Brain pick on an old problem of mine (squealing and poping sound when system is under heavy loa

Question

Firstly, my apologies if this post gets double posted as I am on a barely functional dsl connection?<SPAN> It get?s flaky when it rains which is only periodically for about 2 months of the year?
I was wondering if someone in the know might be able to clue me in as to any fixes for this VERY old issue of mine.
I have already searched a bit and all I found was the squeal and crash issue, mine is similar but not identical.
History:
I have been a creative card user since the first SoundBlaster came out (and jammed it into a 286 system). Well I think it was the first since I was new to computers then?
Anyway I have had an SB, SB6, SB6AWE, SB Li've, and now SB li've Audigy 2 ZS. Pretty sure I had an audigy pro card (a family member was upgrading so I grabbed theirs for cheap).
Since around the audigy series of cards I have been working on friends and family member?s (and their friends/family) on the side.<SPAN> Though these days I am not a happy camper.
Problem:
I am having this problem that I have now learned to li've with where when I am playing sounds (game or music) and the system gets under some type of heavy load I get LOUD squealing and popping sounds (mostly the squealing kind). The sound can be in excess of my volume settings and I tend to wear headphones (I can't believe I wasn?t deafened the first few times and occasionally recently when I forget, actually I have been having trouble understanding people lately, need to get my ears checked I guess).
Heavy load defined:-On occasion copying files from one dri've to another (usually large files in this case).
-Always when copying files over a network to or from my system.
-in few cases of a network heavy or hard dri've heavy application (lan games anyone?) ? Mostly when I am hosting.
NOTE: for the most part the card works fine in games as I usually don?t do something else while playing a game, usually.
For how long?:
This is hard for me to place.<SPAN> I remember wanting to upgrade to 2k when it came out but I heard from friends that had tried to upgrade that the drivers for the sb6 awe or any other creative card were garbage so I delayed upgrading to win2k till I got my first + ghz system and didn?t have much choice. I have been dealing with this since (also at the time I had an audigy or perhaps just a li've, hard to place).
Steps to solve this (not resolved yet):
I have tried several different configurations, this problem has been present on both an amd and 2 (or more) different intel chi
ps.
The problem has not been present on non-creative products under 2k (yes I had a card made by the company that creative bought out a while back), driver updates have done nothing or made it worse (though recent drivers seem to be a little better).
A while back (on the amd machine) I tried dealing with creative via e-mail and got canned responses of things I had already tried (and had noted in my request for help that I had already tried them) even as far as completely clean installs and as I mentioned different systems.
I am now using completely different hardware besides the sound card.<SPAN> Swapping out for other soundcards doesn?t help if they are creative cards (I even went as far as trading someone else identical cards to no avail).
I have even tried windows xp to see if that would help, nope.
The only solution to this so far has been not to use the card and for a while now I have been suggesting to friends and family to just use the internal on mobo sound instead of an add on creative card.
I have even had someone else build me a system (as apposed to my building it) just in case I was doing something weird, no help.
That and just not listening to anything when I am about to put my computer under a heavy load (and making sure to disconnect the phones just in case since sometimes it happens without sound playing, RARELY).
Current system specs:intel p4 2.66 ghz
Audigy 2 zs (platinum if memory serves, pretty sure here)
Geforce 6800gt
gig of ram
(I would have to hunt around for other details like mobo)
I have to say all this effort to get one companies hardware to work just sucks and what sucks more is I have no choice on the market, there is only one noteworthy sound card company when it comes to gaming, on the plus side there isn?t much for me to look forward to in gaming these days? I don?t like MMOs (if I can't play in on a lan and just the people on the lan I don?t care for the game much). Halflife (the reason I bought the geforce 6800 gt card) renders the world in such a way as to make me motion sick (just like all the quake games) so that was a waste of money?
The reason that there isn?t much to look forward to in gaming is because I can just disable my creative card and enable my onboard mobo sound and actually hear sound while doing stuff as apposed to garbled deafening screeching sounds that I do now when I forget to stop sound before doing something hard on the system?
Personally this is a last cry for help before I completely give up, I am already a very disenchanted customer hoping there might be some way that I can just listen to music or play games without much worry about sound (the squeals can be heard from across the room from the headsets set at a normal volume so you can imagine what that?s like when they are on my head). I have already, for the last couple of years, been steering people away from creative products in general touting their core product a failure and the people that didn?t believe I just let them sit and listen to some music and then copy a file?
Sound and music are almost more important to me than graphics btw, I have returned games for poor (in my opinion) quality sound tracks (mostly EA products) and have bought games that had good sound/music but poor graphics, heck I still play some old dos games (loom anyone).
Sorry the end there got a little ranty, so anyone have suggestions to the problem section?
One last thing: This took me a while to find and is a bonus to anyone that read all that? For some relati'vely cheap 5. headphones (all I had looked at were over $00) check out the zalman headphones. I have had mine for well over a year now and they still sound just as good as when I got them (even after the ear shattering squeals) and only cost me $50)<SPAN> They are sturdy too (more than I expected), I tend to break headphones within 5 months even some nice $50 stereo ones and these things are still intact.<SPAN> By break I mean break a wire, blow a speaker (squeals) (not literally exploded), snap the headpiece?<SPAN> I can't seem to see a direct link to the speakers so google zalman and headphones?

Answer 1

I don't know if anyone is following this or cares much but I thought I would add some info for those that like me before signing up, simply searched and found some useful tidbits. I also didn't see an option to edit my previous post as most boards I post on have that option to give you an alternati've to double posting...
My system was gigabit however I only had cat5 cable with a megabit switch. Now the switch is gigabit with a cat5e cable and a short distance from me to the hub (same system otherwise). The gigabit is onboard.
I figured I would see a bit speed boost with the new network and indeed in games I did see an improvement on large data transmitting games (American Conquest 4x4 maps in multiplayer LAN) however I expected file transfers between me and other gigabit on mobo cat5e systems would be significantly better. Instead I saw speeds only slightly better than before, around to 2 megabytes per second (using a measurement tool Netstat li've from AnalogueX) and that annoying screeching. At those speeds that might explain why the game was still on the jerky side (a full blown 4x4 map the way we play stresses all computer components but network seemed to be the bottleneck).
My solution to getting fast file transfers? Disabling my sound card by going to device manager right clicking on the Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS item and choosing disable. With an acti've file transfer (large single file rather than small files) I saw about -2 megabytes per second. Within moments of disabling the soundcard I suddenly had about 20 megabytes per second and the estimated time went from 0 minutes to almost finished...
I have to say on an aside that this just adds to my disappointment with this card (and the fact that I have seen similar poor performance in other peoples cards set up by me or not). This continues to cast a light of doubt for me and future creative products. I have to say though that the X-Fi (after fully updating drivers) seems like it *MIGHT* be worth a try? I certainly won?t drop any money into a new creative card (or recommend creative computer equipment) until I see some good proof that problems such as those that plagued this and other creative cards are gone.
Now remembering several posts I read here (and why I am even posting this), I tried disabling some of the features of my nice Creative card (through the various consoles for example the EAX console). Indeed I did see a performance boost (more on that later) as well as death to the squeals (though oddly I did hear that odd electrical interference noise that is supposed to be why onboard audio sucks) and my ears thanked me for that. As for performance my transfer rates went from -2 megabytes per second to a whopping 4-8 megabytes per second (mostly 5). I am definitely leaving those special features disabled for bandwidth intensi've games, after all they are mostly meant for movie and music enhancement (though they make some games sound nice too). I should note that the squeals, though not deafening, are present with other separations in playback, during file transfers. This isn?t much of an issue for me since win2k (and XP) lets me disable and enable my sound card at will without reboots (most of the time) and it has become habit to work around my sound card in this way already.
I know that there is a limited bandwidth on the system bus between all devices however I just have to wonder why my SB Audigy card is using up so much bandwidth when not doing jack... That and I thought that limit was much higher than 20 or so megabytes per second which has me wonder just how much this sound card is wasting (and possibly stressing) in my system when not doing anything. My guess though is the sound card is merely interfering with PCI traffic and not acti'vely using it (though I am not aware of tools to check this). This might explain why I have gotten less than stellar performance out of other hardware though I have yet to try pushing my system with the sound card off yet?
While I still can't recommend creative sound cards to customers at least I can't say that Creative doesn't make anything worth buying anymore (and I used to be a huge creative advocate). The new Zen mini player got pretty good praise (search maximum PC for the review).
Assuming this thread stays open I will add more of my hopefully useful experience with this sound card. If on the other hand it'ss closed up (since there were a few unkind comments) I should have to assume that Creative has completely turned it'ss back on me as well as my current and future customers (unless some other reason for closing is given of course). As it is now I see signs of improvement in the companies? products (which pleases me to no end) though not yet enough to justify my spending or recommendations, besides the portable device, though I have no interest in devices that don?t allow for flash memory expansion I have been asked about them on occasion.