Audio craclking/popping on newbuild - help!

hbuzz

hbuzz

hbuzz

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Joined
17 Jan 2012
Posts
31
Hi there,

I’m having problems with my audio on my newly built machine. I am experiencing slight crackling/popping jumps when playing audio in a media player player or streaming online. The characteristics are that when I scroll up and down on a webpage I get the crackling. It’s not guaranteed that it happens every time I do this however for instance if I scroll up and down constantly it doesn’t happen continuously and happens but is now and then. The problem also happens when I am not in a browser just performing normal windows tasks. It seems to happen less frequently but it’s defiantly there.

My system I built is using the old HDD and I have installed the latest drivers etc and I think I am all up to date with these. I am running a M-Audio 192 soundcard and I am confident it’s not the cables etc. I have tried various things such as reinstalling the drivers for this card. Removing the HD Audio Genie software that is a live update for the motherboard. Disabling USB 3.0 in the Bios.

I’m open to all suggestions because I’m tearing my hair out!!

My System specs are
MSI GD65 G3
I7 2700 3.5Ghz
16GB Ram Kingston 1600mhz
M-Audio 192
Asus GTX 560 CU2
Fostex PM2 monitors
Running Windows 7 64

Thanks
Haydn
 
No everything was fine and working as it should before the upgraded, I'm pretty sure it's not them because of the way everything behaves in windows.
 
Is the problem stuttering (interruptions in) playback, or noises superimposed on top?
If it's noises on top, then it could be the sound card picking up electrical interference from the rest of the pc. You could try moving the sound card to another slot to see if that affects it, and enabling any spread-spectrum options in the bios.
 
Sounds like a buffering issue to me - go into the m-audio control panel and go to the tab which is titled hardware settings. On there, there should be a setting for DMA buffer size, set the latency to a higher number of samples.

see page 21 here: http://www.m-audio.com/images/global/manuals/AP192_UG_EN1.pdf

I've never heard of it affecting windows playback before as it's usually an ASIO problem (ie, with recording software) which creates clicks and pops. Another thing to check is whether or not you've disabled your onboard chipset in your BIOS. I've had that cause problems with PCI soundcards before.
 
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Great thank you, i'm going to try some of these suggestions when I get home tonight and report back. As far as I can tell it seems to be ontop of the audio but I'll have more of a play tonight.
 
Had a bit more of a look into latency within windows with PCI audio cards. If the points I mentioned above don't make any difference you could have a look into the PCI latency timers in your BIOS.

Someone on youtube who had latency issues managed to brick his motherboard in the process though, so be VERY sure that you know what you're doing. Have a look at this thread and the link in the first post for more info.

http://www.overclock.net/t/103398/what-is-pci-latency-and-what-does-it-accomplish
 
Brilliant problem solved without playing with any latency times in bios! Turned out I needed to increase the buffer size as suggested. Thanks for all your help, now time to listen to some music!
 
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