0
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I built a new workstation with an Asus P5Q Pro motherboard, using the onboard sound for a soundcard. It is running Windows XP-64bit.

It works fine except when I try to open this WMV stream: http://www.bloomberg.com/streams/video/LiveBTV200.asxx (SFW: Its a business news stream)

The sound is very distorted (kind of pixelated with an echo).

I have taken the following steps to fix/debug this problem:

  • Tried various media players: VLC, Windows Media player etc... they all play it with the same distorted sound.
  • Tried upgrading to the newest driver and downgrading to older driver.
  • Tried opening other wmv streams and media files... they all play fine.
  • Ruled out a network issue by using my laptop on the same network to open the stream.

    Any ideas what could be causing this problem?

3 Answers 3

2
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My thoughts on this would be a problem between the codec, and the driver for the sound card. Unfortuantely windows XP 64bit is renowed for bad driver support. I would suspect that that particular stream uses a codec thats different to anything else you use, for streams that are working, and its having a problem when working with your sound card driver.

Is there any particular reason your using Windows XP 64bit? I know Vista takes alot of bashing, but when it comes to 64bit support its miles ahead of XP. Its a bit drastic for one audio stream I know, but my suggestion would be to change OS's either to Vista x64, or down to xp 32 bit. If it is a driver issue, your unlikely to see any improvement as I doubt there is any further development on most 64bit XP drivers.

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Its pretty much the same for me - As like you I don't have problems with other streams - Its them - Perhaps they have poor encoding or are you using a non standard codec

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For what it's worth to add some details:

  1. The audio codec is Windows Media 9 Voice. On a complete aside it doesn't play with Macs (without an ancient version of Windows Media Player) and sounded okay (but a bit like what you explained - not unbearable but noticeable) when played in a Virtual Machine running Windows XP

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