Audigy 2 ZS soundcard making clicking noises

[CurlyWhirly]

I have had this card for around a year now and it offers excellent sound, so much better than onboard sound.
However there has always been trouble when I am listening to online video streams or playing online games, namely that the sound card makes irregular clicking noises.

I have just found out that the reason could be something called PCI Latency.

I have downloaded a patch from http://www.georgebreese.com/net/software/ and it appears to have fixed the problem despite the patch being BETA software.
In any case if I did suffer problems then I could uninstall it in Add/remove programs.

As to the cause, apparently it is a feature of the VIA chipset that my motherboard uses.

Finally according to a reference on the website:

"Warning! This does not install on Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), or on Windows 2003, due to increased security on those versions."

Strange as it appears to have installed when I ran it as it is listed in Add/remove programs

 

[CurlyWhirly]

Are you using Medusa 5.1's By Any Chance ?

No I'm only running 4.1 sound at the moment using a quadrophonic speaker setup.
Are you implying that those speakers can produce the clicking noises as if true I find that strange

p.s. my problem has now gone away since installing the patch!

 

[CurlyWhirly]

I've never heard of a magic BIOS option and in any case I have a Gigabyte motherboard not a Abit one but I will check out the advanced features next time when I reboot.
I think that these only offer performance features to do with memory timings and such like and nothing to do with sound cards

 

[CurlyWhirly]

i believe at the time they were added to the via chipset pack of the time so was no need for a seperate patch. Id be quite suprised if via hadnt got there act together since then and have the issue fully sorted in newer chipsets.

To be honest I wouldn't know what version of the VIA chipset I'm running!

The only VIA patch I've ever downloaded and installed is the VIA Hyperion 4 in 1 which was to do with my graphics card.

I am running the VIA KT 400 chipset which I know is way out of date but it serves me well and will continue to do so until I can afford to upgrade to a 64 bit PC.

 

[CurlyWhirly]

I used the patch & it seemed to do the trick well it reduced the crackling noise. . .

Well it has certainly done the trick here but to be honest I was a bit wary about installing it as it is BETA software but I'm glad I took the risk now!

By the way for some strange reason in normal use my sound was fine as it was only when I attempted to play online sound samples like from an audio or video stream that I noticed any crackling.
Also online games were affected, but in all these cases it was sporadic as one day it could be quite bad and at other times barely noticeable!