[Carey Carlan]

muzician21 wrote in news:e5a19271-7954-4e24-82f8-
:

I'm including RAP since I imagine you've run into audio issues with
Windows. I'm having an oddball problem I've never encountered before.
Running XP Pro SP3, I find that when I play video with Windows Media
Player there's static & popping in the audio. The same video plays
fine in Virtualdub and with SoundForge.

I tried uninstalling WMP and reinstalling, seemed to work at first but
then developed the same issue.

It used to work fine on this Windows install, the issue seems to have
cropped up recently. What's the difference between how VirtualDub and
SoundForge accesses/plays video audio and how WMP plays it?

This is the first time I've run into this. I had some problems with
DRM wmv video that I initially thought was the fault of the file, but
now I sense the bug is in the system.

I'd like to solve this without doing an O/S reinstall. Any input will
be appreciated.

I can't address your specific issue. I've never seen WMP play
incorrectly. IME, it either works or not.

The usual culprit in static and popping is a disagreement over data
rates (sample size and rate) If, for instance, you're playing a track
sampled at 48K, but your audio card will only accept 44.1K, the software
must convert in real time. If it doesn't convert, the sound either
doesn't play at all (most common) or it sputters and skips. If the
software can't convert fast enough it will also sputter and skip, just
not so much.

In the case of WMP, I find that it's such a hog of system resources and
so nosy about DRM that it's better to just retire it for something
simpler like Media Player Classic.