Computer audio.
A few weeks ago I bought a Sennheiser headset. After a while I became annoyed with the sound quality. I detected a fair amount of distortion. Swapped back to my old Koss set, could not hear the distortion nearly as well.
Did a few back and forths, then tried an old Sony headset, withe them I could not hear any distortion, but the sound quality was really crappy.
Then tried listening to stand alone CD player with all three. The Sennheisers sounded the best and beoutiful. Hmmmm. Houston, the computer has a problem. The audio from the computer is piped via fiber optic to an external analog converter, which feeds an amp, then speakers, and the converter has a headphone jack, which is where my headphones are connected. Thus the computer's analog audio out is not used.
This exercise pointed to the audio device or driver and/or codecs. Using the device manager checked the the audio device and driver. It is a Realtek High definiton device. Had a "correct" "best" driver according to the checks, but not high definition. The driver had a 2008 date.
Poking around the Realtek website found the latest driver is dated around may 2014, much higher rev# and is labeled High Def.. Donlaoded and installed new driver. Reboot, of course, it is windows after all. My other PC's are Linux. This is the last of the Mohicans.
Tested several pieces of music which were previously noisy and distorted. No more noise, and can't hear any distortion. Hmmm, maybe I need a set of Grados
around $1400.--, well maybe not.
Love when things get well.
BTW the PC is a Sony Viaio of somessort. 2.2 Ghz dual core, 64 bit, all in one with Win7, bought used a few years ago for about $250.-