Right speaker sounds muffled after a brief crackle.

I recently unplugged my headphones (almost always plugged in) and decided to play a video. As soon as I hit play the speakers made a loud crackling noise and the right speaker sounds more muffled than the left. I tried to compare the speakers by playing a track on mono and moving the slider in audio preferences and I can confirm the right speaker is muffled compared to the left. Is this a software issue / bug or is the speaker damaged in any way.