Weird sound issue with Media Player Classic

[Faqa]

Simply put, it outputs terrible sound after my upgrade to Windows 7 64-bit. Crackling and static and such on any high notes. Now, the hardware has to be fine, since Windows Media Center works awesomely. Random tweaking of audio options in MPC has had no avail. Now, I would just keep using Media Center, but it's support for .mkv isn't very good and it has syncing issues.

Anyone have any ideas why Classic would do this? I'm using a Creative X-Fi soundcard on an ASUS P5B-Deluxe.

[General Zod]

What type of codec pack are you using? I've never had any issues with .mkv on Media Player Classic with the CCCP unless there was something faulty with the encode. Otherwise I can't think of anything.

[JointStrikeFighter]

use something else.

[General Zod]

use something else.

"Use something else" doesn't actually help fix anything when it might be a very simple solution you know. Have you even used MPC before?

[Faqa]

Teh intrawebz has informed me that it's a 64-bit thang. The CCCP is all 32-bit. Why Wow64 doesn't make this issue go away, I don't know. It's not like a codec is a device driver, but there you are. After install the Shark007 codec pack, I was able to hook up the correct codecs to Media Center to fix the mkv thing and the syncing issues, and off I went. Still weird, though.

[Archaic`]

I've never had any such troubles with the CCCP on my 64 bit Win 7, so I wouldn't be so quick to say it's a universal 64 bit issue Faqa. You do have the 09/09/09 release version?

[Sarevok]

Have you tried VLC ? VLC has replaced MPC as my choice of light weight player due to being constantly updated to support modern hardware and software. MPC was good once but it is sorely lagging behind these days.

[General Zod]

Have you tried VLC ? VLC has replaced MPC as my choice of light weight player due to being constantly updated to support modern hardware and software. MPC was good once but it is sorely lagging behind these days.

I'm not sure I'd call VLC "light weight". It also has poor subtitle rendering abilities, which I'd assume he's using since he's talking about an .mkv file. The problem here is that it sounds like whoever made the .mkv files he's using did a poor job making the encode.

[Stark]

VLC scales some video badly too. Since I don't pirate movies and tv I don't care though.

Grubbing atone with codecs is a dogs life. Does anyone know what could be up with this specific mkv and has he tried other ones?

[Executor32]

Which version of MPC are you using, Faqa? The original MPC is sorely out-of-date, but development is continuing via a third party on a separate codepath, Media Player Classic Homecinema. The latest version is in the Combined Community Codec Pack, which also has all the codecs you'll ever need for pretty much everything.

[Faqa]

I've never had any such troubles with the CCCP on my 64 bit Win 7, so I wouldn't be so quick to say it's a universal 64 bit issue Faqa. You do have the 09/09/09 release version?

I do. Fresh download from the site.

Also, to remove doubt - my problem with .mkv is on Windows Media Center, NOT MPC. Or rather, was, until using the Shark007 pack. MPC output terrible sound in everything after my switch to 64-bit, not just .mkv.

Also, I've used VLC in the past, and I'm not a huge fan.

[General Zod]

I've never had any such troubles with the CCCP on my 64 bit Win 7, so I wouldn't be so quick to say it's a universal 64 bit issue Faqa. You do have the 09/09/09 release version?

I do. Fresh download from the site.

Also, to remove doubt - my problem with .mkv is on Windows Media Center, NOT MPC. Or rather, was, until using the Shark007 pack. MPC output terrible sound in everything after my switch to 64-bit, not just .mkv.

Also, I've used VLC in the past, and I'm not a huge fan.

This might be entirely too obvious, but what kind of audio settings was your CCCP set for? If FFDShow were set to anything but 2/0 stereo it might cause some problems. Were you using any non-default settings at all?

[Faqa]

Nope.

[Netko]

Why are you even using a codec pack on Win7? It has support for all the codecs realistically needed built-in (hardware accelerated even), and the only major format that isn't supported out of the box is mkv, which is easily remedied by getting the MKV Media Foundation splitter from divx labs. You may also need the ac3 splitter.

After that, get MPC-HC and don't look back. The only thing old DirectShow-based codec packs do on Win7 is mess up its Media Foundation-based thumbnail/transcoding/streaming system (and playback occasionally as in your case) - they aren't needed unless you plan on using some niche codec (and then you're better off installing it standalone instead of letting a ffdshow-based codec pack take over your system) since all common variants of MPEG4 are supported out of the box (h264, as well as all the simple profile codecs - DivX, Xvid, etc.), as is MPEG 1&2, MP3, VC-1 and other MS Windows Media codecs - in other words, pretty much anything that you're going to realistically find. Again, the only somewhat popular format or codec missing is MKV, and there the problem is missing support for the container - the actual video (usually h264) and audio (mp3 or mp4) is supported perfectly fine - so just get the splitter to support the container format from divx labs.

So dump all that alternative codec crap out of the system and let Windows take care of it now that it finally has competent format support out of the box (which works as you can yourself see in Media Center which, of course, uses the Media Foundation codecs).

P.S. Ok, I forgot about legacy stuff stuck in the old Quicktime formats and (ugh) Real's formats - but there the solution is to only install what's needed (QTlite and Real Alternative lite respectively), and then use MPC-HC.