Distorted Playback Revisited

[Michael McBroom]

We discussed this topic -- a problem I'm having with my system -- at some length back in April. Here's a link to the thread:

I'm revisiting the topic because things have gotten even worse. Before I mentioned that the problem was confined to MIDI playback but that audio was still fine. Well, now that's no longer the case. Both MIDI and audio playback are now highly distorted. I confirmed this just now by loading up a file that contains audio tracks only, and I even tried all driver formats (ASIO, MME, etc.) -- didn't make a bit of difference. I mentioned in the above thread that I also use Band in a Box with my compositions and that I was having the opposite results with it -- MIDI playback was fine, but audio was distorted. Now, BiaB shares with CW the same problems. Both audio and MIDI playback are distorted. So, whatever's going on with my system, it's gotten worse. 

I've run out of things to try. I tried everything that you guys suggested in the above thread, and there were some excellent suggestions -- it's just that none of them are working on my machine. This particular machine is still running Win7 on a 3.4 GHz AMD quad-core processor and it has 16 gigs of RAM. It's worth noting that "regular" audio playback, such as Netflix, etc., is unaffected. Playback using the various streaming services is just fine.

I'm tempted to blame Win7, except for two reasons -- it's gotten worse since MS stopped sending auto updates and I'm still running Win7 on my old laptop and both CW and BiaB work perfectly on it. The laptop has a 2.8 GHz Intel dual-core processor and 8 gigs of RAM.

I'll be upgrading to Win10 soon. I have to replace the machine's DVD drive -- it's not seeing disks anymore -- and I just got a new one in, just haven't installed it yet. Once it's in place I plan to upgrade to Win10 and I'm hopeful that this will fix things, but I wouldn't be a bit surprised if it doesn't.

Anyway, if any of you have any further thoughts on the matter, I'll pay attention. You might want to scan through the responses in the above thread first, though, so we don't repeat things.