Audigy crackling?

[XprincoX]

I just installed my new SB audigy mp3+ and started playing some mp3s. Then occasionally i notice a little crackle or distortion when i move the mouse or do something. Anyone else experience something like this? Anyone know how ta fix it? Im not sure if this has anything with conflict thing with the 686b southbridge. :(

[Sonny]

What's your rig? Make a sig with your system specs so we know what to do. If you got an ABIT MoBo you can go here (http://www.viahardware.com/faq/kt7/kt7faq.htm).

[Pitspawn]

OMG The Audigy crackles? Creative Labs have had the Live cards out for so damn long now, I would have thought they would have this fixed by now.

FFS, I was thinking about upgrading to an Audigy. Looks like yamaha is only choice now :(

[SickBoy]

Isn't the fix for this problem enabling the Memory Hole option in your BIOS? Thats what I thought I read somewhere.

[Pinky]

Originally posted by Pitspawn
FFS, I was thinking about upgrading to an Audigy. Looks like yamaha is only choice now :(

Turtle Beach Santa Cruz.

Three cheers for Creative :cool:.

[XprincoX]

Woohoo very strange.. what happened to my signature? Was there when i posted it yesterday. well here is hopefully it'll be there this time. :p

[typhoonmike]

Well have you tried clocking your system down to see if it was perhaps a problem with the overclock? Yes I realize the card is new and an upgrade to a card that probably worked fine with the overclock but maybe it's just crappy.

[Über~PhLuBB]

Originally posted by Pitspawn
OMG The Audigy crackles? Creative Labs have had the Live cards out for so damn long now, I would have thought they would have this fixed by now.

FFS, I was thinking about upgrading to an Audigy. Looks like yamaha is only choice now :(

What? SB Live!'s crackle?! I just friggin ordered one! Please explain!

[Pitspawn]

Creative Labs are hogs. They are like Microsoft, nVidia and Intel. They hog the market. Because of this, they set the standards. Their products can be as quick, slow, reliable or unstable as they want. You almost have no choice but to put up with them.

Creative Labs built the SBLive with EMU10k chips. The massive bandwidth they consume on your PCI Bus would not normally be a problem. However, the one thing that CL SBLive cards do not have is PCI Bus Mastering. Because of this, on certain mobo chipsets, data corruption can occur.

The problem ultimately lies down to the VIA 686B southbridge and VIA KT133 northbridges. Some mobo chipsets like the AMD 760 are better at dealing with the traffic.

The problems that can be caused by SBLive cards...

MP3 & General Audio sound skipping
Hard Drive corruption (I lost 2 massive hdd once over the bug)
Computer lockups
Too many other problems to count

One of the reasons I upgraded from a KT7A to a 8K7A is to get away from the 686B+SBLive bug. It worked, I see only the smallest affects on my system now.

[XprincoX]

Originally posted by typhoonmike
Well have you tried clocking your system down to see if it was perhaps a problem with the overclock? Yes I realize the card is new and an upgrade to a card that probably worked fine with the overclock but maybe it's just crappy.

Sadly yes i have tried lowering the clock down to 1400 and sigh... still the same. However i've noticed that when i use winamp the crackling is much more frequent compared to when i use creative playcenter. :(

However i would still have to say the sound quality of the new audigy veeerry noticeably clearer and compares to some high end systems. Now if it would just let me enjoy my music without the occasional cRackle, bzzzz.... nonsense.. :D

[Über~PhLuBB]

Originally posted by Pitspawn
Creative Labs are hogs. They are like Microsoft, nVidia and Intel. They hog the market. Because of this, they set the standards. Their products can be as quick, slow, reliable or unstable as they want. You almost have no choice but to put up with them.

Creative Labs built the SBLive with EMU10k chips. The massive bandwidth they consume on your PCI Bus would not normally be a problem. However, the one thing that CL SBLive cards do not have is PCI Bus Mastering. Because of this, on certain mobo chipsets, data corruption can occur.

The problem ultimately lies down to the VIA 686B southbridge and VIA KT133 northbridges. Some mobo chipsets like the AMD 760 are better at dealing with the traffic.

The problems that can be caused by SBLive cards...

MP3 & General Audio sound skipping
Hard Drive corruption (I lost 2 massive hdd once over the bug)
Computer lockups
Too many other problems to count

One of the reasons I upgraded from a KT7A to a 8K7A is to get away from the 686B+SBLive bug. It worked, I see only the smallest affects on my system now.

I have an Abit K7A, which uses the VIA KX133 and 686A chipsets. Do you think I'll have a problem? My credit card has already been debited, so I'd have to wait 10 days to cancel an order and get the money back...

[portorock]

Like you, I thought it was a fluke, I have Win2K and the Audigy MP3 and with no music or anything, I get a humming sound when I move the mouse, it is low but noticable, I want it gone but don't know how.

[typhoonmike]

Originally posted by Xprincox


Sadly yes i have tried lowering the clock down to 1400 and sigh... still the same. However i've noticed that when i use winamp the crackling is much more frequent compared to when i use creative playcenter. :(

However i would still have to say the sound quality of the new audigy veeerry noticeably clearer and compares to some high end systems. Now if it would just let me enjoy my music without the occasional cRackle, bzzzz.... nonsense.. :D

Heh. Maybe the sound quality from the Audigy is so good that you are actually able to hear the problems with the music that you couldn't hear before. Actually that's just a load of crap and there's obviously a problem that I shouldn't be poking fun of.

Really wish I could help you. Perhaps try some of the creative newsgroups to see if others have the problem. Then you can at least see if it's just you or others. Maybe Creative knows of the issue and is working on a driver fix. Audigy is new technology so I'm sure there are some bugs to work out.

[Microsoft]

theres not a problem its how people install the drivers and where the placement of the cards are

[XprincoX]

hmm... veeerry strange indeed.. now im running my system at 1531 and strange enough no more crackling!! At least i havent experience any in the last 2 hrs of playback... more testing in progress. :confused:

Microsoft, what u mean "its how people install the drivers and where the placement of the cards are"? The cards installed where my original sb live was and i used the drivers on the install cd.

[Microsoft]

placement of cards is 99% of stability drivers anyone can install,

and when installing new hardware its always recomended to reformat and do a clean install

[Pitspawn]

I have an Abit K7A, which uses the VIA KX133 and 686A chipsets. Do you think I'll have a problem? My credit card has already been debited, so I'd have to wait 10 days to cancel an order and get the money back...

Unfortunately, you might get the problem quite badly. I originally had an ABit K7A board (686A) and the audio skipping and hdd corruption was awful. I tried all the patches and nothing. In the end I upgraded to the KT7A board (686B) and found lots of new patches. The board still had the problem, but it wasnt as bad. Recently, I upgraded further still to the 8K7A (686B+AMD760) and found even less of the bug.

With the new 8K7A, I haven't seen any of the symptoms of the VIA 686B even without patches.

I would do a little more research into the problem at www.viahardware.com (http://www.viahardware.com)

There you will be able to find out how likely you are to get the bug, and how to solve some of the worst problems with it.

[portorock]

hey Microsoft, you might want to try listening to the comp when it's real quiet, not listening to music or anything like that. I do a lot of work at night while the wife is asleep, this means no tunes for me, and at ten at night, all you can hear is the silent hum of my water pump and the movement of my mouse, and I do mean hear. For some strange reason, the mouse movement is picked up through the speakers. I too just swapped out my sblive 5.2 for the audigy, and I noticed it rght away. Might want to give it a try. Just FYI, I even uninstalled the old drivers to prevent any conflicts, and running a dual boot sys (98/2K) I get the same prob for both.

[XprincoX]

very interesting developments... The audigy was actually performing just fine, and flawless. It seems that the problem was not the card at all but the driver that was installed. Im currently testing the card in my friend iwill kk266 and i have to say thats the kind of performance im talking about! :D So i guess it was the freaking drivers that were causing all this mayhem. im current reinstalling my windows and then we'll see it'll operated normally on mine too.

And i must reiterate this new audigy is reeeaally kick @$$! :D

hehe i know what u mean portorock. All those TOTAL quiet hrs cramming at the library late nite ;)

[typhoonmike]

Well hope the fix works out for you. I format constantly although I don't want to. I hate formatting and doing a clean install hoping to fix a problem only to have the problem still exist or have something else screw up.

[WyrmMaster]

Check your wave/direct sound output volume. Mine crackles if its set above 50%. I was haveing a problem with it resetting itself, and found that the volume slider in winamp changes this volume setting. I went into winamp properties and disabled the volume control and everythings fine.

[FerrariF50]

Yamaha sound card??? Were at?????



Originally posted by Pitspawn
OMG The Audigy crackles? Creative Labs have had the Live cards out for so damn long now, I would have thought they would have this fixed by now.

FFS, I was thinking about upgrading to an Audigy. Looks like yamaha is only choice now :(

[XprincoX]

Yup it was the driver the whole time. Everything is working 100% perfect now, and the sound is fantastic. (Altho this new winXP will take some time to get used to) :D

[F117NightHawk]

With my Audigy, the performance has been all over the place since I installed it yesterday. When I first installed it, the sound was horrible. It was crackly and hissy on my 2 Boston Accoustics speakers. Then I hooked the Audigy up my JVC home stereo and it sounded awesome. Next I moved the speakers away from the computer's monitor and hooked the Audigy back up. The hissing's gone, but I still have to turn the volume in the mixer all the way up to hear the sound well. On my old Live Platinum, I could have the volume down to almost nothing, and it was still deafening. So I don't know if I have a soundcard problem, or a speaker problem. The speakers are only 3 months old.

[XprincoX]

Originally posted by F117NightHawk
With my Audigy, the performance has been all over the place since I installed it yesterday. When I first installed it, the sound was horrible. It was crackly and hissy on my 2 Boston Accoustics speakers. Then I hooked the Audigy up my JVC home stereo and it sounded awesome. Next I moved the speakers away from the computer's monitor and hooked the Audigy back up. The hissing's gone, but I still have to turn the volume in the mixer all the way up to hear the sound well. On my old Live Platinum, I could have the volume down to almost nothing, and it was still deafening. So I don't know if I have a soundcard problem, or a speaker problem. The speakers are only 3 months old.

What OS u using? Before when i was using win98, win2k or even winME i would have to push the value 2/3 or even all the way up to get a fair amount of volume. But now with winXP i barely have it at barely at anything and its loud. Otherwise, check what type of speaker u have selected in multimedia and sound devices.

[F117NightHawk]

Thx for replying. I'm using Win98 SE. On my old computer which had onboard Sound Blaster Live Platinum, I barely had to turn up the volume at all. Increased sound performance doesn't give me enough of a reason to get WinXP. I can live with it the way it is, or buy new speakers. I've been thinking of getting one of those 5.1 dealies. I'm absolutely sure I have the right settings. I have 2 speakers adn that's what I have the thing set for.

[nil_esh]

Just got an Audigy, no problems sounds great (with the latest drivers, mp3's skipped with the supplied drivers). The mouse clicks might be being picked up off of the CD connector, that's happened to me with older sound cards, you can mute the CD-ROM or remove the connector entirely. Though I would imagine this would only happen with the analog connector.

The adjustable subwoofer crossover is great! It makes my 15" sub sound 10 times better connected directly to the card rather than through my reciever. I actually considered writing some software to do this after the emergance of 4+ speaker sound cards, but now I don't have to. Though the lack of keyboard controls makes it difficult to accurately adjust the crossover, because you have to use the mouse.

I am kinda disappointed with Turtle Beach after owning a Montego II Quadzilla. They basically abandoned driver support on it. Their web page says "Windows 2000 is a business operating system [so we don't support]." Fortunately there is a little hack which lets you use the old NT drivers under Win2k. Unfortunately the card doesn't even work on my Asus A7V266, which forced me to get the Audigy. I was originally going to get a cheap card for my old Epox MVP3 and use the Montego II in my A7V266, but oh well, good excuse for a nice upgrade :)

[F117NightHawk]

How loud do you have the volume in your mixer? How loud is the system volume and the Wave/MP3 volume? On mine, I have to have them up almost all the way to hear the sound decently. On my old machine (which had onboard SB Live Platinum), I had them way down at the bottom and the sound was phat. The speakers don't hiss and crack anymore, but it doesn't seem right that I have to have the volume up almost all the way. The volume on the speakers themselves is set at just below 1/2 and it sounds OK then.

[Clean_Baldy]

I just installed the Audigy X-Gamer in my brothers computer yesterday. I had the same problem with the crackling speakers. I also had an IRQ problem, but thats another story which i'll touch on which is quite easy to fix usually.

Well, I went online and got drivers from the internet, rather than getting them off of the CD. NEVER use those damn CD's that come with the hardware. Always get the newest ones online. They always seem to be less quirky. Also, the Audigy uses DIGITAL sound to the CD drive. If you dont have it set in BIOS, and try and play music from the CD drive, you may get crackling sounds. I forget the option, but its quite evident once you get into the BIOS. Just gotta switch it.

OK, now, with putting in any hardware, there could be IRQ conflicts. The operating systems today are pretty smart. Just take out the new hardware and whatever has the conflict and move them on the motherboard.... usually fixes it on its own, which it did.

Hope this helps. I'll find out exactly what I did to get rid of the crackling. I dont really remember. I'll ask a friend about it, and get back to you. But Im pretty sure I did what I stated above.

Enjoy, Audigy rules!

[nil_esh]

I ended up returning the Audigy after getting my Montego II to work on the a7v266. I didn't feel like losing $100 on a card with mediocre sound quality and poor software/drivers (though it does have extremely cool features). The occasional stop error (under win2k) and random squeeks were making me nervous, especially after updating the drivers and still experiencing some anomalies. Comparing it in 2-channel with the Montego II Quadzilla, I found the low end to be pretty weak even with bass set high in the controls. The sub crossover made it boom, but it was still lacking the texture I was looking for. The Audigy's highs made me aware of more of the music, though, I could hear echos and other little sounds a little better (note: I used a flat eq on the Montego II). The highs had a certain iritating sharp sound to them, though, I couldn't quite get used to it (even on CD-quality recordings, not mp3). No EQ and no keyboard controls (you mean I have to adjust levels with my trackball?!?) also helped in my dissatisfaction with this card. It was fun testing this card, though, and might've kept it if I had paid < $50 for it. Considering I paid $40 for the Montego II, a card which is nothing special, and the Audigy didn't match up in sound quality, it was back to store it went.

However sound quality is a personal thing (to some degree), some may love the way it sounds, but I didn't think it sounded $100 good. I can't really evaluate this stuff on the 3d/gaming side, either. I'm only equipped with a 2 or 2.1 speaker setup, and don't do much PC gaming.

I think I would get a Santa Cruz if I see it for $60 again (kicking myself for not doing so), but for now I'm sticking with the Montego II which has decent sound and a good EQ. I've also done tons of recordings (both mic and line in) with it with great results.

Sorry for the long post, I tend to babble endlessly...

[F117NightHawk]

I'm thinking of getting Boston Accoustics BA4800 speakers. They're a 4.1 setup. The speakers themselves are tiny, but I've read good stuff about them. I don't see how tiny speakers can make a good sound, but I'm hoping maybe if I move to 4.1 sound, I can get a better output from my Audigy. Maybe a great soundcard will still sound crappy with 2 speakers that cost under $50.

[XprincoX]

hehe.. why not go for a 5.1 setup then :D and remember how good the bose acoustimass sound. If ya want some good sound with an audigy ya gotta get some high end speakers. Otherwise you might as well keep our old ones, cuz u most likely won't be able to hear the difference with some crappy speakers :D

[F117NightHawk]

Originally posted by Xprincox
hehe.. why not go for a 5.1 setup then :D and remember how good the bose acoustimass sound. If ya want some good sound with an audigy ya gotta get some high end speakers. Otherwise you might as well keep our old ones, cuz u most likely won't be able to hear the difference with some crappy speakers :D

Because 5.1 speakers are only necessary for watching DVDs on the computer (which I'm not planning on doing). I want to play games online (like Quake) and you only need 4.1 for that. I don't want to hear all my regular sounds in a stupid center channel and only hear stuff off to the side occasionally.

[CaptBill]

During one of my Windows Update on XP there was an update that was suppose to fix the crackling problem