Snap crackle pop issue....fixed - audigy 2 plat/

Question

My first post, Hope the title doesn't mislead/anger anyone, but i truly believe these solutions
are uni'versal and can be applied with just about everyone.
My card is almost 5 years old now or so... I've seen the frustration on this board about this
nasty issue.... i felt SO bad for some of you guys that i just had to sign up and share my
knowledge (or lack of!) for the multiple, possible 'fixes' to this. its not entirely CREATIVE's
fault and there is ways to fix it, you just need a bit of Patience and the willingness to learn
a bit more about your hardware if you arent too savy with tweaking it. this might of all been
said before, but i really hope this helps some of you.
Lets get the blahblahblah's outta the way just to be safe, shall we? Obviously, make sure your
card isn't sharing an IRQ with a cd/dvd device, or any kind of hardware that transfers a lot of
data constantly or uses a lot of power like a hard-dri've, maybe even certain gpu's. In my case,
my bottom PCI-slot (3/3) only shares an irq with a USB port and as corny as it sounds it did
improve the issue (i disabled that USB, but that isn't necessary its overkill/fail-safe
precaution, probably doesn't even help at all, paranoia setting). download Si-Software Sandra to
see exactly what belongs to where and what irq is being shared with what. Also before i forget,
clean out your dri'ves with bleach/acid/napalm with a program such as Drivercleaner, just to be
safe, right?
If you have anything on your Motherboard that's VIA/raid related, its imperati've you upgrade the
drivers for it, it could very well be your single solution, for example the latest via_hyperion
pro_v5a.zip did it for me and my particular setup just recently after a small hardware upgrade.
this fixed the MAJORITY of the pops in several different machines with these motherboards as well
i might add. Also make sure the Cable is newer than 2 years old, dirty worn cables can
cripple/weird out any piece of hardware, that goes for HD's, CD roms, ...anything that uses
IDE/serial cables etc. lots of people toss their dvd/cd roms out thinking they've used its
life-span, when a brand new ide cable is all it really needed. but... this VIA/raid driver
problem seems to be a pretty common fix in my experiences.
Gamers who suffer from "sudden" or "random" pops here and there while gaming......... with time
will notice this occurs usually when the HD is seeking a lot of info and is under a decent amount
of stress, OBLIVION is a good example of the HD being as important as ram/cpu/gpu IMO. that's
why....... "it seems to do it more (pops/cracks) with certain games than others". ACOUSTIC
MANAGEMENT is Often to blame for this in My opinion, and some maxtor dri'ves come with this
enabled from the factory (why, why why?!! ...die die die!!!). Imagine setting the In-game HD
cache setting Tweak for obilivion enabled to , + Acoustic managementenabled....it turns
preformance into a bloody mess, and will (possibly, most likely?) crack annoyingly often whenever
a new area is being loaded and sufficient data is being called, not to mention make a less
experienced gamer think his machine is completely screwed for no reason. Acousitc Mangemtn
enabled on a hard-dri've can be suicidal for certain games and will almost guarantee preformance
issues, cracks, burns, bruises, broken bones, stab wounds.....and most likely the lovely POPS...
the nasty loud firecracker ones...it can be so bad to the point where many of us will not even
play anymore out of frustration, especially for you audiophiles... leaving us angry and desperate
for a fix. Acoustic management CRIPPLES performance and destroys seek-time, that i AM sure of,
so fix it anyway for your own good, unless you don't care for performance. Please, get rid of
this nasty, possibly/commonly built in feature that turns a 7200rpm dri've into a 5400rpm (ouch),
make SURE this is disabled for you maxtor/seagate HD owners who play games or just want better
performance period. You'll have to google those instructions, I wouldnt dare say more.
On a separate machine, "tad in" and "cd audio" had to be muted to stop a lot of it, as well as EAX
effects (i know you love eax, but its worth the sacrifice) slider turned DOWN to 0% even when disabled.
this may not be necessary for everyone, but a lot of us suffer from those soft "echoey crackles"
and its a quick fix. im sure you've all read this "solution" 5 billion times, but it doesnt hurt
to put it out there. that, or dxdiag or control panel audio properties the slider to Standard acceleration, better to lose eax IMO.
there is no support or guarantee with this patch, and it supposedly doesn't support/work properly
with XP Servicepack 2, however this worked on my dads machine and a friends' as well. GOOGLE
"down vlatency", (not "download" vlatency) and click on the "georgebreese.com" link and try his
vlatency_v020_beta2.exe. this simply overrides some BIOS settings that many of us cant access
easily or at all, and boosts IDE latency and on a lot of different PC setups and gives more
juice to the PCI bus by editing how much the CPU will control the pci bus for, or something like
that. point is, its a redbull for your PC's pci related bandwidth/juice management and it cant
hurt to try (lets hope not j/k).
i don't recommend messing with IRQ assignments in bios or pci latency utilities unless you really
know what you're doing and consider yourself a power user, just a personal opinion, 32 is fine
and a lot of people end up regretting messing with these settings.
there is also the "turbo off" setting (think there's a "patch" for that registry setting too),
but i seriously doubt it will resolve a users problem who suffers Heavily from this syndrome, but
i guess you could try it.
Last but not least, another "ghetto" fix that could improve your issue is killing your CMSS
feature. i have no idea why that setting always acts up (at least for my machine it does) and
causes rice crispies to go off.
Its 2am on a Friday, I've been writing for a while, and i really don't know if i was clear enough
with what i said, but no way im going back to read/correct cause ill be here forever. if you've all tried this before with no luck, sorry. i'm just trying to help if
i can, and if 2 single words out of this post can even spark an idea to help fix somebodies rig, its worth it, right?
Remember to never trust anyone with anything (especially advice) or put your hopes and dreams
into a randomer's advice (such as mine!), keep in mind I'm just an average guy with no
qualifications or credentials that could be wrong about EVERY single thing i just said, i could
be completely out of my mind for all we know, listening to me could very well make your PC
explode and set your house on fire....be warned!! haha that's my surgeon generals warning for ya. GOOD NIGHT and good luck!

Answer 1

Here's the link to the download:
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/audioupdate2007001.html
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