Audio playback is scrambled and only has high frequencies

[AWS]

I recorded two shows, Joey and a new CSI (far and few between these days), a few days back. We stared to watch CSI but the sound was messed up. Only sound in the hi-frequency range and was audible and it was mixed with "scratches" or other in-describle sounds - but sounds which are not normally there. When the actors are talking you can hardly hear them and you hear a lot of higher-pitched scratches or ??? instead.

Then we stopped playback and played Joey; once again, same problem. Rebooted the machine. Same problem. Changed the audio decoder from nVidia (latest as of 2/7/05) to the SageTV audio codec. Same problem. Played another video file and they were fine. Has anyone had this problem before?

It might just be a one-time spook but I thought I'd mention it.

SageTV 2.2.4
nVidia codec: 1.0.0.67 (might be an extra ".0" in there)