Software playback audio issue MBP 2009

Hi MacRumorians,

Very happy to be part of the Apple gurus community!

I bought this MBP in 2009, 13", Intel Core duo 2, 2.53ghz, 8G ram (added myself) running OSX 10.6 snow leopard (I think).

So my issue is that when I playback audio through the headphone jack from software like iTunes, Ableton Live, VLC, etc the sound sounds horrible: over compressed, super bassy, sounds like it’s ‘playing double’ as I can sort of hear a very short delay adding up. Very bad. I already checked EQs, etc. Same issue for both software. Also It didn’t used to be like that. It kind of just appeared a couple years ago. I have played small gigs straight from the headphone jack and it sounded fine.

However, when I play audio through the headphone jack from internet apps like Youtube, Soundcloud, etc, everything sounds fine. So this tells us that it should not be a hardware issue.

Also I produce loads of tracks on ableton live and usually playback everything through an external soundcard, no issue there either. The issue happens only when playing audio through headphone jack from software playback only. As a result I never take my MBP out as I can’t take the audio quality from headphones when working on tracks.

I searched about this topic which brought me to the Utilities>Audio midi settings.Everything looks like it should. iTunes and ableton are updated to their latest version.

What do you reckon I should do? Reset to factory settings? OS update to Maverick? But then isn’t my MBP too old for the latest update? Also read about a PRAM reset.

Thank you very much for your help and your time!!
Cheers
Le Filou

soundcloud.com/le-filou

 

Looks like I'm not the only one unable to sort this out. I will start by resetting the PRAM and see what happens.