Snap Crackle Pop, and no its not my cereal

[eedmond]

have you checked whether it is the speakers or any electromagnetic or radio interference nearby that could cause the crackling......you could try another set of speakers and check around for a source nearby that could cause this

Has the onboard sound been disabled correctly?


if you get the same problem with the onboard then it may not be the card with the issue..

I thought it might be the speakers they are Sony SRS-D300 speakers that I bought from about 10 years ago. I am right now listening to Daniel Rodriguez in the latest Realplayer which I just upgraded to yesterday. I am not getting a single pop or crackle so far. I will try to find some headphones or something to try out. Will post what happens.

As for the Radio Interference nearby we have a cell phone tower about 100 yards down the road other than that I wouldn't know how to go about finding out. The cellphone tower is fairly new though I think this problem predates the tower.

As for the onboard sound there is only 1 option in the bios that has to do with onboard sound and it says either Auto or disabled. It was disabled until recently when I pulled my Audigy.

-Eric

[eedmond]

Ok.I just tried some Sony SRS-5 CD-Walkman speakers and I got them to crackle plugged into my Subwoofer's Headphone jack. The cord was not long enough to reach the back of my machine so I scrounged around and found a pair of Sony MDR-CD60 Headphones and tried those in my subwoofer's headphone jack and got them to crackle then I unplugged my speakers and plugged the headphones into the speaker jack in the back of my computer and got them to crackle too. But it took quite a bit for me to do it. I am running Horizons in windowed mode and had to minimize and then maximize Horizons for the sound to crackle or go into a really busy area with alot of players on screen. If I had my audigy in I would have just had to have stood still for a min before they would crackle.

Any thoughts?
-Eric

[Mayet]

Ok what was the common denominator in all that changing ? was it the subwoofer?

and the cell tower may have bearing on the issue

[eedmond]

I unplugged my speakers and plugged the headphones into the speaker jack in the back of my computer and got them to crackle too.

Nope the Subwoofer is not a common denominator.

Celltower interference is unknown. I just know that it does not interfere with any other electronics within our household including TV's, speaker systems, cellphones, wireless phones, modems, and a 2nd computer.

-Eric

[confus-ed]

Ahhhh ! ... an 'I hate soundblasters' thread ... count me in ..

First thing ... we keep on 'wittering' about leads & connectors & speakers ... well standard audio cables are a bit like a big ariel, if there is any exterior interferance & they aren't well shielded they very kindly amplify it & project it out the speakers, good 'firm clean' contacts are a 'must' too.

The way to decide whether the card is at fault or the machine is either seperate the pc & cables from any possible interfereance (not really that practical) or why don't you use fibre optic cabling ? No interferance at all there from outside (alternatively 'well shielded cabling' if your speakers aren't digital).

Now as for whats going on in the pc ... its to do with pci bus signalling & how Soundblasters do it & priorities of request handling. There's also a whole hardware vs software decoding thing going too ...

Your onboard sound is almost certainly completely software based, that's where the cpu does pretty much all the work & the card itself has no memory or Codecs built in ... Your Audigy though is hardware based & has codec chips to do the decoding & a memory buffer to 'save up jobs' for the cpu as & when required.

Now if the 'geniuses' at soundblaster wrote drivers that complied with pci 2.1 specification as well as 'adjusting their cards' so they actually did comply instead of 'nearly' (they comply to some other related standard apparently) then when they flushed buffers everything would get done right, but because they 'tinkered' with the priorities for sound processing everything gets out of whack & you get PCI latency issues & snap crackle pop ! This is worse/better dependant on the motherboard bios, some are 'good' many though ... urrgh !

I don't know what to say now, this could well be interferance, or it could well be that you've 'fluked' a sucession of motherboards that don't like soundblasters!

If this is a VIA chipset board then there's a PCI latency patch by 'George' aka the 'soundblaster patch' over on www.ViaArena.com

[hudsonsmith]

On another path, do you have fluorescent or halogen light fixtures? Dimmers? Any other electrical appliances with a transformer?

[eedmond]

My bedroom light is a fluorescent bulb. One of those mini twisted things that plugs into a normal light fixture. I also have a 2nd computer in another room.

-Eric

[imagoon]

I'm with confused here. I had a live and an audigy. They both had issues with pops clicks etc esp with anything that used the PCI bus hard, like the HDD's. This is a well known issue with sb lives and audigys. I finally got the Hercules Game theatre XP 5.1 and never had an issues after that. BTW there are some drivers that attempt to fix it but the SB cards are just not 100% compatible with the PCI standards. The tweaks they used did cause issues with some boards but others you cant get rid of the noise.

~Chris

Ahhhh ! ... an 'I hate soundblasters' thread ... count me in ..

First thing ... we keep on 'wittering' about leads & connectors & speakers ... well standard audio cables are a bit like a big ariel, if there is any exterior interferance & they aren't well shielded they very kindly amplify it & project it out the speakers, good 'firm clean' contacts are a 'must' too.

The way to decide whether the card is at fault or the machine is either seperate the pc & cables from any possible interfereance (not really that practical) or why don't you use fibre optic cabling ? No interferance at all there from outside (alternatively 'well shielded cabling' if your speakers aren't digital).

Now as for whats going on in the pc ... its to do with pci bus signalling & how Soundblasters do it & priorities of request handling. There's also a whole hardware vs software decoding thing going too ...

Your onboard sound is almost certainly completely software based, that's where the cpu does pretty much all the work & the card itself has no memory or Codecs built in ... Your Audigy though is hardware based & has codec chips to do the decoding & a memory buffer to 'save up jobs' for the cpu as & when required.

Now if the 'geniuses' at soundblaster wrote drivers that complied with pci 2.1 specification as well as 'adjusting their cards' so they actually did comply instead of 'nearly' (they comply to some other related standard apparently) then when they flushed buffers everything would get done right, but because they 'tinkered' with the priorities for sound processing everything gets out of whack & you get PCI latency issues & snap crackle pop ! This is worse/better dependant on the motherboard bios, some are 'good' many though ... urrgh !

I don't know what to say now, this could well be interferance, or it could well be that you've 'fluked' a sucession of motherboards that don't like soundblasters!

If this is a VIA chipset board then there's a PCI latency patch by 'George' aka the 'soundblaster patch' over on www.ViaArena.com