Hi,

I'm having a strange problem.

I'm using Squeezebox 3 -> Charlize amp (a low powered amp like the Sonic Impact T-Amp) -> Klipsch RB-61 speakers.

I'm getting weird distortion on a particular track that I'm not getting on any other track. And I don't think that it's the amp clipping, as it's happening even at low volumes, and I can play other tracks MUCH louder without clipping.

What's weird is that I don't heard the distortion at all when I listen to the track through headphones, or through my laptop. Which makes me thing there's something wrong with my hardware (either the amp or the speakers; it happens with sources other than the Squeezebox). But I don't get this problem with any other track!

Here is a portion of the track at issue that is causing me problems, in both flac and wav:

http://www.princeton.edu/~dagordon/test.flac
http://www.princeton.edu/~dagordon/test.wav

The problem is particularly noticeable for me with the 'S' in 'Say' in this excerpt, and toward the end. It basically sounds like there's static there.

any ideas?

I really appreciate any help!

Thanks,
David

Hmmm! The only thing I detected on that "S" part is a clip, as shown below:

Other than that, I can't say much, well apart that it's not hardware related.
By the way, the sample you gave as a lot of clipping, but it's normal up to a certain point anyway.

Thanks for the response!

Why do you think it's not my hardware? That is, I thought that clipping in modern cd tracks is fairly common, and that it normally doesn't sound like distortion -- is this not right?

Well, clipping doesn't occur if a human doesn't master the file with the clippings in it.
In other words the hardware record things as is, if no clip is present in the master file, it won't record any clipping. And if clipping is present in the master file, it will record the clipping, it's not the hardware that will introduce the clipping in the first place, but in theory the original clipping could be amplified, but I never experienced such result.

It's true, normally it doesn't sound like distortion, but distortion and clipping are pretty much related. So, we need to see what caused that clipping in the first place. Your answer could be in the master file, or while modifying it. But from here it's very hard to track back the source of the problem.