[pg2k3]

I'm a technical support rep so I still had my troubleshooting face on. I figured it out after 10 minutes of serious troubleshooting and process of elimination.

Nobody probably uses the Music Store but I do especially since they now offer around 30 free classic songs every week. Anyway, back to the solution.........

If you installed the HTC Streaming Media Cab (For Mobile Youtube and RTSP support) than you are most likely being annoyed by a file called EmMp4SbrDec.dll. The touch already supports every SBR version pertaining to MP4 and AAC codecs out of the box. Therefore, this file is causing conflicts with whatever the Sprint Music Store is using. Simply find the above mentioned file in file in the Windows folder and rename or remove it. I recommend using Total Commander for the job.

I did several hard resets trying to figure this one out then I decided that it has to be one of the HTC files doing it as the Music Store playback would go back to normal.

The problem is the Codec installed by that cab is not decoding the low-bandwidth SBR information used to "Reconstruct" the higher frequencies in the Sprint music files (Which are based on AAC+). This makes your 48Kbps files sound like 64Kbps equivalent files rather than 96-128Kbps depending what your listening to.

I hope this helps someone out.