[MPlayer-users] can't play voice recordings under ubuntu

[stan]

On Sun, 13 Oct 2019 03:11:48 -0700
Silvio Levy <levy at msp.org> wrote:

> I've been using mplayer for 10+ years and suddenly I started having a
> problem: when listening through earphones, any voice track will be
> muted down to almost zero. 

Have you tried with another sound player, say audacious or xmms2?  Have
you tried different earphones?

> I can listen to a music recording just fine.  When playing a movie
> I hear music but once dialogue comes on, the volume drops by 60dB or
> more, or else it's distorted by constant short interruptions. 
> Voice-only recordings are unplayable.
> 
> This is only on earphones; with builtin-speakers or external
> speakers reproduction is normal.

This sounds like you have a notch filter operating.  Since sound is
fine on speakers it is almost certainly *not* mplayer.  Do you have an
equalizer in the earphones?  Is it set to knock out frequencies around
200 - 300 hz?  Are the earphones noise cancelling?  Could the noise
cancellation be functioning incorrectly?