Snap Crackle Pop, and no its not my cereal

[eedmond]

My Specs:
Asus A7N8XPCB2.0 Bios C1007
GF4TI4800-VTD (MSI)
Soundblaster Audigy SB0090
Maxtor SATA-150 HD (160GB)
Promise FastTrack S150 TX2Plus
1GB of RAM (2 512mb PC3200 Crucial)
Windows XP SP1

My problem is that I get alot of snap crackle and pop's with my soundcard. I have had this card since it first came out and it has been on 3 motherboards and all of them have had this problem. It got worse when I bought my SATA HD and pci card and started playing Horizons. Creative's knowledge database says it could be a PCI bandwidth issue but I have talked to some local friends who are techs at shops and they just laughed at that explanation. They think it is a bad card. I do not know enough of the inner workings to know if it is or not.

I thought the problem was soundcard driver related but I had the latest drivers and even tried a 3rd party driver (which did not work at all). But I since have pulled my Audigy out and am currently running with my onboard audio from my MB. It is FAR better with the noise then the Audigy was but it too still pop's at times (About 75% less then my audigy).

I had this problem with my previous soundcard as well a SBLive 5.1 Platinum card. It too made alot of noise. I am getting to the point of swearing off all SB cards. I have been looking at the Terratec Aureon series of cards.

Any ideas of how to fix my SB or should I bail and go to Terratec or another brand that you suggest?

Thanks,
Eric

[Mayet]

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..

[eedmond]

Originally Posted by Mayet

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

[Diver01]

I dont know if this is whats happening to your PC, but I had simmilar issues with my Sound Card and inerference. What I found out was the soundcard was picking up interference from the Graphics card. I relocated the sound card to the bottom PCI slot and the interference dissapeared. I dont know if this would help you or not, just thought I would share...

[eedmond]

Originally Posted by Diver01

I dont know if this is whats happening to your PC, but I had simmilar issues with my Sound Card and inerference. What I found out was the soundcard was picking up interference from the Graphics card. I relocated the sound card to the bottom PCI slot and the interference dissapeared. I dont know if this would help you or not, just thought I would share...

I tried that. The sound card was originally in the 3rd PCI slot down from the AGP but then I moved it to the bottom one and I still had the problem.

-Eric

[tommo666]

I got pops and crackles on my sb live 1024 player. I did the lot. Drivers, installed the os over the top. Checked with creative support, who were most helpful seeing as it was an OEM card. Finally did the simple thing, checked the background processes and found it was SETI, that damm prg was throwing noise onto the pci bus. Uninstalled it and the pops got unistalled as well. I occationally get pops now but only in times of heavy CPU load.

Moral of this tale, before diving in feet first, check the easy stuff. But we're human and it's crawl under the desk, fight off years of dust. Prise the case open. Cut your hands on the sharp edges, swear, bang your head on the desk etc :-)))

[eedmond]

Originally Posted by tommo666

I got pops and crackles on my sb live 1024 player. I did the lot. Drivers, installed the os over the top. Checked with creative support, who were most helpful seeing as it was an OEM card. Finally did the simple thing, checked the background processes and found it was SETI, that damm prg was throwing noise onto the pci bus. Uninstalled it and the pops got unistalled as well. I occationally get pops now but only in times of heavy CPU load.

I do have a program called United Devices running in the background working on Cancer research. I will try turning it off when playing and see if the problem goes away. You can look at it here http://www.grid.org/home.htm

On another note I bought a Audigy 2 and installed it. It is 10X better than my Audigy 1 but I still get a few pops here and there, seems to do it usually under load. Gonna try turning of UD and see what happens. Would never have thought of a program like SETI or UD causing sound issues.

-Eric

[Archer]

Does it crackle when you are in safe mode?

Do you have anything electrical nearby?

[hudsonsmith]

Originally Posted by 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

Does it pop if the light is off? 2nd computer shouln't matter - you're concerned about electrical equipment with transformers. I would experiment with turning off other equipment on the same circuit.