My background is as a senior VP in high-tech in Silicon Valley in the networking industry, now retired early. I’d be very surprised if your distortion description was due to your internet feed from Xfinity. At least not from your description of the way the sound changed.
It literally sounds more like a hardware issue such as a cap, bad cable, or something else that is injecting an analog, not a digital component, causing the distortion. If it was in the internet stream such as dropped packets, it would be more likely exhibit itself as delays, dropouts, etc. BTW... your downstream speed in the 200+ mbps is far beyond what you need to stream music and Netflix. Again, if your audio and TV were competing for bandwidth, it would be more in the way of delays and dropped packets, again not giving the kind of audible distortion you’re describing.
I would try my best to swap out hardware as a test to get the internet out of the equation first. You’ve got enough “moving parts” in the chain that I feel you should get it down to a simple setup with your CD player, preamp, amp and speakers. Run that for awhile and see if you hear any distortion. If you do, then get your gear diagnosed, especially the old amp which may have leaked a capacitor or two in it’s 20 years of loyal service to you.
Best of luck
Gary
It literally sounds more like a hardware issue such as a cap, bad cable, or something else that is injecting an analog, not a digital component, causing the distortion. If it was in the internet stream such as dropped packets, it would be more likely exhibit itself as delays, dropouts, etc. BTW... your downstream speed in the 200+ mbps is far beyond what you need to stream music and Netflix. Again, if your audio and TV were competing for bandwidth, it would be more in the way of delays and dropped packets, again not giving the kind of audible distortion you’re describing.
I would try my best to swap out hardware as a test to get the internet out of the equation first. You’ve got enough “moving parts” in the chain that I feel you should get it down to a simple setup with your CD player, preamp, amp and speakers. Run that for awhile and see if you hear any distortion. If you do, then get your gear diagnosed, especially the old amp which may have leaked a capacitor or two in it’s 20 years of loyal service to you.
Best of luck
Gary