Audio Aliasing Issue

Hi.  Sometimes I’m noticing aliasing in the audio on my WDTV Live.  

I can be playing a music file or video file, and it sounds fine, then I can pause it, only to find the auido is aliasing when I resume playback.  The aliasing sometimes occurs immediately when I start a video or audio file,as well… not just when I pause/stop in the middle.

It has happened with .mp3 audio, .flac audio, while watching .avi videos streamed across the network, and even while listening to Pandora.  Thus, I have to say this problem seems to be with the overall audio architecture rather than the player’s handling of specific file types.  It’s a completely intermittent problem.  Anybody else experiencing this?  Has it been discussed elsewhere?  I found no other threads discussing this.

Oh, and I have the latest firmware.

L8r.

I know what aliasing is in theory, but I’ve not heard it (that I know of) so I can’t understand what you’re discribing.  

Is this something OBVIOUS to a casual listener, or is it very slight?

I have a pretty decent ear, and I can’t say I’ve noticed a change in audio quality when pausing anything…

Hi, Tony.

Yes, the effect is very noticeable, even to someone with average ears.  I’ve gone ahead and created a YouTube video to show you exactly what I occasionally hear when starting music on my player.  I did this because I had no luck finding a proper example to show you elsewhere.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8123NdNnM4

MichaelVandeven wrote:

Hi, Tony.

Yes, the effect is very noticeable, even to someone with average ears.  I’ve gone ahead and created a YouTube video to show you exactly what I occasionally hear when starting music on my player.  I did this because I had no luck finding a proper example to show you elsewhere.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8123NdNnM4

I must have non average ears? 

I can hear a slight effect – it’s a little complicated because the second example is louder (and loudness tends to drive our perception of audio more than anything else) but when I compensate for this I do hear a slight “fuzzineess” or lack of clarity in your first example.  It’s certainly not something that would jump out at me, though.

How do you have your output set?  Are you using the “stereo” or “digial” choice, and how is your audio connected?  I don’t play music, but I do a lot of 5.1 audio (DTS or AC3) and pause all the time and I have never heard anything like this (and at the audio levels I play things at you’d think I would notice this at least sometimes).  I’m using the “digital” option on the Live, and connected via HDMI to my AV receiver.

Hi all.

I just bought a WD TV Mini last week, uprgaded to the latest firmware, and also have the audio aliasing issue. This may be the wrong forum but it sounds like a similar problem.

I’m consistently finding the problem on xvid-encoded files with 48khz mp3 audio. The aliasing can be heard using the analog audio outputs on the box, and also via the digital out! The files are not the problem since they play back without audio aliasing artefacts on a pc, and on a cd-r in a divx-enabled dvd player.

The only other file type I’ve tried so far is 44.1khz wav, and noticed no audio problems. Perhaps it’s a 48khz thing?

It would be great to get a fix for this problem. I’m being picky, but it basically makes the audio unlistenable to my ears.

cheers

Ben.

Skylab wrote:

Hi all.

 

I just bought a WD TV Mini last week, uprgaded to the latest firmware, and also have the audio aliasing issue. This may be the wrong forum but it sounds like a similar problem.

 

I’m consistently finding the problem on xvid-encoded files with 48khz mp3 audio. The aliasing can be heard using the analog audio outputs on the box, and also via the digital out! The files are not the problem since they play back without audio aliasing artefacts on a pc, and on a cd-r in a divx-enabled dvd player.

 

The only other file type I’ve tried so far is 44.1khz wav, and noticed no audio problems. Perhaps it’s a 48khz thing?

 

It would be great to get a fix for this problem. I’m being picky, but it basically makes the audio unlistenable to my ears.

 

cheers

Ben.

It is a 48 khz thing.  It’s downsampling the file to 44 khz.  That’s a limitation of the device.

Downsampling of audio doesn’t inherently mean aliasing will occur.  Furthermore, this problem can’t be entirely attributed to downsampling since I have encountered it when playing music streamed over Pandora in addition to my local and/or network media.  There is no downsampling taking place when listening to Pandora, whatsoever.  This aliasing problem is definitely a system-wide issue.

To the person who asked about what type of setup i have, I simply have HDMI plugged directly into my TV from the WDTV Live box.

I’ve noticed a lot of silly feature requests on this forum, and it seems to me that perhaps WD should take a look at solving real problems (like this one)  first.  However, I don’t want to sound like I’m bashing WD  by saying that.  They have actually done a rather admirable job of continually developing the firmware for a box that only costs $110 at retail.  It costs a lot of money to keep pushing real advances in firmware features and stability, and they’ve shown a commitment to the TV Live that I have found surprising.