Sound crackling with X-Fi Xtreme Music

[[R-CON]MrD]

Originally Posted by Johny_B_Nasty

Aaah, you mean, in order to get rid of the old OpenAL, I need to uninstall the soundblaster drivers (X-Fi XtremeMusic) in the first place?

Does it mean that OpenAL comes with the soundblaster drivers anyway?

Or do I need to install OpenAL separately?

However, if I was to uninstall OpenAL only, then I wouldn't know how to do that because that thing doesn't appear in my system at all.

OpenAL appears as a separate entry in my add/remove

After cleaning all drivers out, install latest drivers, then latest OpenAL independently.

If you are still seeing problems then try another pci slot for the card in case of wierd conflict problems on your mobo.

BTW. You did turn off onboard sound in your motherboards BIOS didn't you? Remove onboard sound drivers too.

[Johny_B_Nasty]

Thanks to everybody taking his time to read and contribute here.

Now, an update is due, folks.

My sound card got even worse couple of days ago; as if the the amplifying unit was dead so that no voice (with slight crackling) was coming out of the loudspeakers.

That was the right moment to make use of the manufacturer's and retailseller's warranty. I sent the card back to Amazon and we'll see what comes next.

However, I promised to post some links from my research on this idiotic issue.

Sound Blaster X-Fi Issues Explored

Crackling and popping X-Fi?

Myths and Truths about PCI LATENCY

Soundblaster X-Fi Crackling and Popping Update

Re: Follow-up: Crackle/Pop issues (go to hataru's post)

Incurable Soundcard Stuttering?

soundblaster x-fi cards and bf2

Crackling/skipping sound


Oooof, that's it folks. Hopefully these info sources can be of any help for others with similar problems.

Cheers,
Johny

[thepalerider]

Good luck
Did you know Vista took a step backwards by remove the hardware abstraction layer for Vista?

Read this for a work around:
Creative offers workaround for Vista gaming sound

Hope is helps

[Johny_B_Nasty]

Hi!

There is news and I'd like to give you an update.

I received a new sound card from the retailer because of the warranty.

This F-Fi Extreme Music plays music (and movies) normally again.

In-game behaviour is not utterly conclusive. First, the sound card works smoothly, then after some 15-20 minutes the sizzling poping crackling (SPC) kicks in. However, with this (brand new) card, it is much less invasive.

Also it depends on the map; a particular "bad guy" is Bi Ming and some other maps I don't recall at the moment. There are also maps where I didn't notice any malfunction even with the old card- those were the old maps.

Lowering the volume in the system controls added more peace.

So far I don't notice any SPC after I increased the "latency" for the X-Fi, from default to 128. For the time being I hope that this tweak will work it out.

One major problem showed up: after some time, 1,5-2 hours, the game CTD. This is actually unacceptable...

Where I assume the problem lies
The hardware of the sound card deteriorates with time. Possibly some semi-conductors lose substance. This is because the problems didn't start at once but gradually increased.

Add to this the hot air stream coming from your video card; usually the mother board setup leads the hot air from the video card directly to the sound card. This then maybe favours the depletion of the sound card elements.

Conclusion
If anyhow possible, in future I'll avoid Creative Labs (CL) products (sound cards at least). Why? In spite of that massive phenomenon, internet is full of forums on this problem, CL did nothing effectively to deal with it.

[[R-CON]MrD]

Have you thought about reinstalling your pc fresh in case there are problems in the OS generally?

[Johny_B_Nasty]

Originally Posted by [R-PUB]MrD

Have you thought about reinstalling your pc fresh in case there are problems in the OS generally?

Thank you MrD for your suggestions.

However, I don't want to spend any more time with that damn sound cards of CL. If they couldn't make them work by default I'm not going to waste even more of my time.

Also, I don't believe that the reinstallation would help because I did already that with the old sound card which gave me no comfort.

I just hope the SPC won't grow stronger and that's it.

Cheers,
Johny

[Brummy]

...


I installed the new OpenAl, copied, renamed the dll file and placed it in the BF2 folder. Started up BF2, reset Video settings, and reset Audio settings, and voila, It says my sound hardware is incompatible with these settings. So basically it screwed up all my audio in BF2 ?

Any solutions, before I just rename the dll back to the old one?

[nippe]

I have also this X-FI extreme music card. It gives this annoying cracking sounds only in some games (like in Fable). Is your graphic card near your X-FI? If you gc runs hot it might cause problems with your sb. This could be the case because the sound works correctly ten minutes. Maybe there is too hot in your computer case?

In BF2 (and mods) seems to be some kind of bug that makes sometimes one sound looping (for example I hear a MG shooting and then walk away but the sound keeps repeating itself. Only way to cure this is to start the game again (at least on my comp). In PR I noticed some variant of this bug. I heard an APC driving and I run away. After 5 min I couldn't see the APC but the it's engine voice was still there. This APC sound used EAX effects and it changed the direction as I turn a round.

[SnipingCoward]

i have another suggestion: your PSU is not powerful enough - with this system i would go with at least 500W from what i read - how many Watt does your PSU supply

also: your ram might be broken, have you tried already to only use the new sticks?

(probably only applies if you live in a country which uses AC as current)
a totally different thing: do you have this effect on headphones too? if not you could try to plug the speakers into a different branch of your power grid (ie: connect to the kitchen with an extension cord) (reason: all the stuff (ie psu of the pc) connected to the electricity grid, where the speakers are connected to, induces a distortion)

[jOHNNYdOUBE]

There was something on the creative site in the driver section details about a problem with 4 gigs and the extreme music.