A few days ago I played a couple of MP3s that have been sitting on my hard
drive for a long time--files I know are of pretty good quality. They
sounded like absolute crap. Skipping, clicking noises every couple of
seconds...just unbearable. I had backups on CDs, so I did a comparison
using WinDiff--they turned out to be identical, so I figured there was no
point in re-copying them over to my hard drive. I played the backups--they
also sounded like crap, which was puzzling, because I *know* I've played
them all before and they all sounded fine.

For the hell of it just tried playing them again today (the files on my hard
drive, that is)...it's been a couple of reboots since last time. The same
files sounded fine. Windiff says they're still identical to my backups (not
that I was expecting any differently, TBH).

What's the verdict in a case like this? It's not the media players
themselves, 'cuz they (MP11 and Winamp) gave the same results. Corrupted
audio driver state, which a reboot took care of?

It's not the first time I get this...anybody else has had this intermittent
problem?