I am House

[#686578]

You are my other doctor guys. Go.

This has been happening since Tuesday. My speakers will randomly decide to stop working. As in whatever I'm listening starts turning to static, then fizzles out, and finally nothing. Or sometimes it'll skip that and just turn to nothing. I've done both a driver update and rollback, as well as some other small things that I really didnt think would fix it.

I assumed it was a hardware malfunction until I noticed it only happens when I'm watching youtube. I can go hours of playing video games, watching hulu, listening to music through vlc, et cetera without any problem; but after a few minutes of watching youtube it will cut out... and then it will take roughly 10minutes before my speakers start working again, in which the process happens in reverse, it like unfizzles, becomes staticy, then just works fine.

I honestly have no idea what the problem could be

[#686578]

By the way, it doesnt just start working again after I stop watching youtube (I had the habit of just getting fed up with it and closing out the window and going to do something else until my sound returned). It waits like 10-15 min after closing youtube to start working again.

My curiosity is getting the better of me, I know I should just reformat to verify the issue as software but I want to know what's causing it.

[Blubbartron]

My only thought would be that you're dumping more stress on the chipset to handle the net traffic, and it is potentially overheating. A heat issue would explain why it takes time to go back to normal. Granted, 15 minutes seems long, but if you don't have any direct airflow over your chipset that might be reasonable. It's either that or EMI. A little more information couldn't hurt. Do you use a seperate sound card or onboard? Stuff like that.

[Kryssan]

signal scrambler, scramblin' your signals.

Couldn't resist.




Do you use integrated or a card for your audio? Do you have other speakers available to test and see if it is a card or speaker issue? Seems odd that it would only affect one program, but sound isn't a field I have a lot of expertise in. Maybe moots or kare would know more.

[Norellicus]

cancer

[Norellicus]

But really do you use any kind of plugins or anything that interferes with or modifies youtube playback?

[Seraph]

It can't be Lupus, the tests came back negative and there is no infection in the lymph nodes.


But the first thing I thought of was a heating problem, either on your chipset or possibly the hardware itself (somehow?), depending on what you are listening to on youtube. Assuming this is a PC, can you crack open the tower, blow a fan into it, and see if you can prevent the problem that way?

[Effluo]

do you have an addon sound card? Could be going bad.

[#686578]

Great thoughts, I should have mentioned that it is a laptop, so it is an built in sound card and speakers that I am using.

A heating issue could definitely be the problem as well, I didn't think of that, I'm glad I have you guys around. There are three problems with this laptop (Dell M1530) that would make it so I would not buy this laptop again, and heating up like a bitch is one of them. Usually, however, it seems like it's made to run hot at least, which I guess is a nice compensation... I've never noticed any problems like this before, with this sort of issue, or in general even with or without regards to overheating, but I'll definitely monitor it and see what happens the next time.

The curious thing would be that although my laptop does heat up very easily, it generally doesnt overheat all too often. And ontop of that it does heat up very easily which means I've had a lot of instances where my laptop would have been in a similar heat range before within the past year, but I've never experienced a similar problem. And then a third thing is, why does it seem specific to youtube?

[Norellicus]

I doubt it's heat as you'd see the problem playing games in that case.

[#686578]

I'm wondering if it's some awkward impossible combination of heat + youtube, as my laptop is always hot, always.

[Norellicus]

As a proof of concept, try browsing videos on some other site; metacafe, gametrailers, etc.

See if you can reproduce it.

[#686578]

Reproduced. Can rule out both heat and youtube as the problem.

Megavideo produces it as well. Perhaps it's some streaming codec, or perhaps even how firefox handles it.

http://www.megavideo.com/?v=HMIFB6ZB for reference

I did find some speakers I set aside for when it happened again, the speakers work during this period, but my internal speakers do not.

Random speaker outtage -> no sound on internal speakers -> plug in external speakers = sound -> unplug speakers no sound

[Norellicus]

Sounds like a hardware problem then, something with the wiring. Why it happens when streaming video...hell if I know. But if it were a problem decoding the videos then you should have the same sound issue with external speakers.

[#686578]

I am seriously out of ideas here, I'm pretty much to the point where I may just actually their technical support to figure out what the problem is.

[Isiolia]

Have you tried alternate browsers at all? Updating versions of Firefox n' Flash?

My guess would be that it's somehow screwing up/overloading the internal amplifier for the speakers (which the laptop does have, 2W/ch into 4 ohms according to the manual). That'd explain the internal speakers cutting out while the external ones work. Exactly why, I dunno. I assume those sources will typically have poorer audio quality than most, which may have something to do with it.

[#686578]

I have not used other browsers, and that depends on what you mean by "updated." Considering I still use Firefox 2.0.0.X, latest update of 2.X sure. Flash updated as well. How the audio from streaming would do what you've suggested is still beyond me.

[Furtwangler]

It's possible the combination of streaming video (which puts additional stress on the processor and any integrated video card) is producing enough heat and general activity that its interfering with the amplified internal speakers. All I can think of.

[Isiolia]

Might want to try using something else, Firefox 3.5, etc to narrow down those possibilities.

I'm not sure what would cause that issue from the audio signal itself either - I mean, you can overstress an amp easily enough, but I'm not sure how/why it'd be restricted to Flash video as it seems to be, unless maybe it's clipping from poorly recorded audio, as commonly pops up on Youtube and such.

[#686578]

This is now happening when I play Heroes of Newerth as well, perhaps it's happening more often than I thought but I never noticed because I normally dont have sound playing.