Strange sound problem

Hi all,

I ran into a very strange sound problem with the embedded mp3-player on Contrebombarde. This became apparent with this beautiful piece played by Grandjeux:
http://www.contrebombarde.com/concerthall/music/7540
When I play this on my office notebook (Windows XP 32 bit, IE8) everything is fine.
When I play this on my home PC (Windows 7 64bit, IE9), every low bass note gets accompanied by a very strange much higher pitched sound, which has a constant frequency. I first thought somehow my headphone, my good old trusted and cherished Sennheiser HD560 II (20 years old!) broke down, but when I plugged in my cheap earplugs just now I got the same sound. Saving the mp3 file to disc and then playing it back with VLC player completely eliminates the strange sound, so I am pretty sure that this is an artefact produced by the specific version of the embedded player used on my system.
Has anyone experienced something similar?

Regards
Reiner

Reiner,

I believe the MP3 is being played by your browser--you might try opening the page, and playing the file, using a different browser, or at least a different browser version.

What browser, and version, are you using?

John

Hello John,

its Internet Explorer 9, Windows 7 64bit. I think the mp3 is not played by the browser though, but by some flash applet embedded int the Contrebombarde site. I assume though that different versions are used depending on browser and operating system. Perhaps Daryl can add some insight here.
It would be interesting to hear of other people who are using the same browser/operating system. Please listen carefully to the example, in my case the ringing really can't be overheard.
Again, when downloading the mp3 to disc and plying it back using another player (VLC in this case) it sounds fine.

Reiner

Hello,

it might be a lame idea, but have you tried to do a hard F5? --> Have you tried do delete your browser cache or at least reloaded the site with Ctrl + F5 (which usually empties the cache for the specific site).

Greetings
Purator

I'm using Windows 7 - IE 9 - 64 bit. No problems.
Ollie Mayes

Hi Reiner,

Yes - I get this problem as well. I can get rid of the extra sounds by manually setting my Focusrite Saffire to run at 44.1 kHz sample rate instead of 48 kHz.

The embedded mp3 playing app doesn't appear to be able to tell my sound interface what sample rate to use when replaying the sound file. Whatever setting I leave the Saffire on remains unchanged when I play something from the CB site (if the Saffire is set to 88.2 or 96, then I get no sound at all).
I'm guessing that this means my computer's sound playback system has to interpolate samples as otherwise the pitch and speed of the soundfile would be all wrong. This act of interpolation must be causing the unwanted tones on the lowest notes, although I'm not sure why. The difference in frequency between 48 and 44.1 is 3.9 kHz and this is about the frequency of what I hear when replaying at 48 kHz sample rate, so it's presumably some sort of filtering issue.

Maybe someone who understands more about what goes on "under the bonnet" here could comment further ?

Hello David,

looks like you identified the problem! I'm using a Focusrite Saffire LE as well, and when I manually set it to 44.1 kHZ for this file the problem is solved as well. So it really must be the embedded mp3 player (jplayer) not being able to set the soundcard to the correct samplerate, which then causes the Windows sound driver to interpolate between the player and the soundcard, with more than undesired results.

Does anyone have an idea how one might get the sample rate of the focusrite Saffire to switch automatically with the CB sound files?

Thanks!
Reiner

At the risk of sounding like an old fogey, which I am, the rates at which software installs itself these days (Windows 7 doesn't even warn me it's going to do an update that's going to require a hard reboot) and various new features are added to something like NetFlix (features which are sometimes unaddressable on the playback screen), or an error is detected on Adobe Flash Player, or G-mail introduces new features requiring non-logical runarounds to do simple filing, or Skype refuses to budge, I count myself lucky to anything at all on my computer.

Still I pursue cloud computing because it requires so little space in my 6' x 12' living space.

What's actually alarming me further is that accomplished sampleset producers are making public appeals for help at a single instance of dysfunction.

James Pressler

David, you are correct. The browser (much less the browser plugin) can not usually instruct an audio interface to switch from 44.1kHz to 48kHz. If there is a mis-match, then you'll hear a problem. I'd recommend downloading the file and playing in an OS-native media player.