Audigy + Winamp = sound cracking!

(If it's not broken, dont fix it.)

So true.

I upgraded my Winamp from 2.81 to 2.91 about a week ago, and noticed that when I played MP3s, I would get random cracking sounds (sounds like listening to a scratched CD). It even happens when I streem from internet radio stations. Winamp 2.91 works flawlessly at my work, so I didn't think it was the problem.

I decided to upgrade my Audigy drivers with the new EAX performance Beta drivers, install went fine, however now I opened up a can of worms on this one.....

I noticed that dispite how much I turned up the bass and treble it still sounds like i'm listening to headphones while playing games, its all "mids' " I spent an hour trying to mess with the mixxers and stuff, I got the MP3's to sound normal (except for the random cracking), but games are almost unplayable, no bass or treble.

So, I installed the latest "real" driver from creative and all my problems that I created are still there.

Today when I get home I'm gona uninstall the Audigy, remove it and reinstall it, to see if that wont clear up any conflicts.

Anyone else had simmilar problems?

My system specs are below. (using XP, and 4speaker+sub setup)

Creative has had known problems with the "crackling/popping" of sound from thier cards. I think the Audigy2 got rid of most of it. It's just what the card does, no way around it really. Either go Audigy2 or another brand if it really bothers you.

I had the same problem. I tried to upgrade drivers and such, but no avial. I finally broke down and bought another card.

All better.

Uninstalled drivers, removed it from my device manager, reboot to bios, disabled the onbord audio, changed a couple other things, get into windows, install newest creative drivers, done.

disabled the onbord audio

Click to expand...

There's one crackling reason right there

install newest creative drivers

Click to expand...

The official ones, or the beta EAX performance ones? People say that with the betas, the treble is actually artificially increased (so you basically need to decrease it a bit in the mixer settings to get back to 'official' driver quality). If indeed you are running the betas, have you noticed any sound quality differences in i.e. music and DVDs?

I'm using the official ones (not the performance beta one)

Creative actually stopped giving support for the Live! & the Audigy series. They're providing good support for the Audigy2 series. And the good news is that the Audigy2 drivers support Audigy!!! I've been using them for quite sometime without any single problems. For more details check out this link ~ h++p://www.driverheaven.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=8874
A beta Winamp 2.92 is available on the net, you could give that a try. But if you want the best sound, try Foobar. Its simple, fast & very powerful. BTW, it doesnt have any fancy GUI or any visualizations. People who didn't like it complained that it looks like notepad! Anyways, here's the link for Foobar ~ h++p://www.foobar2000.org

PM me if you need more info!

hmm... odd, i have a audigy 2 and official drivers and im using the newest winamp and i get cracking too!! im waiting for the august drivers thats supposed to come out, would that fix this problem?

try this drivers:
Audigy Web Update 2 - Core Driver package
http://www.americas.creative.com/support/files/download2.asp?centric=205&maincat=11&os=10&subcat=35

i had cracking before too on my audigy, but then after time and all the XP updates they went away.

i got audigy 2 now and no cracks so far. using beta drivers, fully updated XP and my other sys specs in sig.