So ,why do you say corrupt mp3s' ,sounds more like maybe some settings in you sound setup ,do you have any software installed belonging to your sound card ,if so check it to be sure all is setup right ,or maybe even go to the sound card manufactor website for updated drivers for the card .

I don't think the problem is settings/drivers/etc. I have the same symptoms: Echo-y sound, volume jumping high/low throughout the song, voice is consistantly very low compared to the overall level, instrumentation/sound quality seems distorted, equalizer can't fix it. It only affects most of the mp3s/mpegs, not all of them. All my settings are the same as before, as far as I can tell. This started happening today: I hooked up my computer up after having it in storage for about a month. I'm going to go through the system backbone and once again make sure everything is okay, but with some of the mp3s playing fine, I think it's some kind of file corruption. Maybe my harddrive suffered some damage from heat or moisture while the machine was in storage, but I doubt that. More likely it's a virus, although my Symantec antivirus didn't detect anything, and the mp3s/mpegs were all fine when I turned my computer off to put it in storage. So.. I really can't figure it out. Also, the video part of the mpegs seems fine. It's just the audio that's bad.

Incidentally, I'm running Win98 2nd Ed. For players, I'm running RealPlayer 10, Winamp, and Windows Media Player. Basically the same on all of them.

~GregorMendal

I think some of your MP3s are regular and some are MP3pro. Both have the same extension (.mp3). What you could do is install the latest version of Winamp 5. This player has support for MP3Pro. See if this helps and let me know....

Goldeagle, I thought it might be something like that, as I know I've got several types of mp3s, edited with several programs, from several sources, so they're all mixed up like that. But I already have Winamp 5, and a crapload of codecs for everything imaginable, so I ruled that out.

But I did figured it out. That little volume control on the systemtray... open the properties for that. One of the many slidebars is for 3D depth balance. Click on "Advanced" for that slide bar. There's a check box: 3D Enable. Turn this off.

Apparently, something in my soundcard went kaput -- it lost its ability to use this 3D sound depth option. So my mp3s all work normally now, but they don't sound quite as good as they used to. I'm going to buy a new soundcard soon anyway.

Hopefully others with the same problem will find this.

~Gregor