Crackling on Audigy Ca

After reading a number of posts regarding this issue I decided to add my experience and observations in the event that it may provide some insight to someone else as to what the root of the problem is.
I have had an Audigy 2 Platinum card for at least two years now and never had any problems with crackling, popping, or other sound annoyances until this past winter break. I couldn't relate the problem to any changes with my computer so I assumed I was getting interference from something. The erratic behavior of the noise seemed to reinforce that at the time. Unfortunately, any measures to remove the source of the interference, including moving the computer to another state, had no effect.
During normal use the crackling has been quit erratic. Often it increases in intensity, but usually without an event to go along with the increase. In fact most of the time I don't hear it because it is softer then my music. If I pay attention I'll hear it but it doesn't stick out. When it does get bad one of the temporary fixes I have gotten from the forums usually gets rid of it, not always though. Something that has worked best for me is toggling the CMSS 3D setting between CMSS and CMSS 2. This works about half the time for me.
This brings me to the main point of my post. In my experience the crackling has been at it's worst when an application is using EAX. Often when I run a game that uses EAX the crackling instantly gets worse. I also recently noticed something peculiar about the crackling. When I turned in the game the sound rotated around through my speakers as if it was an object in the game. This leads me to believe the problem might be related to the drivers for EAX or something closely related to those drivers.
I noticed a beta driver that deals with OpenAL and I'll try that to see if it hel
ps.
If it does I'll make a mention of it.

I too have read through all the posts here and many tips and tricks elsewhere. I have installed the latest drivers (02.08.0004) without success. Here are my symptoms:
I boot the machine from a powered off state. At this point, using Windows Media player 0, it plays my MP3s perfectly, but when I play MIDIs, it crackles. Going back to MP3s is just fine.
Now, I stop Media player and close it, and open MS FlightSim 2004 and start flying around. The sound is crackling. After playing a few minutes, I close it and re-open Media player and now the MP3s crackle too! (the MIDIs continue to crackle)
The crackling while playing MSFS2004 did go down a little with installing the latest drivers (I did that last night).
Note that the crackling is not just coming through my headset or speakers (note that I have the Audigy 2 Platnium with the headset jack on the front dri've bay addon, and the speakers pluged into the card on the back), it is actually in the sound 'engine'. I know this because I was trying to record a MIDI to a wav file for my wife and the recording (played back on her machine) has the crackling noise in it.
I'll be trying those beta drivers my self to see how they do.
Todd

Similar Messages

Distortion / Crackles on Audigy 2 Platinum

Hi all,
Yesterday my Audigy 2 Platinum eX soundcard arri'ved in the post. I'm impressed with the quality, however there is some distortion and "fuzzyness" at some frequencies which is very irritating.
I've tried altering the settings and resetting them to the default but nothing seems to work. At the start of the Kaiser Chief's song "Modern Way" some faint but noticable crackling can be heard. The problem is a lot worse on more complex songs such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers song "Get On Top." On this track it sounds a lot more like distortion than crackling and it's not ignorable.
The problem is not with my speakers. I've tried it with my 5. surround sound, hi-fi speakers and headphones and the distortion can be heard on all of these at all volumes. I think I'm right in saying that this means the problem must be with the card, the card's driver or settings.
I'm running the latest drivers which I obtained from the Creative site.
Anyone else had similar problems or have any suggestions? I'm thinking about sending it back because I'm not very happy.
Edit: Forgot to mention that I have tried:
- Using different PCI ports
- Reseating PCI card
- Reinstalling latest drivers from website
My onboard sound drivers have been uninstalled and the device has been disabled in the BIOS.
Thanks in advance.
PhilMessage Edited by PhilM on 06-09-2006 04:42 PM

what chipset/motherboard are you using?
this could be the like the problem with the x-fi crackling on nforce4 chipsets.
i have the same card as you and its running fine on an nforce2 gigabyte mobo

Klipsch 5.1 Speakers Crackle with Audigy 2

Can anyone help? No matter what I do, the crackle is on all speakers. Music, movies, games, or no sound running, the crackle still is there. I ran through the update BIOS and the suggestions on troubleshoting, and they didn't help. Are the speakers not compatible? I don't have another computer to test the speakers on unfortunately, but when teh computer is off the crackle is not there, so I think that it is some setup with the drivers or whatnot. Thanks for the help.

i have the same setup, klipsch 5. promedia and Audigy 2 Zs. My suggestion is do not turn treble all the way up, i usually leave it around 75-80%. I have bass around 30-40% as well, and just use the dials on klipsch to adjust to your personal preference.
seems with the crackle you might have a problem with the wiring, maybe they have been worn down, and they are interfeering with something else you have. they are really sensiti've.
a good way to add onto the clarity of klipsch, is upgrade the wiring. If you still have the problem after messing with the treble and bass, i suggest you buy new wires.

Crackling on Audigy SE...Official Explanation is Bo

It appears this is a common problem with Creative's cards. I've read the "official" explanation of why it happens, and at this point I'd like to note that I'm not hopelessly retarded. This official explanation is about as bogus as it gets. It's like saying your car's brakes don't work because you're going slower than the speed limit.
As for my situation, I bought an Audigy SE to replace my motherboard's pitiful onboard sound (which had begun to malfunction). The comparison is night and day--the Audigy has much clearer sound...when it isn't deciding to randomly crackle.
It worked great for over a week. Within the last few days, it's decided to start crackling all the time though. At first I believed it to be faulty hardware, and I was planning on getting a replacement from Wal-Mart. After a bit of searching, I saw that it is a common problem. I read the official explanation and knew that something was definately wrong. I've come to believe it to be Creative's drivers for this card.
Conspicuous things I have noticed This crackling only happens in Windows using Creative's drivers.2) Nearly 00% of the time, the crackling only starts to happen when another application is loaded or closed.3) There are no drivers posted for this card on the site (at least where they should be) to try in place of the ones that come on the disc.
The first point is a big one. When Creative's drivers aren't being used to control the Audigy SE, the card works fine, always. I've run the development version of Ubuntu 6.06 with the 2.6.5-9 i386 kernel & the generic kernel module for this sound card's chip between /4 and /3 of the time during these days when the problem emerged. Never once has this happened when I'm running Linux.
The second point is interesting. When in Windows, the crackling will start when other processes are launched or terminated. If you start a movie or song and just sit there, there is never a problem. When the crackling is triggered, it is usually solvable by simply closing the media player program (I use Winamp and BSPlayer myself) and starting it again. The issue will be gone until triggered again as described above.
The third point is just odd. There is no product page for the Audigy SE, nor is there a downloads page for this elusi've Wal-Mart card. While this isn't necessarily important to my driver suspicions, it does hinder my ability to troubleshoot by using different drivers in Windows.
The Audigy is in my middle PCI slot and is assigned IRQ 8 with an I/O address range of 9800-98F. There are no other devices in my machine sharing these resources. I cannot move the card, as all other slots are occupied and positioned because the cards will not fit in other locations. For example, there is a capacitor that prevents any other card from using one of the slots, my VGA cooler blocks off the top slot, and my 3ware raid controller's connections block the bottom slot. The used slots are populated with the Audigy, a Silicon Image SATA controller, and a 3ware Escalade 7500-8.
I realize that this scenario is likely not true for all cases of crackling, but it does lead me to believe that the issue here is a bad driver...not a bad system configuration. It wouldn't be the first time that a sound driver has had to be reinstalled or upgraded for seemingly no reason. It's happened with my friend's Extigy many times and also with my last two motherboards' onboard audio solutions.
Message Edited by Tbird76 on 04-06-2006 02:07 PM
Message Edited by Tbird76 on 04-06-2006 02:08 PM

Hi,
The answer to your dilemma is PCI Latency. The problem is that today's video cards jack up the latency settings so that they will provide better benchmarking results. When a PCI device such as a soundboard or AGP graphics card (yes, AGP, which also travels on the PCI bus - remember AGP is a port, not a bus) grabs the PCI bus to send data, the PCI Latency Timer starts counting down. When it gets down to zero, it releases the bus and lets other devices use it. If there are no devices waiting, it keeps using it. It is important to note that the timer is set in cycles (not seconds), so this can affect any speed machine although it seems to crop up most often with AGP cards + fast sound boards (Audigy and above). The PCI Latency Timer can be set anywhere from 0 to 255, although it is usually set in blocks of 8. Most of the time for a grossly overset PCI device, you will see 248. That setting is ridiculous. It means every time a device has it, it counts down 248 cycles until it offers it up again. If another device is set much lower (say at 32), that device only counts down 32 cycles before it goes back to the PCI bus hog. Needless to say, the device at 32 gets the bus 8 times less than the device at 248 (in layman's terms).
The Audigy 2 is set to 32. That is a reasonable setting. Many video cards are set much higher than that, some as I said up to 248. What ends up happening is that you will notice this problem more and more as your soundboard gets better and better. Ironic, isn't it's A SB Li've card can only process a limited number of concurrent sounds, but an Audigy 2 or X-Fi can process considerably more. Therefore, it needs the PCI bus more than older cards in order to provide more sounds. But if you don't change the PCI Latency settings of your videocard, then a much newer sound board will get the bus exactly the same amount as an older one, despite the fact that a newer one wants to do more. See the problem? That is also why many people who find solutions to mitigate this problem often advise turning off EAX. That greatly reduces the number of concurrent sounds handled by your soundboard (and removes all the benefit of buying a good board!).
Now here is the rub. Regardless of what you set your PCI Latency settings to in your BIOS, every PCI device will OVERRIDE them and set whatever the driver authors want. Annoying, isn't it's The best way to see this is to either download the 00% free utility called Double Dawg (ses link below), or the shareware app Powerstrip. Both will show PCI latency settings while XP is running, and both allow you to reset them on-the-fly.
Try it out, it fixed my problem. I have an Athlon .4, Audigy 2, and Asus Radeon 9600XT. As soon as I fire up BF942, Doom3, or Far Cry, I would start to get annoying pops and hisses, crackling, and interference. No more! I have set both my vidcard and Audigy 2 to 32, and I have no problems any longer. You may have to experiement with the settings a bit, I have heard that 80 for vidcard and 64 for soundboard work pretty well for other people. But you must change it if it is set at 248 because that means your vidcard is hogging the PCI bus.
For more info, you can find some excellent tips on this site : http://www.mark-knutson.com/t3/index.html
It's the site of the guy who wrote Double Dawg.
Rooster.

Crackling while PCI-bus is stressed [Audigy 2

Hello
I have a Audigy 2 NZ soundcard. I recently bought a SATA-controller card and have connected a harddri've to said controller. When that disc is under heavy load, such as when transferring large amounts of data to my main harddri've, I experience crackling and hissing sounds while playing music (and presumably any other sound-related activity).
If the harddri've is not under heavy load everything works perfectly. I gather this has to do with the PCI-bus being stressed.
I realize there are plenty of posts on this forum discussing a crackling/hissing problem on the Audigy 2, however many of them seem to concern a general crackling problem, even while the system is not under any sort of stress whatsoever...
So, finally, my question is: is there anything to be done to eliminate this crackling?

Solfi wrote:
...if I'm not completely off about what these latencies does, shouldn't I be *decreasing* the latency of the soundcard, so that it's lower than the Raid-controller, thus giving it priority over the SATA-cards in my case?
And is there any way to quantify whether or not changing these settings arbitrarily has any optmising or detrimental effect?... Are any guides out there as to what values one should choose, or is it all a matter of try, try again?
Decreasing PCI latency means less CPU time.
Here is some information @ http://www.mark-knutson.com/t3/index.html
You can google more.
You can also prevent programs to set PCI Latency (set by the BIOS (PCI Latency timing setting)) using registry tweak.
- set all DisableProgPCILatency key values on registry into (HEX or DEC). (defaulted to 0).
- boot PC to BIOS
- set PCI latency timing value into 32 or 64 (BIOS) 'this become settings default (32 =
best overall performance)
- boot
When you BOOT # time after changes, your PC may freeze or start very slowly. If it
does, BOOT once into safe -mode (no changes needed ). I think this happens if your
graphics card is not accepting too low value.
Run PCI Latency tool and see, if there is some useful changes got.
If you need to adjust more, then use tool for it (This also allows increasing your sound
cards PCI latency, if you feel its too low).
If you need some background info, visit
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?s=2dc5da53e77e878a9d37e52f3afd&thre adid=290
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=06522
Tweaking istructions for DAW - http://www.musicxp.net/
.jtp

Hey CL, Audigy 2ZS need beta drivers/Crackling problem fixed t

:angry: Owners of Audigy 2ZS need beta driver and or fix for the crackling and popping audio problems to. My system is: ASUS A8V with latest official BIOS, ATI x850 Pro, WD SATA 250GHD, AMD A64 3700, 2x52 twinx Corsair matched memory, Antech true power 2.0, 500 Watts. I have all the latest drivers and I am running XP pro SP2. I to have the bad audio when playing games such as BF2, COD2 and UT2004. I also have bad audio when playing music through WINAMP and surfing the internet. I have no IRQ conflicts and have the beta drivers for the Audigy installed. I can reduce/eliminate the amount of popping/crackling by going into my BIOS, then save and exit.Message Edited by Dirty_Harry on 06-07-2006 09:55 AM

No it does not, as long as you do as follows: (Instructions are copied over from my previous posts on the subject)
How to manually change the Windows HAL:
Use the following command: "expand d:\i386\halacpi.dl_ c:\windows\system32\hal.dll"
Whereas: d: is your CD-ROM letter, or where you Windows XP Installation resides.
halacpi.dl_ can be any of the following depending on what you want to install:
"Standard PC", Non-ACPI PIC HAL (Hal.dll)</LI>
"MPS Uniprocessor PC", Non-ACPI APIC UP HAL (Halapic.dl_)</LI>
"MPS Multiprocessor PC", Non-ACPI APIC MP HAL (Halm
ps.
dl_)</LI>
"Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC", ACPI PIC HAL (Halacpi.dl_)</LI>
"ACPI Uniprocessor PC", ACPI APIC UP HAL (Halaacpi.dl_)</LI>
"ACPI Multiprocessor PC", ACPI APIC MP HAL (Halmacpi.dl_)
</LI>
Offcourse, the HAL you should change to is Standard PC. You will lose Dual Core or HT support in the process, but I strongly believe it can help. As per above, you can switch back to your previous HAL without reinstalling. You will be most prolably asked for the drivers of your devices, but on my setup, it didn't, as they were already stored in Windows' System Folders.

Audigy 2 NX USB+Vista 32 BIT-Pop/Crackle Pls h

I have big Problem i have a Audigy 2 Nx USb Soundcard with Windows Vista 32 Bit OS!
I had the driver from February installed it was fine there...
with the new driver rel from 23.8.2007 (USB Series Windows Vista Driver .0.0002) any few seconds crackles and pops apears when i am listening to Music etc. or Winamp hangs up....!!!
What could be the problem.....i think the new driver !because the one before works!Message Edited by Gabber25 on 09-29-200709:35 AM

"Kano_69,
It's a beta driver on a beta OS. What exactly are you expecting?
Jeremy
Forum Moderator
Creative Labs"
well ati & nvidia brang out "beta drivers" AND THEY WORKED ? and that waz 4 the first "vista" build... so i waz expecting "li9ke all of us" to have drivers that make sound at least clear . . and play at normal speed instead of slow downs and snap,crackle & poping all ova the place.... thats all i waz expecting thats all... not much ill go back to onboard sound "once again" so i can have clear sound in vista.... THANKS ANYWAZ lol 2 cents 4 ur effort

Crackling with XBOX games using the Audigy 2 ZS Plat. Pro

Hey, currently I have my XBOX wired into the internal front dri've that comes with the Audigy2 ZS Plat Pro. That is going in to the optical in, through the XBOX's high definition pack.
Now, when playing games, (Halo 2, Ghost Recon 2), I notice a LOT of crackling when there are explosions or bass heavy events on screen. It doesn't even seem to be just restricted to bass either, as when sometimes there is loud in-game talking coming through, that crackles as well. It is seems like when there is a lot of sound that is coming through, that triggers it mostly.
Anyways... I can't see how this would be a hardware conflict, since im just using the sound card to pass the XBOX's sound through to my Logitech Z-5300's. I have played with every setting on the Audio HQ and the Creative menu's (Volume control, bass redirection, THX settings, etc..)
Also worth mentioning is that games working from my PC are fine, as well as music. So it is definately isolated to the I/O Audigy connector. Also, there is no crackling when played on a regular home stereo receiver, so it is not a defect in the cable or anything.
Does anybody have any suggestions at all? I have been going nuts trying to figure this out!! I have downloaed and installed the lastest drivers, but perhaps im installing them in the wrong order? Who knows... please, someone help me out!! Hopefully the Creative staff have heard of this and can suggest something for me.
Thank you so much for your time, and I hope I can get this working!
EDIT: Oh and also, please dont reference me to that help page on the Creative support page. I have been looking through the forum pages and tried most everything listed.Message Edited by jeffsaylo on -26-2004 07:00 AM

jeffsaylo what bigben said might be right also in the link i have at the bottom someone fixed this by changing the pci slot cause of a irq being used by 2 devices. worked for him but not for me but maybe you want to try it. check for this by going to control-panel then systemthen /hardware/device manager in device manager click view then "resources by connection" then look under irq for audigy and make shure its on its own number also to free up irq's disable unneed devices(in bios or windows?). anyway didnt work for me but let me know if you have any luck?
http://www.3dss-forums.com/cgi-bin/w...&vc=#Post42450

Help with Audigy 2 Zs and crackling sound ..

For the past 5 months or so ( not long after I got the product ) I have been getting this periodic issue with the sound ...
I'll start to notice a popping and crackling sound coming from the left channel when loud sounds issue from the game ( multiple games ). After a while I figured ou ttha tI could :
a: Reset all my settings to Default , Then reconfigure my surround
or
b: Reinstall and/or patchthe current driver set ...
Both seem to fix the issue for some time then it all returns within a month or so .... It's a rela pain to have to keep configuring my Audio settings every month.
My system specs are
Asus A7N8X DLX Rev. 02
AMD 3000+
Gig Corsair XMS
BFG 6800GT 256
Audigy 2 ZS
Raptor 74 Gig
and some Altec Landsing Speakers ( I forgot the model number )
Any idea what could be causing this ?
Thanks in advance.

I got the fix for you twellons. Just go in the audio control panel and mute the midi/synth in the panel and you will have the fix. My system specs are close toy yours amd 2800xp, nforce 2 a7n8x dlx ver .04 and a original audigy card. Now creative has to address this issue in new drivers. Also download the demo of contract jack and when you load the game and the game menus comes up, scroll through the options in that menu like new game, load game quickly and you will here that popping noise in only the left speaker. and when you do that fix that i mentioned above, no more popping . So try that out and please get back to me and tell me if it worked or not. That issue was tough to figure out.
P.S. You owe me

Crackling/Popping on Audigy 2

I have the following components on my computer:
A8V Motherboard
AMD Athlon64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+
4 52MB DDR/PC3200 DIMMS
74GB WD Raptor 0,000RPM SATA Hard Dri've
60GB WD 7,200RPM Ultra DMA Hard Dri've
DVD R/RW Dri've
ATI Radeon X850XT PE 256MB AGP
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
Thermaltake PurePower ATX 560W Power Supply
I constantly have crackling and popping sounds from it and I have been trying to fix it. I only have a temporary fix.
. Uninstall drivers.
2. Use Driver Cleaner.
3. Restart.
4. Re-install basic drivers.
5. Restart.
The sound is fine then after that. But when I restart my PC again, the crackling and popping sounds come back. Anyone have a clue what is happening here?

Aha someone that has similar probs to myself.
I also have a very similar setup Asus board A8V (latest BIOS), AMD 4000 SDiego, ATI 850XT PE (latest Drivers), 2GB RAM, but my sound board is a Audigy 2EX plat (January drivers (only thing that is stagnant)) and I'm really peaved when I get crackles and pops, it usually happens when I first turn on/power up my PC at the start of the day, if I do a restart it clears the problem. Don't bother doing the whole driver thing as it makes no difference. tried many things as my profession is a computer technician so been round the houses with this issue.
Power supply is 600watt as well no card definately getting the power. PCI changes make no difference either. Seem that us older card holders are forgotten about to quickly. The card has been good up to recently. Both sets of driver official and unofficial have same effect as well. It could be down to is some internal conflict that is at board motherboard level with you haveing a similar set up this adds a little more weight to my theory but who knows.
Doubt we'll even see any more driver updates that covers Audigy 2 cards etc. seeing as the last one was January 06.Message Edited by Minister on 0-0-2006 06:50 PM

Audigy SE & Microphone Crackli

Hello!
I just purchased an Audigy SE, and everything seemed to be working fine. Sound works GREAT, but the problem is that the sound produced over the microphone is pure crackling. The program that's causing this problem is Ventrilo, and thats the only program I'm ever going to use for the microphone.
I'm running Windows Vista, and under the "Recording" tab, I've got S/PDIF-In set at the default. The microphone says it's currently unavailible. Now, I've set the microphone as the default device and turned the volume all the up, and tapped the microphone to see if it gets a response - it does. Then when I go into Ventrilo to test the device, no sound comes from the microphone at all.
What's the problem? The drivers are installed, and it's starting to really frustrate me since I had to replace my older sound card for issues like this.
PLEASE HELP!

Never mind. I looked through a search, and apparently the SE is designed for 600-ohm impedance mics. My HP-s are 2200-ohm. *starts looking for a new sound card*

"Audigy 2" (not XiFi) Crackling correction progress rep

Problem:
I had nasty crackling on my Audigy 2. With sound playing, without sound playing, with headphones, with my normal speakers, with different speaker settings (though those different speaker settings (headphones/2./5./etc) were quiet for awhile then started crackling just as bad as 5. did) and at any volume, though the problem was Volume dependant (as is audio...), though I don't remember why I believe that nor can I demonstrate the statement again. Here's the log of how I'm fixing it.
I've got Win XP, SP2. I've got an "Audigy 2" with driver version '5.2.4.96' showing on the Creative SB Audigy 2 (WDM) hardware device, which is showing in the device manager. I would update the drivers but I don't have internet access on that computer. I've also read that updating only worsens the problem. I'll still test it after Wednesday, May 9th, 2007. My PCI IRQ's are (and the ISA IRQ's do not duplicate any of these numbers):
0: Ethernet Controller
6: ... USB ... - 24D2
: ... USB ... - 24DE
: NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GS (Bfg's overclocked card)
8: Ultra ATA controller
: USB - 24D7
9: "Creative SB Audigy 2 (WDM)" (yeah, fullname)
20: Intel(R) PRO/00 VE Network Connection
23: Intel(R) 9290EB USB2 ... - 24DD
I started with a USB device also on IRQ 9, but I disabled that, which didn't help. I re-enabled it and disabled the Firewire port that comes with the sound card, which still didn't work. I tried both options, thereby exhausting this possibility and it still didn't work. Just in case, I left both disabled. I checked my BIOS, re-enabled my AC '97 device (which I thought was onboard sound), and that didn't help or hurt, so it's still enabled. I didn't find anything in my BIOS about a Firewire device (~'OHCI Compliant IEEE 394 Host Controller), so I didn't disable it.
I read something about Power Supplies. I ignored it. It did get me thinking about possible stray EMF due to the wires and that causing problems. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that it's assumed the internals of a computer are assumed "noise free" or near enough that engineers can ignore it.
There was a problem with Compaq's a long long time ago where they didn't hook up a sound cable from the CD-Rom to either the sound card or the MoBo. I remembered hooking up that cable to my Audigy 2 with that very problem in mind. It's a standard double-wire spiral; means the shielding is self-induced and nothing to write home about, but should be adequate. I'll wrap it in an insulated metal pipe and use my Power Supply to ground it at some point and then repost how that goes. 'Should be' might not be good enough.
On muting "Line-in," the crackling-noise drops some but not significantly. On muting "CD-Audio," the crackling-noise nearly disappears. Where I once got a louder pop every two-three seconds and a constant crackle/fizzle of static, there is now a much, much quieter pop every thirty minutes or so.
Of course, that was last night. I turned my speakers on this morning and it was back in it's full nappy-sounding glory. Pulling up "Play Control" (formerly "Accessories >> Entertainment >> Volume Control) shows [[[I've got CD-audio muted still. I unmuted and it disappeared.] - Question if that's right. Don't exactly remember. ]]I "Mute All" and it comes back less severe and slowly increases its occurance frequency. I'm not waiting to see if it'll get to the full rate of fizzle. Unmuting "Mute All" does nothing to change it. Muting "CD Audio" makes it disappear again. Unmuting it makes it come back. If I mess with the Main's volume while it's muted, the static comes back. Unmuting the CD Audio seems to fix it for ~ 2 seconds. Reducing the CD Audio to half volume dramatically reduces the static. I put all volumes (Main, Wave, MIDI Synth, and CD Audio) to max to make it worse so I can diagnose it further. I muted the CD Audio and it disappeared. While it was muted, I dropped the three non-Main's to half. ~0 seconds before static started, and it wasn't as bad as it can be. Unmuting CD Audio does nothing. Muting it again makes the noise go away. Ten minutes didn't allow the noise to start again. Unmuting it, however, did allow the noise to start again. Using any sort of audio re-activates the static, such as a fully muted Mediaplayer.
It may just be a temporary fix, but it lets me keep my speakers on and drain the noise for awhile. The crackling isn't as bad when it's first unmuted but it builds.
I've changed video cards three times since I got this card. It has nothing to do with my video card.
There's more tests I can run to localize it and try to ID the problem, but I'll do those later. I'll finish up following the "Fixing Crackling" sticky, too, but after Wednesday. Here's my status report. It's just one more voice.

I can't help unfortunately, but I have a crackling problem myself with Vista 32 bit edition. I have a Sound Blaster Audigy SE running on a Gigabyte P35-DS3P motherboard. ALL the time during any audio playback, there is persitent crackle/skipping. Sometimes I'll go 0-5 seconds without it, but it pops back up randomly. My speakers are fine, when I was using onboard sound there were no crackle issues at all. Anyone have any idea what could be causing this? I'm going to return the card if I cant fix it soon, I was hoping it would be an upgrade from the onboard sound I have, but it is worse ATM due to this crackling. BTW, there are no other devices on the PCI bus other than my video card.

Audigy SE: Snap, crackle, pop / hardware not fo

You think you have problems... take a look at mine... all CL relavent... I have a problem that Dell says they can't isolate, and sware they will make Creative's problem if our next course of action doesn't resolve the snap, crackles and pops in games (like Flight simulator 9 and 0, and WoW). Yes,?integrated MB?Sigmatel drivers (merge between CL and another company) and PCI SB cards have the same problems... Snap-crackle-pop and the continual "SCHHHHHH..." sounds. My system is a Dell, which of course, gives me a little support, but not much. Please read... With tech support through Dell from India and Canada, my system, w/o CL cards installed creates snap, crackles and popping sounds in any 3D engine game (like FS 9 and 0, and WoW). Dell has no idea how to solve this problem, after installing drivers for DX, doing and IDE config, reinstalling my onboard Sigmatel drivers, changing the hardware acceleration and sample rates, simply unplugging and plugging back in the input jack leading to the speakers, trying a CL's sound card, like the Audigy SE (with its own problems much like what my onboard integrated Sigmatel drivers do)...etc. Now, to all of you experiencing CL's problems, I have already tried updated drivers, moving the card from one PCI slot to another (through all PCI slots), adjusting volume levels, tried playing a DVD (couldn't hear anything well from the DVD beacuse the volume, though maxed out, wasn't loud enough), tried a SB 5. Dell Digital (same problems), and the list goes on. My system:?OS: Windows Media Center 2005Dell E50 3ghz P4 w/ ATI PCI hypermemory 256 video card(2) free PCI slots available after vidoe and TV out cardSigmatel integrated sound (not a 3D sound engine...they admitted that)2.5 gb DDR2 SDRAM, 400mhz?This isn't top of the line, but the next course of action from Dell is to wipe my system clean of WMC 2005 and install Windows XP Pro, at their cost, not mine (thank God for tech support extended warranty). At least then I will have CL driver's. After reading this post, however, and many on this forum, I find that CL's has not addressed the fundamental "problem". So, I wonder, after all is said and done, CL's hasn't really isolated the problem? What gives? It would appear the OS doesn't matter, so maybe the Chipset does? or is it the 3D sound engine? i am not a tech, and Dell tech support can't figure it out, either. So, any suggestions?

... and by the way, the cards won't even install with CL's software from the CD on to the system. The only way to get any of the cards to work, if at all, was to force the driver to work (going in and saying "I want THIS driver installed"). The software on the CD won't run (multiple cards...dell digital, Audigy SE, li've 5., etc) nor will the downloaded drivers EXE file run. When I forced the driver to work I got the "SCHHHH" sound, instead of the advertised "PERFECT UPGRADE FROM THE BASIC MOTHERBOARD AUDIO TO OUTSTANDING MUSIC, MOVIE AND GAME SOUND". In my case, the sound was no-more superior than a fart in space.

Audigy 2 ZS Platinum, EAX/Game Major Problems(Crackling, Pops, Freezing, Screeec

ok, well, here is my story, ok, in about early august 2004, i purchased my Audigy 2ZS platinum, of cousre i was excited because i knew i was getting one of the best sound cards out there, it wasnt too long until i realized that there was a problem with my soundcard, i was playing Rainbow Six 3(one of the games that came with it), when out of nowhere, it froze with an anoying loud repeating high pitched screeching noise. at first i thought it was just a little first game streching thing that happened, but then it happened again, and again, then it happened in other games, i.e. Halo PC(mostly cuz i was playing that most of the time). i was so tired of it freezing that i just took it out and i decided to test it out with my brother's audigy 2, but again, it did the same thing, so i just sticked with my onboard audio. I went on some forums and i saw that the majority of people have fixed the problem by getting a new motherboard, so i saved up for a new one(i also did it cuz i wanted more pci and memory slots). once i got my new motherboard, i was again, excited to finally use my audigy, once everything was set, i thought it was fine, then it froze once, i updated to the latest dri'ves, didnt freeze again, but then it did, then 2 weeks later, the soundcard started acting funny, whenever i played halo pc, battlefield vietnam, and any other game that took advantage of EAX made these weird crackling and pops with i.e. explosions, environments, and bullets, and even on the main menu of BFV(battlefield vietnam). i tried switching pci slots, did the same thing, i've tried uninstalling, reinstalling, nothing did anything, then i thought maybe this problem was a windows problem, so i did a clean install, so far it works great, besides the fact that it does the same problems, besides freezing, but i do know that it is EAX because whenever i turn EAX off, it works fine and doesnt make any crackles what so ever...but who wants to play a game and not take full advantage of one of the best soundcards, right now, i just reinstalled and installed the soundcard again and it still proceeds to do the same problems, everything is up to date, vid card, sound card, except bios, but, i dont see why it would be the bios because it did the same thing with the old mobo, someone did say it might be a vid card driver, but i dont see y that would be concidering my brother has the latest ATI dri'ves(same with me) and his works fine, i sure hope this is a fix or something coming out to fix this problem because i've noticed that people have been having the same problems.
Here are my system specs:
AMD Athlon XP 2200+
52MB DDR
ATI Radeon 9600 SE
60GB Hard Dri've
60GB hard Dri've
Soundblaster Audigy 2ZS Platinum
D-Link AirPlus ExtremeG Wireless Adapter
Samsung CDR-RW
please help me, because i've had this problem for almost 7-8 months, and right now i am really frustrated with this soundcard.

My story goes much the same way...got an Audigy 2 ZS last summer and was nothing but pleased with it at first. A few months later I noticed static in some games, but ignored it for a while. Then Doom3 came along and static was very heavy whenever surround sound was enabled. No amount of IRQ switching, BIOS tweaking and driver reinstallation could resolve the problem. I continued to li've with it until I upgraded my 9600pro video card to a 6600GT, after which the static was prevalent in all games and random freezing started occurring, usually involving what has unfortunately become known as the "screech of death". The only solution to these problems was to bump the sound acceleration slider down two notches to 'basic directsound features', which is obviously less than optimal for a $20 sound card. Sorry, but as I try more and more things and I read more and more stories it is becaming clear to me that for whatever reason, this card simply will not work properly in some systems.

Audigy 2 ZS + Vista = Crackl

I'm running an Audigy 2 ZS with Windows Vista (32-bit) and the latest drivers on a ASUS P4P800 Delxue. I bought a new set of speakers thinking the crackling was coming from there. I was saddened to find out that this was not the case. I still have a constant crackling noise that is driving me nuts! Audio is essentially **useless** because of it. It has been going on for quite some time now, probably starting with the Windows Vista upgrade earlier this year.
I have tried:
* All of the values in the PCI latency settings
* Resetting the BIOS settings to the default
* Moving the card around in different PCI slots
* Removing the Hauppauge WinTV card
* Taking the second hard dri've off the bus
Nothing has given me any sense of progress. My IRQs are as follows:
* IRQ0 - Intel 8280EB SMbus Controller - 24D3
* IRQ6 - Intel 8280EB USB Uni'versal Host Controller - 24D2
* IRQ6 - Intel 8280EB USB Uni'versal Host Controller - 24DE
* IRQ6 - ATI Radeon 9800 PRO
* IRQ8 - Intel 8280EB - Ultra ATA Storage Controllers
* IRQ8 - Intel 8280EB USB Uni'versal Host Controller - 24D7
* IRQ8 - Intel 8280EB USB Uni'versal Host Controller - 24D4
* IRQ2 - Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS (WDM)
* IRQ22 - 3Com Gigabit LOM (3C940)
* IRQ22 - Hauppauge WinTV PVR PCI II (Encoder/Decoder)
* IRQ22 - OHCI Compliant IEEE 394 Host Controller
* IRQ23 - Intel 8280EB USB Uni'versal Host Controller - 24DD
There are two hard dri'ves in the system, a 20GB Seagate, and 500GB
* ASUS P4P800 Deluxe (BIOS rev 09)
* Creative Audigy 2 ZS + I/O Dri've Connectivity
* Hauppauge WinTV PVR-350
* LG GCC-4480B DVD-ROM / CD-RW
* Seagate 20GB ST300026AS SATA Hard Dri've
* Western Digital 500GB WS5000AAKS SATA Hard Dri've
Does anyone have thoughts on what next? I see there is a 84+ page thread on X-Fi crackling issues, so I'm not likely to run out and switch up the video cards to see the problem continue further.

I can't help unfortunately, but I have a crackling problem myself with Vista 32 bit edition. I have a Sound Blaster Audigy SE running on a Gigabyte P35-DS3P motherboard. ALL the time during any audio playback, there is persitent crackle/skipping. Sometimes I'll go 0-5 seconds without it, but it pops back up randomly. My speakers are fine, when I was using onboard sound there were no crackle issues at all. Anyone have any idea what could be causing this? I'm going to return the card if I cant fix it soon, I was hoping it would be an upgrade from the onboard sound I have, but it is worse ATM due to this crackling. BTW, there are no other devices on the PCI bus other than my video card.

Crackling on Audigy Ca

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