Western Digital Live Streamer audio problem

[martinturner]

Hi,

I bought the WD Live Streamer and for the most part it works rather well. I can play video (locally, streamed, Netflix) and the audio is excellent - can have it loud and sounds great. However, if I try playing any mp3's (locally or streamed) or iPlayer content the sound is distorted (heavily bassy and so have to turn it right down low, I mean very low to remove the distortion). Netflix seems fine (am assuming it's playing HD content). All mkv's, avi's work fine. I am outputting by way of HDMI cable to my LCD TV. I don't have a fancy amp setup so cannot really try optical - annoyingly I bought an optical cable thinking I could use this as an 'in' to the tv, but the tv only has optical 'out' which kinda makes sense.

I am basically trying to find out if the box is faulty as I only recevied it last week so want to send back asap if it is.

Would really appreciate some help; thanks.

edit: to add, I have tried an alternate HDMI cable and problem persists.

 

[martinturner]

Having spent hours looking into this, I think I have stumbled over the issue. TV
speakers! I have the audio set with a custom equaliser rather than the standard Samsung presets - its marginally bass heavy (half way between 0 and max for last two sliders, if that makes sense). Regardless, all other audio is perfect with these settings (Sky, BluRay etc and some WD Streamer output). I have now lowered the bass whilst playing mp3 audio from this device and it resolves the issue - albeit a touch underwhelming in the bass department. The other downside is the audio is also not bassy enough for other external audio sources and additionally movies/Netflix from the streamer itself. Perhaps time to get some external speakers. Thought i'd post this solution in case anyone else plugs one of these in their TV and experiences this niggle.