I use Airfoil and Airfoil Speakers, a cheap alternative to Apple and Airplay, around our house. It keeps the streamed radio or music in-sync around all the output devices so it isn’t annoying walking between rooms or being mid-point and getting clashing beats, music or speech.
A couple of times I’ve noticed it crackling during loud parts of songs or especially on shoutcast radio streams when using Winamp. Today I tracked down a topic that might explain why. In their case they say that forcing their application to output in 44100 Hz 16-bit solved their problem. However winamp’s DirectSound output status showed that it was already using this!
Simply changing Winamp to use the WaveOut plugin solved my problem. The WaveOut plugin also reports it is using 44100 Hz 16-bit so I’m a bit confused but relieved at having fixed the audio problem.
Further testing with the faulty DirectSound output in the Winamp settings could find no option that fixed it.
Update: This problem also happens with Media Player Classic (MPC-HC).
Another workaround is to change the output volume of Winamp or the affected media player to a lower volume – For example; 90% instead of full volume. This seems to fix the problem.
thecomputerperson 