Oh, joy, my speakers are popping static. XP

====

Oh, good, seems to have been temporary....

Odd thing, after-- OK, in order:

Maid comes every other week.
She moves the speakers to clean, including the subwoofer, which has it's own power supply.
After that, what usually happens is that the balance seems to go off; usually the right speaker gets muffled.
Unplugging and re-plugging seems to restore it.

THis time, when I plugged it back in, the balance restored, but it was popping, usually when the sound reached certain volumes, and octaves, which tended to be the high notes of the human voice; especially annoying when I was watching a video online.

So, complete shut-down, I guess letting it cool off, maaaaaaaaay have been the compy re-adapting incorrectly in the first palce (it does some auto-config things when you plug even speakers into it, apparently), so full shut-down apparently fixed it, my speakers seem to be OK now.