Speakers sounding funny when playing bass

[kyrien]

Does anyone know what could be wrong when my computer speakers make grumbly, groaning noises whenever the music goes very bass? It's a little hard to explain, but the sound becomes garbled, kinda scratchy and otherwise irritating to listen to.

I have altec lansing speakers. Yukie said that my speakers are probably revolting because I've knocked them off my table so many times... but I really doubt that is the reason why...

I rebooted and the symptom seems to have gone away, but I'd like to know what might have caused that to happen to begin with.

[Evil]

is it both of them? it could be that one or both of them are busted they they grumble or rattle loudly when they are busted ...can you find out?

[kyrien]

It was my entire sound system. Both satellites and the subwoofer, so I was wondering if maybe I ha dmessed with some of my multimedia settings but I couldn't find the program I had used 4 years ago to initially set the sound options (reformatted about 3 years ago, so I guess I never reinstalled that program). The speakers came with my computer (4 years old), so I don't really consider them to be -that- old...

Though, I've rebooted and the problem went away. Could it be low memory or something? Or maybe... uhhh a corrupt file?

[Evil]

Dude you need a new computer...bad :D

[Kinael]

Maybe your speakers aren't good enough to play all the sound. Or your mp3 player's EQ settings are awkward and turned the bass wayyyy up. Try setting the EQ to 'auto.'

[kyrien]

Pfft @ Evil. I like my computer.

Kinael: I doubt it has anything to do with the quality/potential of my speakers since they've worked fine all this time (Altec Lansing, not a no frills brand). Only thing I could think of so far as hardware is concerned is what Evil originally suggested that they might be busted, but that doesn't seem to be the case either. I did conside the EQ settings though, but they haven't changed from what they've always been (I'm using an alternative setting, and have been for a very long time now).

[Eric]

Well, other than you telling me that the reboot fixed it, your speaker diaphragm sounds like they got blown. Diaphragm is that dome made out of paper that vibrates in order to create sound. When that thing gets blown, cracked, torn, etc…, it usually results in, “grumbly, groaning noises whenever the music goes very bass.” I dunno how to explain why a reboot fixed it.

[Star of Sorrow]

Hm. I had the same problem with mine recently. It was fixed apparently when I rebooted, I think.

[kyrien]

Hmm... I was thinking maybe something that got temporarily corrupted?

[Eric]

I doubt it, if a DLL got corrupt, it would be highly unlikely that it would still spit out sound (delete a few bytes from a binary and see if it still runs). Anyways, hard drives rarely change 0's to 1's.

Did the music sound "slow"? I wonder if the CPU process peaked at 100% so it started lagging and sounding wierd?

[kyrien]

Hm... not really. It only sounded weird when the sounds went very low. The first time it happened was when i first got my speakers and I had to play with the speaker EQ settings or something. But since I reformatted 3 years ago I have no idea where that program went, if I even reinstalled it.

[MacPhisto]

This has happened to me when I messed up the equalizer settings on my mp3 player... sometimes you can do that by accident with a mouse scroll or something. You can also check your master volume for your computer and make sure it's not sitting up at max. If you're using Winamp, there's a 'master equalizer' control on the left side of the equalizer panel; if you slide that up too high it'll give you similar results. Only other software-related thing that I can think of is maybe the sound card drivers are corrupted or incorrectly installed (ex. you have the wrong driver version for your card)... sometimes Windows Update will ask you to install driver updates and I've found that they can mess up your system a little if you keep going without rebooting, so if you've got that stuff set to automatically download and install... that might be why a reboot 'fixed' it (completed the installation of whatever patch).

I don't know though. My motto where my computer is concerned: if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it. If a reboot fixed it, I wouldn't worry about it until it happened again.