Windows Media Player

As you probably realize, there are a great many possible causes, so it's hard to give solid direction. But here are some things to try. I assume that you are using Windows 7:

1)Temporarily disable your realtime anti-virus protection.

2)If the computer has a headphone jack, try using that instead of the line out jack. It is conceivable that the output impedance of the line output is too high to be an optimal match to the A2's 10K input impedance. That wouldn't account for the WMP issues, but it might account for the "lackluster" sound with the other program.

3)Defragment the hard drive, unless the drive is an SSD (solid state drives should not be defragmented).

4)Right-click the sound icon in the taskbar, select "playback devices," then "speakers," then "properties." See if all of the settings make sense to you. In particular, under the "enhancements" tab make sure that "setting" is selected as "none", and under the "advanced" tab make sure that both boxes in the "exclusive mode" area are checked.

5)If you have an external hard drive, but are playing the files from an internal drive, copy one of them to the external drive and try playing it from there. And vice versa.

6)Open Task Manager (enter "task manager" into the search box that appears when you click the start button, then click "view running processes with task manager"). Select the "processes" tab, then check "show processes from all users," and while playing an audio file see if any unrelated process is consuming a significant cpu utilization percentage.

7)Open dxdiag.exe (by entering that term into the search box under the start button, and clicking the corresponding search result that will appear). Wait for the green progress bar to finish. Under each of the tabs other than "system," in the "notes" box, verify that "no problems found" is indicated.

If none of that gets you anywhere, let us know the exact model number of the computer, and perhaps researching that will lead to further ideas.

Regards,
-- Al

03-15-12: Xxqq250
I have a question that you might know the answer to. Have you ever tried any type of line conditioner with a computer and external drives? Given that computers are not really made for high end audio, I can't help but think that it may make a substantial improvement.

Good question, but I have no relevant experience. Even though I'm both an audiophile and a computer enthusiast, who builds his own computers, ironically I haven't yet merged the two and the only digital source in my audio system is a one-box CD player :-)

I'd imagine that a power conditioner could very well be helpful in many setups, mainly by minimizing the amount of computer-generated noise that might find its way into the power wiring and from there into the audio components. Also, if the computer is located close to the audio system a shielded power cord would seem to make sense, to prevent rfi from escaping from the power cord and radiating into the system.

I would guess that the effects of a power conditioner will tend to differ depending on whether or not the computer's power supply uses active power factor correction, perhaps making less of a difference if the computer provides that feature. Recent computers are increasingly utilizing active PFC, especially the better ones and those that are Energy Star compliant.

FWIW, I'll mention that I use a CyberPower CP1500PFCLCD true sine wave UPS on my desktop computers. It works great for my purposes, but I wouldn't recommend its use close to an audio system because I've found that it radiates rfi, as detected by a portable AM radio brought near it. Inexpensive UPS's that put out stepped approximations to a sine wave, btw, should not be used with computers that have active PFC.

Thanks for your comment, and thanks to Tom6897 as well.

Best regards,
-- Al

Well, it sounds like you've been doing a lot of the right things. And the machine looks like it should be a reasonably decent performer, certainly powerful enough to cleanly handle .wav and mp3 files.

I use NOD32 myself, although just the anti-virus program rather than the full "Smart Security" suite which it sounds like you are using. The NOD32 a-v is about as good as it gets among a-v programs in terms of having minimal impact on system performance. I have no particular familiarity with the other components of the suite, though.

Defragmenting on a daily basis strikes me as overkill, actually, which will result in unnecessary wear and tear on the hard drive. For typical computer usage, once every week or two should be more than enough IMO.

Good luck with the experiments! Regards,

-- Al

A few further thoughts:

1)The Gateway site indicates that a BIOS update was released on 11/21/11, which was about two months before you purchased the computer. So conceivably that update is not present on your machine. Unfortunately the site doesn't indicate what the changes were, but perhaps one of them was audio related.

The version of the installed BIOS should be indicated briefly when you start the computer. The version released on 11/21/11 was P01.B2.

2)If you haven't already, try playing a CD directly from the machine's optical drive, and see if you get results that are the same as when you play the corresponding .wav file from the hard drive.

3)Look at the file sizes of the .wav's, as a rough check to verify that they weren't inadvertently compressed during the ripping process. A 3 minute track should be roughly around 30 MB.

Regards,
-- Al

Good progress!

If the programs you disabled restart automatically when the computer is booted, you can prevent that by one of several means, depending on the particular app. First, see if the app itself offers a means of enabling or disabling automatic startup. Next, if that is not possible, see if it is listed under "Startup" in the listing of installed programs under the Start button. Delete its entry if it appears there. Next, if it does not appear under "Startup," enter "msconfig" in the search box under the Start button, click on the corresponding search result, and uncheck the item in the "Startup" tab, if it appears there. The final possibility is to enter "Services" in the search box, then click either "Services" or "View Local Services," then right-click the entry for the particular service, and select "Properties" and then "Startup Type." Take a look at the "Dependencies" tab before changing the "Startup Type" setting, to see if there is anything else you might be affecting.

As far as the BIOS update is concerned, I would do that only as a last resort after all other approaches are exhausted. In the meantime, it would probably be a good idea to email Gateway and ask them if they can tell you what the changes were intended to accomplish, and specifically if any of them are audio-related.

According to this reference the update procedure is simply to download the latest BIOS file, and start the update process by double-clicking the icon for the downloaded file. A BIOS update is usually straightforward and takes very little time, probably less than a minute once it is started. HOWEVER, if something goes wrong, perhaps because of a bug in their software, or if power were to happen to drop out during the update process, the computer can be "bricked" (i.e., rendered inoperable, and repairable only by replacement of the integrated circuit chip that stores the BIOS on the motherboard). That is why I suggest not doing the update, at least for now.

Also, in some cases doing a BIOS update on a computer from one of the major manufacturers can necessitate re-activating Windows with Microsoft, although that is not a big deal and can often be done via the Internet with just a few mouse clicks.

Since playback from a CD gives good results, you have proven that there is no problem involving the computer's DAC function, or compatibility of the output impedance or other characteristics of the audio circuitry with the speakers. And given that playback of .wav's from either the internal or external drive gives similar results, my guess is the thing that should be focused on next is the possibility that your .wav's do not have bit-perfect accuracy. Try EAC. (Note that EAC is NOT one of the converter programs that are linked to on that page). It can also be downloaded here.

As far as automated email notifications are concerned, I don't think there is a way to do that.

Continued good luck!

-- Al