Maybe someone has experienced this problem and can help me out.

Couple of days ago I was watching Inglorious Basterds at a decect level, loud but not excessively so, at least by my standards. And the left front M80 sounds like it has a blown tweeter, so I of course freak out and start walking around listening to the center and other speaker, they sound fine.

I switch to the radio and my speakers sound normal no blown speaker static sound. I go back to the movie and it sounded normal for awhile then it started again and this time in all three front speakers and was coming and going. Distorted soundtrack sounded really bad.

I know the speakers are OK, so what could it be? I am thinking maybe the receiver, but since I dont have another one to use it is hard to do a comparison. I have a Panasonic BD-80 Blu Ray player hooked up through the optical connection. All three speakers are running off my HK 5 channel seperate amplifier. The receiver is a 9 year old HK. I also use an APC home theater power conditioner.

Any one else have this problem?

Could just be that movie. If it's not happening on all content that would be m guess.

Possibly the player and/or cable ?

Ron, if the receiver is okay when you use the tuner, it's unlikely that it's the problem. You might try connecting the player(with a coaxial rather than optical connection, of course)directly to the HK-5 to take the receiver out of the chain. You haven't said if any other source material besides that one movie causes the problem.

I have watched a couple more movies and so far the problem has not recurred. I am going to wait and see if it comes up again, if it does not I will watch Inglorious Basterds again to see if it happens again. All the other options involve disconnecting lots of cables and I dont feel like stepping into that mess behind the AV stand at the moment...

I haven't seen the film yet but...

I have heard that the sound design is purposely distorted/mangled at the beginning and as the film progresses, the sound blooms slowly into high fidelity. Could this be the "distortion" that you are hearing?

Like in Grindhouse, when the audio would garble (wow and flutter!) as well as the film glitches that were intentional, to convey a sense of old 70's film vibe.

I watch a LOT of 60's/70's era film and messed up audio is typical of that trashy/exploitation groove-a-delic aesthetic.

Can't wait to see Inglorious Bastards. Supposedly, it is Tarantino's 'spaghetti western' and homage to tough ass 60''s/70's war films as well as perhaps being a remake (?) of the original 'Inglorious Bastards'.

I wasn't paying attention to this thread, but I watched IB this week, and yes, the opening has severe distortion in the audio on purpose (also it uses an old, fuzzy Universal logo, so you're TV isn't messed up either).

I hate it when they do things like that.

Jay, the shiny new one is displayed right before the old ghetto one, so be at ease.

Whew, I feel much better now, thanks