music crackling when playing on laptop

newmum62

Hi

Can anyone help. i have a laptop about 4/5 years old now. lately if i try to play music on the laptop from youtube for example it plays all crackly.

i thought it was my internet connection maybe not strong enough but i played music on youtube on my phone with the same internet connection and it worked fine.

any ideas what could be wrong?

Boom_Bap

are you playing through the laptop speaker, external speakers or headphones?

newmum62

i've done it with headphones and laptop speakers and its the same on both

d31b0y

Could be software problem. Could be hardware problem.

If you plug headphones into the headphone jack (not USB headphones) does it still play crackly?

If it does, chances are it is a software problem (either drivers or flash player). If it doesn't, there is a good chance it's a hardware problem (e.g. speakers).

I'm open to correction here, but as far as I am aware, the headphone jack uses the same drivers as the main speaker.

Do you have a DVD player? Try playing a movie and see if you get the same crackling.

EDIT: just saw the responses. Probably software related in my eyes. Try playing a DVD. If it's still crackly then you probably have a corrupt sound driver. If it's not, then the chances are it's your flash player install.

Boom_Bap

get the latest drivers for your soundcard and install, that might solve the problem.

newmum62

it plays crackly if the headphones are in the headphone jack and when i take them out on the laptop speakers as well.

i have a DVD player and at the time i do remember testing that out but now i cant remember the answer. ill have to wait until i get home to test it out again but as far as i can remember the CD played ok in it but ill have to double check and update later.

if its software related, can i do anything to fix it? not very good at this stuff!

yoyo

newmum62 wrote: »

it plays crackly if the headphones are in the headphone jack and when i take them out on the laptop speakers as well.

i have a DVD player and at the time i do remember testing that out but now i cant remember the answer. ill have to wait until i get home to test it out again but as far as i can remember the CD played ok in it but ill have to double check and update later.

if its software related, can i do anything to fix it? not very good at this stuff!

Sounds like a driver issue, you may not have the correct driver installed and are running a generic one that Windows comes with. Let us know the laptop model (e.g Dell Inspiron 6400..) and the Windows version (XP, Vista, 7 etc.) and we can advise where you'll get updated drivers

Nick

newmum62

ok finally chekced this out.

its a Dell Inspiron 1300. windows XP Home. i played a CD last night and it played perfect so it just seems to be online music.

i just noticed last night when i was doing automatic updates i got a message saying one update couldnt be installed and now i do remember this coming up before but didnt pass any heed on it - it didnt say why or what i could do about this. coudl this be the problem?

thanks in advance

d31b0y

http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04/DriverDetails/Product/inspiron-1300x?driverId=2Y0VM&osCode=WLH&fileId=2940579519

That is the driver for your sound card. Download and install it.
However, I still think it could be your flash player or possibly browser. Which Internet browser do you use?

You can download the latest flash player from here.
http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

Also, you can go here if you are feeling adventurous http://www.youtube.com/html5 and join the HTML5 trial on youtube. Then go here http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=music&aq=f&webm=1 and try play a video and see if the sound is crackly. What this does is it removes the use of flash player from youtube so it should tell us if flash is to blame.

newmum62

thanks a mill for that. ill give them a go over the weekend and hopefully it might work!

newmum62

i seem to have sorted my problem so thanks everyone for your help!

i first of all tried to install he driver for the sound card & it told me half way through it was the wrong driver.

then i tried to make sure the latest version of the flash player was installed and again half way through i got a message up saying it couldnt be installed until i closed interner explorer - this was closed so i gave up on this one.

thirdly i had google chrome installed and i removed this and just went back to striaght foward internet explorer and my music is back playing fine!!

thanks again for your help.