[Tuddy]

Just recently I've been getting a lot of distortion from my on-board sound whilst I'm connected to the Internet.

It seems to only affect audio files on the PC as listening to the Sky box (radio)through the line input is fine. Once off the Internet all the sound appears fine.

Thanks in advance.

[Gamer-GaZzaz]

Have you tried it with a sound card? This sound very strange...

[cdldt]

What type of internet connection are you using?
- Broadband through wired Ethernet
- Broadband through wireless
- Dial-up

[Tuddy]

Thanks to both of you,
I have on-board sound which has been fine for 3 years.

My broadband is wireless and since Christmas there has been two other computers connected to it most of the time (is this the cause?). At the moment there's just mine and the audio is okay??

The distortion appears to come when a web page is loading making the media player to stutter/pause the music file.

[Gadgetcity]

I guessing a little here but I had something similar on my media server and a friends PC. Is your PC pretty slow? What OS are you running? Have you got Norton or McAfee installed or something similar? Have you tried Winamp instead of media player?

When you change web pages there are several processor intensive tasks that can take place. Browsing itself does not need a fast computer. Accessing a new page, with IE holding up a page access to do a phishing check, and then any virus/firewall packages grabbing the access and doing a quick check causes a momentary peak of activity. Sometimes the audio buffer can under-run causing a glitch in the audio.

I've only ever seen it on single core machines though.

What other programs do you have running all the time?

I suspect that this is not a soundcard problem but make sure you have the latest drivers installed.

[Tuddy]

I do have Norton client firewall which has been on for over 2 years. I also have Spybot search & destroy running along with disk keeper.

I've done a Belarc check and all drivers seem okay. I'm running XP pro with a 1.8Ghz processor with 768mb memory along with a 80gig 'C' drive and a 40 gig 'F' drive, I've set the appearance to best performance but the problem has re-surfaced.

I'll give Winamp a go but If there's no simple solution I'll just listen to radio whilst on-line and listen to my burned wma/mp3 discs on the DVD player.

Thanks to all.

[Tuddy]

Didn't realise I posted this so long ago but I think this link has cured my problems. Two days and still all's well.
DMA reverts to PIO | Windows Problem Solver

[Base45]

Guess I'm late on the scene, but I'll like to say this:

If you have audio probs with your pc (hissing/crackling/faint/mono etc), the culprit is most likely to be virus. I learned this from my recent experience where my 2 computers suddenly develop audio problems. After reading up on suggestions, I gave up.

Then on this day, a virus infection warning just poped up on my screen. I did not click 'ok' to the warning. I quickly scan whole 'c' drive with my AVG. And lo!! many backdoors, front doors, infected registry etc came up. After healing and restarting...pressto!!, my audio is as good as gold and starngely, too, my pc is as quick as ever been.

So try my solution when all fails