I acquired a board from Ebay, with the really bad crackles. Tried all the forum solutions, nothing worked. The board is high quality but screwed by this fault.
Decided today to find the problem. after putting it off for a few months.
I finally solved this terrible fault. March 2014
The audigy 2 crackling problem is caused by 4 faulty small capacitors. Hold the board with the chips facing you. input skts to the left, gold edge connectors at the bottom.
You can see 4 tiny capacitors at the bottom right hand corner. These are too small to smooth the small power supply chips. The ripple is what causes the interference. You can prove this by pointing a hairdryer at this corner for a few secs whilst in your computer. If the sound improves then these are the culprit.The heat changes the capacitance a tiny amount and crackles get slightly less. ONLY a few secs don't cook !
You can either replace them with 50volt 100 uf electrolytic caps by removing them or carefully solder the new caps to the solder points on the rear. Make sure that the negative stripe is pointing the same way as the originals. Then glue them to rear of board with a glue gun making sure that the legs are insulated from everything.
Hopefully all those thousands out there can now fix this board.
Does it work-YOU BET IT DOES.
Mike
Decided today to find the problem. after putting it off for a few months.
I finally solved this terrible fault. March 2014
The audigy 2 crackling problem is caused by 4 faulty small capacitors. Hold the board with the chips facing you. input skts to the left, gold edge connectors at the bottom.
You can see 4 tiny capacitors at the bottom right hand corner. These are too small to smooth the small power supply chips. The ripple is what causes the interference. You can prove this by pointing a hairdryer at this corner for a few secs whilst in your computer. If the sound improves then these are the culprit.The heat changes the capacitance a tiny amount and crackles get slightly less. ONLY a few secs don't cook !
You can either replace them with 50volt 100 uf electrolytic caps by removing them or carefully solder the new caps to the solder points on the rear. Make sure that the negative stripe is pointing the same way as the originals. Then glue them to rear of board with a glue gun making sure that the legs are insulated from everything.
Hopefully all those thousands out there can now fix this board.
Does it work-YOU BET IT DOES.
Mike
