outlets have some of the hiss. Other FM stations don't. Possibly the NPR stations are getting their national feed digitally through Comcast?
Later: Page loading is slow. So it probably is an overall degradation of Comcast signal. Still odd. Comcast gets slow at times, but never before with this audio effect.
Next morning: Problem is gone. Doesn't tell me for sure what it was, but at least verifies that it wasn't my old ears or my old Radio Shack amplifier and speakers. It was something in the computer's software or Comcast.
¶ 5:27 PM 
