Disable Microsoft Software Wavetable Synthesizer, My Music’s Cutting Out…

We recently encoun­tered a sys­tem that had an inter­mit­tent sound prob­lem. After run­ning for a few days, any music played would fade and recover repeat­edly. After research­ing the prob­lem, we started with a typ­i­cal round of updates to the usual sus­pects. Those being sound card dri­vers, codec’s, any media player soft­ware being uti­lized for play­back. At first this seemed to resolve the issue, but after just a few days, the prob­lem returned.

Not only was this a prob­lem with our media play­ers, but it was also effect­ing stream­ing online music. Our cur­rent favorite online music ser­vice is Last.Fm. After Pandora’s recent deci­sion to limit users free lis­ten­ing to 40 hrs a month.

So at this point we were able to elim­i­nate our browsers and media play­ers, as these were both up to date. The next thing to rule out was our hard­ware. This was sim­ple enough as the hard­ware is a home the­ater sys­tem that’s uti­lized by other devices, all of which never have an issue. By process of elim­i­na­tion were left with dri­vers and media enhance­ment software’s.

As it turns out there’s an enhance­ment loaded by win­dows, our ver­sion being “Win­dows Vista Ulti­mate 64 Bit”. That par­tic­u­lar enhance­ment goes by the name of “Microsoft Soft­ware Wavetable Syn­the­sizer”. When open­ing your sound prop­er­ties from the con­trol panel, you’ll typ­i­cally see 3 tabs across the top of the win­dow. These are, Play­back, Record­ing, and Sounds. You’ll more than likely be on the Sounds tab by default. If win­dows sounds drive you nuts, as they do us, this is a good oppor­tu­nity to dis­able them. Sim­ply choose “No Sounds” from the drop down on the sounds tab. In Vista you also have the option to load the startup sound separately.

Now select the “Play­back” tab, and dou­ble click the upper device, usu­ally called “Speak­ers”. If you’re not sure which device is your default play­back device, play some music and look for the device with active lev­els. Dou­ble click that device and nav­i­gate to the “Advanced” tab. If selected, uns­e­lect both boxes under “Exclu­sive Mode”. Don’t be tempted to increase your sam­ple rate on this tab. Typ­i­cally the defaults are opti­mal, and increas­ing them could lead to an exag­ger­a­tion of what we’re here to fix.

Keep in mind sys­tems will vary in these areas depend­ing on dri­vers, sys­tem setup, and so forth. So you’re set­tings may look slightly dif­fer­ent. Next choose the “Enhance­ments” tab. Dis­able every­thing on this tab, if possible.

Now restart you com­puter, and the issue should be resolved. We men­tion ear­lier in the arti­cle that as part of our diag­no­sis, we updat­ing sys­tem dri­vers and codec’s. In the long run, reg­u­lar updates will lead to a much more pos­i­tive com­put­ing expe­ri­ence, and will dras­ti­cally reduce the num­ber of errors you encounter. Let us know if this was help­ful by leav­ing a reply below. Happy com­put­ing.

Jan 07, 2010 | Computer Repair and Networks, Recommended Software, Web Browsers, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave A Comment »