2. pc-audio
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Sound Card Recommendations for the iMac

It looks like there is something wrong with the internal sound card in my iMac desktop. The music is now scratchy and mildly jumbled. Having eliminated every other possibility that I can think of - have others been required to replace the sound card and if so . . . .what did you get? Same stock part or upgrade?
puerto

Showing 2 responses by arni

arni
313 posts
 
Did you upgrade iTunes recently? Have you tried playing music through different players on the iMac? If it is garbled distorted sound it could just be a software issue, I had terrible sound on a Windows XP version of iTunes after upgrading to a newer iTunes version....

I would not think that a bad internal soundcard would affect optical digital out... as the digital signal is just passing through... So make sure you rule out software problems first.
arni
313 posts
 
I ended up reverting back to the previous version (from 7.0 back to 6.5). My wife later got an iPod that was incompatible with 6.5 so I upgraded again, (7.5), and had the same issues all over again. Went to Songbird, which was the only Windows player that could handle apple lossless files at the time.

I have crossed over to the good side now and have an iMac. There as some free alternative players for Macs out there, such as cog, vox,and songbird to name a few free ones. I recommend you download one of these and see (hear) if they sound better than your distorted iTunes.
Good luck,
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