Surround System Troubleshooting

[SixStringSlinger]

I have simple Vizio surround system (sound bar, two satellite speakers and a subwoofer) that I use for any listening at home; record player, TV, movies/music/podcasts via my laptop, streaming whatever through my phone. It's not "top of the line" but it sounds good.

This morning I was mindlessly going through my music on iTunes and decided to play "Bold as Love", and some of it just didn't sound right. This was readily apparent between the fake ending, the psychedelic drum fill and the ending solo, where I just couldn't hear some parts. This song is ingrained in my brain so it was very jarring. It seemed to me, because a lot of the tracks in the song "move" along the stereo spectrum, that perhaps something wasn't connected right. I checked all my connections and settings and everything there seems solid and up-the-middle. I tried some other Hendrix recordings and encountered a similar phenomenon, but I haven't noticed anything special when watching movies or listening to other music (though, to be fair, few if any of these will have something like a drum fill that starts on your left and ends on your right and hits all points in the middle along the way).

Is there any chance the problem is with the file I'm playing from? The song is ripped from the Axis CD, from the set of Hendrix reissues from the last 10 or 15 years that each came with a companion DVD (the other Hendrix recordings I tried are from the same reissues). They were ripped using whatever was "stock" in my previous laptop's iTunes, then transferred to my newer one via external hard drive. The connection from laptop to sound system is via Bluetooth. The physical CD is in storage so I can't test with that right now, and there apparently isn't any "official" Hendrix on YouTube Music (the streaming service I use). However, I did notice this same phenomenon when playing the Tedeschi Trucks Band's first album when playing from the ripped file on my laptop, which did not occur when streaming it via YouTube Music (connected via Bluetooth in both cases).

Any thoughts on why this might be?

 

[buster poser]

Seems possible it might have been re-encoded to a lower bit-rate at some point? Certain artifacts I remember from that era when file size was a concern, usually squishy cymbals.

There's an official Hendrix YT (video) channel, but that's compressed audio also, even if it's super high-rez. Also not organized by album. Playlist below.



Might be worth signing up for an Apple Music (or Spotify, Tidal?) trial and giving their "lossless" version a listen?

 

[SixStringSlinger]

Well see, the issue as I hear it isn't "loss" in that sense. There are whole parts I know should be there but that I'm not hearing. For instance, the outro solo in "Bold as Love" isn't supposed to fade in and out, it just fades out with the rest of the song. But playing it from my ripped file I hear it fading in and out throughout, as if (I'm not certain if this is actually the case, but it works as a descriptor) it's "supposed" to shift continuously from left to right and back again but, say, my system isn't putting out the "center" parts. Or, in the case of the Tedeschi Trucks album, there are certain licks and fills I know are in the first song, and that I hear while streaming, but are absent or barely audible when playing from the ripped file.

The obvious suspicion might be that something is wrong with my surround system, but the fact that everything sounds right when coming through a different source (but played through the same system) seems to contradict that.

 

[buster poser]

Yeah that’s pretty odd. I’ve never had audio do that on account of hardware. Maybe it’s one of those annoying remixes like they did with some of the early ZZ?

 

[Blues Twanger]

I don't use your setup exactly but sometimes cinema settings and music settings will try and split the sound up differently among the speakers and can sometimes get confused.

 

[SixStringSlinger]

So I went back to basics. Always go back to basics.

The sound settings on the laptop had the balance shifted all the way to the right. Always go back to basics.

Proceed to properly chastise me, as I cannot chastise myself enough.

Always go back to basics.

 

[telleutelleme]

You can always play this up until the singing starts. Always great way back when laying on the floor with Koss headphones playing this or Sailor by SMB.