Originally this ‘distortion’ broke out on one stand-alone mini, and it was so profound I thought that the speaker had blown a cone, it was beyond intolerable. I made an audio file of it as ‘evidence’. On playback it was obvious that it couldn’t be a physical fault as the original audio was still perfect but in the background, the ‘overlay’ of distortion and crackle was independent to this. Repetitiveness then suggested commonality between both the stream provider and the time of day. Whilst the time of day may still stand (mid afternoon) the fault now appears in various stream providers including Apple Music and BBC Sounds.
Subsequently, this ‘infection’ has now spread to any stand-alone/mono mini. The linked stereo originals are as good as gold (now probably jinxed) but the rest, utterly infuriating and very inviting for them to become very expensive one off baseballs ! - All are auto-updated to current OS.
We did the ‘red light’ reset, frankly if anything, it made the reoccurrence more frequent.
For those that may appreciate or understand: the premises has a split 2.4G & 5G router, both have the same passwords. 2.4 of course predominantly for ‘stuff’ around the place to do their things. The router software always invites to combine both, but as an ignorant user, I assume this to mean loosing the separation for 2.4 peripherals only - do advise if I am in la-la land on this point!
When I tried to log the fault Apple system said the units were out of their support period.. being in a hurry I aborted the attempt, but reading the conversations here, I am going to revisit and try again, as it looks like that was a red herring.
With the holidays on their way, the fear of this distortion breaking out as and when the festive tunes are contributing to the ambiance of various parties and such is an extremely disheartening thought (is it time to brush off the iPod and link it back into the Cinema System once more…? - Oh please Apple anytime sooner than soon would be seriously appreciated by far too many loyal customers…