I haven't been able to find out anything about this by searching here, so I hope I'm not repeating an earlier problem.
I have had MC12 installed on my home machine (XPHome SP3) for a couple of years now, everything running fine, no trouble. A few days ago when I went to play some mp3 files (ones that I have played hundreds of times before) I get loud, screeching, horribly distorted playback. It's not the files; they will play just fine in any other player. Also, the audio track for VIDEO playback is fine. I tried a reinstall, same problem. Upgrading to MC13 gave me clean playback, but quite frankly I HATE the new "tabbed" listings. I uninstalled MC 13, completely wiped all traces of MC12 that might have been lingering, and reinstalled MC12 from scratch. I know it was a "virgin" install because I had to re-establish a library and the settings were all at default.
Same thing. Horrible distortion on playback. Any ideas?