X-Fi Xtreme-music crackles when scrolling

Cuchulainn

Cuchulainn

Cuchulainn

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Joined
2 May 2007
Posts
483
Location
Ayrshire, Scotland
Heya all,

I have a P5B Deluxe Wi-Fi board with the latest BIOS (1216), Vista Ultimate, a P182 case, E6400 @ 3.2GHz, 2GB RAM, 8800GTS and a lovely x-fi xtreme-music soundcard, which sits in the bottom PCI slot.

Basically, whenever I'm listening to music via my PC (usual app Winamp, although WMP is used too at times) or watching DVDs etc, any movement of the mouse, or rather the scroll wheel of the mouse, results in a loud crackling and breakup of audio.

In fact, after some further testing, it seems like whenever something graphically changes on the screen (whether it be scrolling, a web page loading, windows opening etc), anything at all, this loud and ultra annoying issue occurs.

I've tried reinstalling drivers for the x-fi and for my gfx card - neither helped.

I'm using the Creative official vista drivers CD and we updated the drivers to 2.15.002. GFX-wise I'm using the latest NVidia publically released drivers as per their site.

I'm at my wits end - can anyone help or throw any light on the issue please?

Oddly, I've only just re-installed Vista as I've fitted a new HDD. The installation before, with exactly the same board, drivers etc etc, worked fine.

Perhaps I should reformat and try again?
 
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my audigy card & z-5500 speakers do the same. i think its electrical interference that does it.

using optical may help as i believe they are not susceptible to electrical interference (?).
 
Same mobo drivers too?
Try disabling the SoundBlaster enhancements in Vista :

xfi.png


This along and/or updating my nforce drivers to the latest appears to have solved the random crackle/pop issues I used to have as I was getting the same problem with the Auzen HDA X-Plosion I just bought so knew it had to be something within Windows.
 
I get the same problem on my XtremeGamer, It only seems to happen in windows and games seem fine (so far). I'm using an Abit AW9d-MAX motherboard. This never used to happen using the onboard sound so you would expect a £60+ soundcard not to either.

The above fix didn't make any difference :/
 
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After trying absolutely everything - and thanks so much for the kind help given in this thread too - with no joy I've finally fixed it.

What sorted it for me was an increase in voltage to the PCI chipset in the BIOS - only slight increase mind - but a definite removal from the "AUTO" setting to a defined voltage.

If anyone wants to give it a try I can reboot and take a look at the voltages I've used for you?
 
Cuchulainn said:
After trying absolutely everything - and thanks so much for the kind help given in this thread too - with no joy I've finally fixed it.

What sorted it for me was an increase in voltage to the PCI chipset in the BIOS - only slight increase mind - but a definite removal from the "AUTO" setting to a defined voltage.

If anyone wants to give it a try I can reboot and take a look at the voltages I've used for you?
Click to expand...


Could you do that? it would be interesting to know just incase the problem does re-occur!
 
Okey dokey. This is where I'm up to at the moment.

I'm going to try dropping each setting a notch or two in turn until the problem re-occurs. Obviously then I should know which voltage sorts it. I suspect though it'll be the ICH chipset that's the daddy!

Anyway :

PCI Latency is 32 at the moment btw.

FSB : 1.4v
NB Vcore : 1.45v
SB VCore : 1.60v

The above are probably inconsequential. However :

ICH Chipset 1.215v

Is, I suspect, the crucial adjustment.

I'm going to do a little testing now. Perhaps it's all coincidence. But after trying literally everything, this seems to be the only thing that has resolved the issue. So it's worth investigating I reckon.

Oh and um obviously take care when fiddling with voltages with regard to temperatures etc, ahem :D
 
mrk said:
Cheers! Do you know if the ICH voltage is the same on all boards btw?
Click to expand...

Oooo I'm not sure about that one mate. I only have three settings on my P5b Deluxe Wi-fi - AUTO, 1.057v and 1.215v.

The mobo uses the Intel P965 chipset.
 
Hmm I shall have to investigate I think, I will leave for now though as it appears to be working fine!
 
Lydzor said:
Hmm, i seem to have this problem at times too, but i only have onboard sound. :confused:
Click to expand...

Going back <holds arms out wide> a long time ago when I used to have a similar problem I found that turning down the hardware acceleration within the control panel a notch for the sound resolved my crackles. Not the ideal solution but it worked :)
 
This remains a little bit of a mystery really.

I tested extensively yesterday and couldn't repeat the issue.

The NB VCore seemed to have been the only thing out of the BIOS settings that would come close to repeating the problem. For me it has to stay at 1.45v.

Everything else is set to AUTO (apart from of course the CPU vcore as I'm overclocking).

So it's a total mystery.....

I'm just glad it sodded off before I splashed out another £100+ on a different soundcard.
 
Yup my xfi is back in too and the pop seems to be very intermittent and rare now - my bios settings too are on auto but there are so many settings on the a8n32-sli that I just don't know what to change first even with the info above!

It only happens when playing videos or playing music though and it only seems to be on mp3 sounds too for some reason ?
 
muted line-in ?

the sound you are hearing is likely to be noise coming from somewhere (electrical noise), probably bad shielding from the PSU or overclocked CPU.

after trying the above you can try putting sum anti-electical noise paper stuff over the top of the x-fi, this is also suposed to better the sound quality quite a bit on the x-fi :D

-Jonny
 
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Vimes said:
Going back <holds arms out wide> a long time ago when I used to have a similar problem I found that turning down the hardware acceleration within the control panel a notch for the sound resolved my crackles. Not the ideal solution but it worked :)
Click to expand...

I have Vista and apparently Vista handles sound differently to XP, hence there is no hardware acceleration setting. :( Thanks for the advice though. :)
 
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