"Fuzzy" playback

[irovax]

After opening Audacity, sound from any source- media player, web browser, system sounds, among others- becomes "fuzzy." This only occurs after executing Audacity, and continues even after I close it. However, if I restart my computer, everything is back to normal. My soundcard is integrated into the motherboard, I believe. However, none appears under Device Manager, so I can't specify further.

Thank you for your help~

[steve]

The only thing similar to this that I've come across was that someone found an incompatibility between Audacity and a Firefox Add-on. I don't think this got resolved beyond not running Firefox and Audacity at the same time - I don't think that the offending Add-on was identified either.

Audio editing is quite a demanding task for computers, particularly if they are using "generic" hardware (audio cards that are designed for music work MUCH better than most on-board jobs). It is generally advisable to avoid running other applications a the same time as audio editing. With a bit of experimentation you may discover that there is some specific program that you are running that does not get on with Audacity.

[rockhead]

i am having the exact same problem. i have Yahoo toolbar, google toolbar, Veoh toolbar, Aim toolbar, Bitcomet Helper, AdBlock Plus, Reload every, Winamp toolbar, and the pre installed talkback addons Move Media Player plug-in.

[irovax]

Hmmm... I do have a few FireFox add-ons. However, I'm not usually running Audacity and Firefox at the same time-- actually, I'm not usually running any other program. I tried tweaking msconfig and disabling all non-vital processes on start-up, but the problem still occurred.

I can run just about any program under Crysis, so I doubt that the problem lies on the hardware side, save for the sound card. What I'm really curious about, though, is why the problem persists even after anything except a full shut down and restart. Standby, as well as Hibernate, do not fix this problem either.

Thanks for your help~

[kozikowski]

One of the techniques available when you just can't figure out a problem the normal way, is to reverse it. Can you make it worse? If you roll Audacity for record while you're set to capture, say, internet audio, does the capture audio have the distortion?

Obviously, the next question is what do the waveforms look like if you do that?

If this problem is sensitive to level, make it louder. Turn up not only the master volume controls, but the controls associated with the sound device itself. Does it get worse, or does the presentation just get louder.

Somebody with two computers or systems needs to capture some of this and present it do we can listen. It is totally possible on Windows machines to produce "sneak" pathways for feedback ("Why does my turntable have echoes?"). If you do that just right, it can produce "fuzzy" audio.

Koz