Windows Media Player

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

Al,

I use NOD32 Antivirus 5, which has antivirus and antispyware. That's it. Was highly recommended and seems to work pretty well.

I'm after it tomorrow. Hopefully find the cure. It's gonna be a wet one here this weekend, so I'll have plenty of indoor time for computing. Thanks again.

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

Just getting started here. Haven't checked on the bios yet, but I have played a CD in the drive and it is much better. At least acceptable and I've used the equalizer and it does not seem to be negatively affecting the sound and the pulsing in volume and distortion is not present like when playing from the hard drive.

I also checked some of the .wav files and they are indeed around the size you suggest they should be. I'm now gonna start with the list of recommendations in this thread and try to get to the bottom of this issue.

Again, with a CD in the drive it sounds pretty good, much better than the .wav being played off the computer.

Muchos Gracias Al.

Warren

Well, I've tried selected advice here so far. Just as a preferrance, I wanted to keep WMA and not rely on a different player. So I have used it and compared it to the CD drive and its not as good as the CD drive playing the CD, but it is better than before I started applying your suggestions. I have also tried the PowerDVD 10 software that I noted in my first post was already on my computer. I think I like it a bit better than WMA for playback only. Now, to answer the questions asked by all:

Al, disabled the antivirus and that made no audible difference.

Speakers are plugged into the headphone jack at the rear. Doesn't seem to be any other way to connnect them.

I defrag too much according to you Al!

Got all my settings straight by right-clicking on the task bar speaker. This did seem to help some and now pulsing is gone or at least mostly so. While in this area, I did click again on the button to update the driver and to my surprise, it updated the driver and I rebooted after the update. Not sure it made any significant difference, but I am glad I have the newest driver now.

Moved some .wav files to my external hard drive. Sound is pretty much the same.

Went to the Task Manager to see if any processes were running. This is where I found some processes running and turned them off. There was an immediate change in sound and maybe resolution. They were three desk apps that showed computer CPU usage, hard drive usage, and a weather app. They were indeed using significant percentage.

Tried the Dxdiag.exe app and it showed that there were no problems found.

After all of this, the music indeed sounds better. I prefer the PowerDVD 10 software, which sounds much closer to the music being read from the CD drive. WMA is also indeed better, but still has some of that upper-midrange grit and distortion, which is what makes it "lackluster" as I'd previously stated.

I have noted several Foobar 2000 suggestions. May try that in the future. Sticking to WMA for now.

I'm not sure how to tell 16/44 files from 320k files as noted by Timlub. I know that the files I have listened to today are .wav and are quite large, like Al said, about 30 MB for a three-minute file.

I have definitely used EQ settings in WMA where I adjusted the individual bands and that helps some for sure. Also, one of the presets in the PowerDVD 10 software is nice.

I have not tried an upgraded PC on my computer, but that is a bit farther than I've been willing to go. But thanks for the thought.

So, these are my findings and though I'm pleased, I don't think I'm all the way there yet. Seems that WMA should be able to sound a bit better, read cleaner, if it weren't for the upper-midrange still being slightly distorted after these changes (and the BIOS has not been updated). Actually, you'd think WMA would be better than the CD playing in the drive because WMA is reading a loss less file.

Thank you all very much for the help. And I'm still open to more suggestions. BTW - Somebody refresh me on how to get email notification when a thread is updated.

Al, indeed, I have the PO1-B1 7/8/2011 BIOS, not the updated file. But I'm not sure how to update it. I hoped to see an update button while I was in the BIOS but didn't.