Terrible sound distortion.

[125037]

I thought it was my sound bar, so I went out and bought a new system, it still does it.

When I play Music Videos or Music from my Mac on Apple TV, the bass sounds "broken" and the music sounds really bad. It's not my HDMI cords or Output on my TV because the same does not happen for TV Shows, movies, and trailers that are streamed from my comp. But ALL music and music videos do.

I don't purchase much music from iTunes, but they are just standard MP3 files. All 120 of my music videos however, ARE purchased from iTunes and they still do this.

I've reset my TV sound settings although that shouldn't matter seeing as how it plays TV shows and movies beautifully. I have everything connected to my LED via HDMI and am using the red/white audio out for my sound bar.

WHY is this doing this? Please help.


Here is a twitvid I sent my friend. I have my iPod hooked up and my AppleTV playing the song both at the same time. You can hear the difference. (I know the distorted one [AppleTV] is much louder but that is not the reason for distortion, it does that at any volume)

 

[125037]

Also, I've tried converting my MP3's to AAC and its still the same. One could say it's my audio out port but why on Earth is it ONLY for my music and music videos? TV shows, radio, and streaming from Apple content play beautifully.

Furthermore, I have went into iTunes and made sure no sound enhancements are on and audio is set at normal volume.

This is killing me.

 

[mchalebk]

"I have everything connected to my LED via HDMI and am using the red/white audio out for my sound bar. "

This is less than an ideal setup, though it should work fine as long as you only care about getting 2.0 sound. What sound bar are you using and which input?

I can think of one possible reason why it might only be happening on music and music videos: generally movies and TV shows use much lower average output levels than most popular music recordings. If the signal out of your TV is too hot for your sound bar, the music would be more likely to overdrive the inputs on the sound bar.

 

[fpnc]

I believe that the sound output level for both music and music videos can be controlled via the Apple TV remote (i.e. this form of content has a variable audio output level). However, movies and TV shows don't offer this option (they have a fixed audio level). This could be why you are seeing a difference between these types of content.

I suspect that you are overdriving the audio input on your equipment. The audio level control for music can be turned off in the Apple TV settings but if you've already tried that (by turning that option off or by using a lower volume setting) then you may have a software/hardware glitch in the Apple TV. If the latter then you may want to restart/reset your Apple TV and if that fails to work you may want to consider a software/system restore (after first making certain that you have backups of all the content that may be stored on your first generation Apple TV -- backup doesn't apply for the new Apple TV 2).