There is a sibling comment describing the same experience. But I think that this behavior can't be reproduced nowadays. I think it must depend on the relative

There is a sibling comment describing the same experience. But I think that this behavior can't be reproduced nowadays. I think it must depend on the relative performance of the software resamplers involved (ALSA's in-kernel plughw vs. PulseAudio's vs. your media player's). Do you remember which media player triggered this?