Distorted sound during audio file preview

When viewing file lists in the Finder in column view, there is that great, handy preview option which if it is a image file - shows the image thumbnail; a movie file - you can preview the movie; and an audio file - you can listen to the audio track.
Within the past couple months, when I try to preview an Audio File in the column list, it plays back at an extremely loud and very distorted level. I'm not sure what changed, but does anyone know a way to correct this issue? All of my other audio works fine, and if someone emails me an audio file, the preview in Mail works just fine. Any ideas would be super. It is not the end of the world (as I can just use Quicktime), but I had always enjoyed that feature before. It would be nice to get it working properly again.
Thanks if you have time!
Mark

Open the Script Editor in the /Applications/AppleScript/ folder and enter the following:
tell application "Finder"
quit
end tell
delay 1
tell application "Finder"
run
end tell
Don't press the Run button until instructed. Next, open the /Library/Preferences/ item of your home folder, and move the item com.apple.finder.plist to the desktop. Once this file has been moved, run the script, and then use the audio preview option again. If the sound is still distorted, move half of the plist files to the desktop, run the script again, and repeat the procedure until the item causing the problem is found. If nothing in the /Library/Preferences/ folder is causing the issue, continue with the other items in the home folder except for the desktop itself. If you determine that an item isn't causing the problem, you can put it back where it originally was.
(11897)

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Distorted sound with audio preview

Hi,
I have a problem with the Finder file preview. As for sound files, one can usually listen to songs within the file preview, without opening an application. But since recently, the sound of this function is very loud and distorted. I had been running two such previews at the same time and suddenly the sound turned to this.
Since then it has stayed this bad. I tried the usual means: restart, clear user caches, repair file permissions, p-ram reset ... nothing of this helped.
The funny thing is: All other audio stuff works fine. I can listen to iTunes, use QuickTime - everything is fine. But as soon as I try to listen via the Finder preview, the sound is terrifying.
Does anyone know any help to this, please?
Many thanks in advance!
Matthias
iBook G3 Mac OS X (10.3.9) 700 MHz, 640 MB RAM

Open the Script Editor in the /Applications/AppleScript/ folder and enter the following:
tell application "Finder"
quit
end tell
delay 1
tell application "Finder"
run
end tell
Don't press the Run button until instructed. Next, open the /Library/Preferences/ item of your home folder, and move the item com.apple.finder.plist to the desktop. Once this file has been moved, run the script, and then use the audio preview option again. If the sound is still distorted, move half of the plist files to the desktop, run the script again, and repeat the procedure until the item causing the problem is found. If nothing in the /Library/Preferences/ folder is causing the issue, continue with the other items in the home folder except for the desktop itself. If you determine that an item isn't causing the problem, you can put it back where it originally was.
(11897)

Audio file previewer in Mac OS

I apologize if this is slightly off topic.
Having recently switched from Windows, one thing I'm finding that I miss is a way to preview audio files from within a folder. Having to open a entire application just to hear a quick bit of the file is tedious when your previewing lots of files. In Windows there was a way to have a mini Media Player of to the side of the files to play them back.
My question is if there is any way of achieving this in Mac OS.
Thanks.

open a finder (folder) on the top left corner there should be three boxes
choose the last one and you'll get audio player on every audio you click including midi
or go to and click AS COLUMNS or just click APPLE+3 on the folder
stash

Distorted sound? No vocals heard, only some ba

Hi! I've been having problems on my Zen Micro Photo I got 2 years ago.
For the past few weeks, the sound coming from it has been weird. The vocals are gone, and only some parts of bass and other background are heard.
I thought this was temporary first, since at first, moving the headphones would fix it, but now it isn't. It's not the headphones, since I've tried it with 3 different types...
I've tried the steps to fix "Distorted Sound on Audio Books" at the knowledge base, but there hasn't been any changes.
I've looked at the threads for problems with the headphone jacks, but I can hear the bass and background in both ears...
Thanks for reading, and I hope someone can help my problem!

You could always delete the com.apple.finder.plist file and then restart. Your finder preference file might be hosed.
Another suggestion would be to try it under a different user. Could be a corrupt user preference.
Another idea....if you have a back up drive with OS X you could start up using that system and see if the problem persists.

Distorted sound quality in AIR 2.6 on iOS

I am experiencing significant distortion of mp3 audio files (a child speaking) in my iPad app built with AIR 2.6. I have tested the audio files on the device in other apps, and can confirm that the problem is specifically with my app, not a problem with the audio file or the device. This is a critical issue for me and is preventing me from submitting my app.
I am using AS3, not Flex, and I am using a SoundChannel to play the file. Does AIR software decode mp3s or is it using the hardware? Are there mp3 compression settings that are better/worse for AIR audio? I tried a 48kbps Mono file and got a little distortion, so I bumped it up to 96kbps Stereo and got a lot of distortion!
Anybody have experience with this?
Adrian
PS. I am completely unable to search by forum on Adobe's site. I can use the general search, but once I am in Mobile Development there is a separate "Search this Forum" field, and that always turns up 0 results no matter what. It would sure be great if this could be fixed so that we could find each other's threads better.

I noticed it too. While testing FLVPlayback of a live stream, on iphone 3gs and 4 at the same time, the iphone 4 was giving that weird jittered audio and the same build of the app on 3gs was playing without any problem. I think on iphone 4, when I run a newly installed app for the 1st time, it was doing the weird audio then if I close app and open the problem is gone, or maybe other way. I was using CS5.5 with air 2.6.
The audio was mp3 / 48-64kbps.
I think it went away after I made some changes with GPU settings or the nativeapplication activate state etc, something not related to audio I made change and somehow it is gone. It was using retina display on iphone 4, so I assumeit was a cpu load issue.
I have that app built with cs5 and PFI and there was no audio issue like this.
I hope this helps , and thanks for great work.

Sound VIs with audio files

I've been stuck with this VI that's supposed let the user set the frecuency and volume of an audio file, and play it.
I managed to get the frecuency part working with Play Waveform, but that doesn't let the volume be modified (or the playback to be stopped before it finishes, as far as I know). So I tried writing it directly into the sound card with the other Sound VIs, but I've only managed distortion with continuous samples, or silence and crashes with finite ones, which are what I understand I should be using.
I've been trying to figure this out for hours, and I think most of my problems come from my lack of understanding of how the Sound VIs work, despite reading their help and support pages several times.
I've attached my latest VI. The playback doesn't work at all and it may crash your computer if it's anything like mine, but as long as you don't try to play anything it should be safe.
Attachments:
Frecuency and Volume modification.vi ‏48 KB

Hi. I'm sorry for the late reply.
In the end, I managed to get the VI working by mofifying the program entirely. I'm still no sure what kept causing the crashes, but I'll try to figure it out at a later time using your advice.
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At what point will gaining an audio file introduce noise or distortion?

I know that in the mastering process an entire stereo mix file will be gained by at least 6 db or so. My question is: At what point will gaining the signal become problematic.
I'm talking specifically about gaining an *audio file*, I'm not referring to gaining a software instrument track.
Thanks!

eMagnus wrote:
I know that in the mastering process an entire stereo mix file will be gained by at least 6 db or so. My question is: At what point will gaining the signal become problematic.
It's the man of a thousand questions...
There's no rule(s) regarding mastering as it varies according the genre and can even vary from track to track. Mastering doesn't necessarily have anything to to do with gain unless it's to balance tracks so the album/CD/DVD has cohesiveness.
Regarding digital distortion:
The simple answer is, don't go over 0 <zero> DB, although peak levels with short durations can be tolerated.
There's two main avenues regarding distortion... peak level and RMS level.
The lower (moving towards 0db) the RMS level, the less dynamics you will have and the more overall gain the file will have.. when I produce commercials I generally keep the RMS level at around -15db, this gives a fairly constant level with just enough peaks and valleys that I can stand listening to it. Some rock/dance producers master down to -12 or -10db.
To show how insane the loudness wars are I've seen tracks mastered at -8db and have heard of tracks being mastered at -6db or less. At this point there are virtually no dynamics every bit of the audio spectrum is used, it's a wall of sound. Even if the peak level never goes over 0db the RMS power can cause less than quality audio systems to distort as the preamps break up from input gain.
Something to think about, you might want to do some research on your own, people giving you answers IS NOT learning.
Also... learn a little about the history of mastering, how it was originally conceived as opposed to how it is used today.
pancenter-

Master gain problem with Direct Audio Device: distorted sound

Hi everybody,
I'm in a bit of a fix here. I've got an application that plays music. Developped with 1.4.2, got it working.
However, when I run it with the the latest 1.5 release (5.0 update 6), the sound is distorted. More specifically, though I'm not entirely sure, I'd say it's the bass that gets distorted. By "distorted" I mean it's shrieking, scratching instead of... well, sounding.
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Looked at www.jsresources.org, but didn't find any information specific to this problem.
Bugparade: no hits.
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Nobody ?
It narrowed it down to the following testcode. Please try to run it with Java 1.5 and some compatible audio file (a WAVE file, for instance):
import java.io.*;
import javax.sound.midi.*;
import javax.sound.sampled.*;
import javax.sound.sampled.spi.*;
* @author futt
public class SoundTest {
    public static void main(String[] args)
    throws Exception
        if( args.length != 1 ){
            System.err.println("SYNOPSIS: SoundTest [FILE]");
            return ;
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        AudioFileFormat aff = AudioSystem.getAudioFileFormat(f);
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        Mixer.Info[] mixers = AudioSystem.getMixerInfo();
        for(int ii = mixers.length; --ii >= 0; ){
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                mymixer = mixers[ii];
                break;
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        if( mymixer != null ){
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                System.err.println("Using mixer: "+m);
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            System.err.println("Using default mixer");
            line = (SourceDataLine) AudioSystem.getLine(info);
        System.err.println("Got line: "+line.getClass());
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        try{
            in = new BufferedInputStream(new FileInputStream(f));
            line.open( aff.getFormat() );
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            byte[] buf = new byte[ 1 << 14 ];
            for(int read; ! Thread.currentThread().isInterrupted() && (read = in.read(buf)) != -1; ){
                line.write(buf, 0, read);
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                line.drain();
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        catch (Exception x){
            x.printStackTrace();
        finally {
            line.close();
            if( in != null ){
                try{ in.close(); } catch (IOException iox){}
}

TS3623 I rented a movie and can watch preview perfectly with video and audio feed as signal strength is at top when I checked. However, when I purchased rental video is fine , but I get scratched sound for audio. Any thoughts to fix?

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Audio files sound wobbly in my 7.1.6

Anyone else experience this --
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okay. i don't usually associate Norton with this sort
of thing (i associate it many other iTunes
issues, but not with this one.)
let us know if disabling Norton helps ... if not,
we'll try working through some other possibilities.
Hi,
Disabling the Norton did not help, however I found another solution. I ended up deleting the new iTunes and installing the older, but latest of version 6 which I remember having worked well and viola... success! It works great! Thanks again for you help and time b noir. Nice to have the player working again.
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Distorted sound during audio file preview

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