Xonar Xense sound card issue, sudden loud static/crackling...

Robbo

Robbo

Robbo

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Hi

I have an old Xonar Xense card that I've had since they came out quite a few years ago now.

Over the past year or so, it's developed an issue where it will emit an incredibly loud crackling noise or a static sound over the headphones connected to it. It seems to do this at random, and thankfully not very often.

As you can imagine it's most unpleasant. I can't replicate it, or predict it.

I'm guessing something isn't quite right with the card hardware wise, it's done this with the normal drivers and UniXonar, and on Windows 7, 8 and 10.

If the card is indeed faulty in some way, what would be a good upgrade from it? I have a few pairs of rather decent headphones so would want something pretty good really, but not massively expensive.

Edit: I should add that in this time, everything has been replaced except the card (bar the PSU), so it won't be motherboard related.
 
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I've seen everything from mobile phone interference to antivirus software listed as causes for this - and basically nobody seems to have a clue.

What system is it in? (ie. is it competing with SLI graphics cards?)

Have you tried it in a different PCIe slot?
This can work if it forces a change in IRQ as sound cards often share an IRQ with the Graphics card, which takes preference.

What are you doing when it happens? (playing music, gaming, browsing, etc.)

What headphones are you using?

Does it happen with speakers too?

Sadly it doesn't seem to be a trivial problem to find a solution for as there are so many possible causes and it may not even be a particular thing that makes it happen, it may be a combination of events.

A replacement will depend on what headphones you are using, whether you need surround sound features, whether you need virtual surround, if you are using speakers too and of course, your budget.
 
Could be a failing capacitor (though usually that is kind of like a sudden blooming kind of sound slowly dying away over a couple of seconds or so rather than crackling).

One thing I noticed recently (dunno why I never noticed it before recently) the old style doorbell transformer in the houses around here can in introduce interference into amplifier circuitry though strangely some devices are immune to it and others not without any apparent rhyme or reason so it could be something like that.
 
Rroff said:
Could be a failing capacitor (though usually that is kind of like a sudden blooming kind of sound slowly dying away over a couple of seconds or so rather than crackling).
Click to expand...

I think it's done this, of sorts, so it could be that.

rids57 said:
I've seen everything from mobile phone interference to antivirus software listed as causes for this - and basically nobody seems to have a clue.

What system is it in? (ie. is it competing with SLI graphics cards?)

Have you tried it in a different PCIe slot?
This can work if it forces a change in IRQ as sound cards often share an IRQ with the Graphics card, which takes preference.

What are you doing when it happens? (playing music, gaming, browsing, etc.)

What headphones are you using?

Does it happen with speakers too?

Sadly it doesn't seem to be a trivial problem to find a solution for as there are so many possible causes and it may not even be a particular thing that makes it happen, it may be a combination of events.

A replacement will depend on what headphones you are using, whether you need surround sound features, whether you need virtual surround, if you are using speakers too and of course, your budget.
Click to expand...

As far as I can tell, it isn't being caused by any sort of interference. It'd be very hard to try and pinpoint exactly what was happening - software wise - when the problem occured.

I've taken the card out and switched to my onboard sound, which is OK but not great, and will see how that goes while I keep an eye out for another card.

Any suggestions? It's mainly for general use/music etc, don't need surround, and anything from £60 to £150 I suppose, can be more or less depending on whether there's a clear good choice.
 
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I'm having the same problem, it happens a few times a week and always occurs immediately after a new YouTube video loads up.

I think it has only started happening since moving to W10 back in August.

Very annoying and unpleasant - poor old hearing.

I may try using a browser other than Chrome and see if the problem still occurs.
 
Out of curiosity, what drivers are you using?

I use the unified xonar drivers and do the low latency install. Basically a minimal install and also doesn't auto run the audio software on start up which can add latency. You can ofcourse open the software to change settings when you want.

Avast used to cause problems with my sound card too I think (or was it my previous one), so I've always just used windows firewall/av.

As for replacement...... Why not get another xense ;)
 
I think it's a youtube issue as It's happened rarely but randomly to me on chrome and firefox
 
Not sure if this helps but I have a Xense with the unified low latency drivers on windows 10 pro. I get the issue once every few months but it disappears after a restart.
 
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