Awful Sound Quality through my PS3

[PJPro]

I mostly listen to my music on my PC through my DAC and headphone amp. However, yesterday I thought I'd listen to some music streamed from my PC to my PS3, AV amp and speakers. It used to sound pretty good....but yesterday it was awful.

It crossed my mind that my recent purchase of a pair of Grado RS1s had turned me into a golden ears. But not to worry.....when I tried a CD throught my CDP it sounded fine. So, perhaps the source rip was the problem. Had a listen on my PC/DAC/Headphone amp and it was great.

OK. So I changed the config of my network recently to optimise online gaming (COD6). Maybe that was the problem. So I tried a CD in the PS3 directly. Same problem, so it's definately the PS3. The cabling (HDMI) seems OK. And there's no problem when playing films. The settings have not be changed on the AV amp or the PS3, so I can only put this turn of events down to the recent software updates to my PS3.

Before getting COD6 I hadn't logged onto the PS network for some time. When I did, a shed load of updates were automatically applied. And now music files sound, well, sort of thick with heavy distortion. I'd go so far a saying it was unlistenable.

Anyone else experienced this?

 

[PJPro]

I notice, actually, that the patch to take the firmware to v3 includes upsampling "enhancements" for audio. However, I went in and turned this off (selecting 44.1kHz) in my attempts to improve the sound quality. Perhaps this enhancement is the problem?

See here and here.

Googling doesn't turn up any reports issues (so far).

 

[PJPro]

Hmmm. There does seem to be a few comments around regarding this update.

Previously, you could get the music playing, hit the PS button and then access other parts of the XMB. Now if you do that, it asks if you want to stop playing music. The fix? Switch the ouput frequency to 48kHz (under music settings). And yes, it does work. Trouble is that bit perfect playback is out the window......and, for me, this work around does not improve the god awful playback.

If it was a radio, you'd want to tune it in.....or turn it off. Unfortunatey, I have to go for the latter!

 

[PJPro]

OK. Seem to have sorted the problem! The PS3 has a volume control. It goes from -4 to +4. For some reason mine was set to +4. Don't know how this came about but I suppose it might have been the kids. If you set the volume control to 0 the distortion goes away.

Don't know how to find the volume control? Play a track, press the triangle and it's one of the options (the speaker) that comes up in the top left of the screen.

If you don't believe how bad things can sound, go in and set the volume to +4. You have to press x to set the value.

I still have to have the output frequency set to 48kHz to get allow music to play and do other things at the same time. Bummer!