Audigy 2 Popping noise - Not a Speaker Problem

[Firehawk153]

Hi,

Specs:

Asus AV8 Mobo (K8T800Pro + VT8237)
AMD Athlon 64 3200+
Audigy 2 ZS (only using drivers that came with Audigy 2 CD)
ATI Radeon 850XT Platinum (Latest Catalyst Drivers)
2 gig Mushkin RAM
Windows XP SP2

Ever since I built this machine I've had a wierd problem with the sound. Assuming the machine is off; I turn it on; it boots up. I then go to play almost any 3D application (X3: Reunion for example) and when the game loads up the sound is all distorted and popping. Its not a speaker problem because it does this when I plug in headphones directly to the computer. I don't detect a drop in frame rates, just the badly distorted sound.

The only way I found to remedy this issue was manually reinstall the sound driver (device manager -> sound and video -> Audigy 2 (WDM) -> manually select driver and reinstall). Whenver I shut down and boot back up the problem is gone. However, the distorted sound will return once I shut down my computer and start it back up again.

I've tried ALL the drivers for the Audigy 2 and none of the drivers fixes the popping problem. I don't have the soundcard in the slot directly adjacent to the video card but I belive its in the slot down from that.

Should I try moving the video card to a different slot? Does this sound like some sort of IRQ or resource assignment problem on startup?

Any ideas would be GREATLY appreciated!

Thanks!

Firehawk153

 

[Firehawk153]

Someone else I talked to said that it might be a PCI latency issue. When I checked my PCI latency settings in the BIOS they were all 64. I bumped it up to 32 (highest it would go and that setting was for all PCI devices) and rebooted....no change; still had the speaker popping.

I then downloaded a PCI latency utility; PCI Latency tool 2.0. I bumped the latency setting on the Audigy 2 to 000 and I bumped a few other; non-essential PCI devices down to 64 (or lower). I rebooted and I was still having the same problem.

Any Ideas?

 

[dopefisher]

this seems to be a classic problem. your video card and your sound card might be sharing an IRQ, like you said. check in device manager, and "view resources by connection." what devices are sharing the same irq address? changing the slot is supposed to help this, but for me it never did. from now on, i just stick with the onboard audio, it is getting better and better as time goes on. i have onboard realtek HD alc 880 right now, and i have no reason to complain about it.

another thing, i never cared for the creative drivers. whenever i had a problem with my audigy platinum ex creative drivers, i used the kxaudio drivers. you can get them http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/mirrors.php?&file=kxdrv3537-full.exe&language=en <---- there, a link to the download mirrors. good luck. i do not know if these drivers work with audigy 2 cards, but i think they do. if you install the drivers and your card is not supported the install will fail and nothing is lost. this actually might solve your problem and you have nothing to lose. good luck.

 

[jimser]

PCI latency of Audigy 2

I had the same problem with my Audigy 2 in Windows 7. I have tried to install various drivers with no luck. It was of the very few things that did not went well with this new excellent OS.

Fortunately with the help of PCI Latency tool i put 255 as new latency for the Audigy and 32 for everything else. This solved the problem of the distorted sound about 90% of the time.