I've searched and read through the topics and all of the information for the audio defect, although my "problem" per se is a bit different. I'm very anal about things and can sometimes (especially for expensive new things I invest money in) can read up TOO much to the point where I manifest the problem in my own head.

I tried the audio defect experiment with 4 songs in Apple Lossless that were about 2 and half to three minutes long, switched back and forth between them quickly multiple times, and didn't hear anything strangley.

However, I have some AAC 128 bit encoded songs that are quite long (A own a lot of 'live' CDs that have improvs from concerts and the like) and the tracks are 7-8 minutes long. I don't ever hear a hard drive noise in the headphones, and I don't really hear static. If I'm switching between songs quickly, sometimes I'll hear a noise, but its more like the abrupt ending of music (like when you're flipping through TV channels quickly and you just hear things like "ah" and "eh" and "ree" for example), and the only time anything like that really happens or any static (every once in a while I hear some static) is every 4 or 5 songs, at the same point the hard drive actually has to spin to load up a few more songs into the cache.

So I'm just curious if it is me being really anal about this, or if the fact that I do hear static every once in a while (not all of the time) means I have the audio defect. Also, I'm guessing the "static" could be the cut off of the live songs (since they tend to blend end to each other, and me switching from song to song on a live CD cuts into the middle of nowhere if you understand what I mean).

Sorry for those tired of audio defect threads, and for all of the (extra bits) of information. :) I'm sure there are others like me though who have to polish every little finger print off often enough.