Sound Blaster Live 5.1 Sound Glitches

[velkan]

hey, i have a SB LIVE! 5.1 and everytime i start a game, after a few minutes, the overall sound gets some weird sounds like pops and they only disappear when i reboot my computer! but they come back when i start a game, i dont know if it is wave distortion or not but its really getting me upset ... and i updated the drivers with LiveDrvUni_Pack(ENG).

the games that i've experiencied this sound glitches are GTA San Andreas and Splinter Cell 1, they are the ones i've been playing lately...

 

[lordxanthrax]

yeah my SB live card has problems a lot when i turn EAX on in games. I've noticed it mainly when I'm running two programs that use sound at once...teamspeak and CoD, teamspeak and BF2...things like that. The surround works just fine though if i'm doing one or the other.

 

[Aliengeek]

SB Live was, and still is, notorious for developing the popping and crackling sounds, drove me nuts restarting, reinstalling, and such to get rid of it for a short while, and it would always return.

I've been in a lot of discussions about this card and some of the other Creative Cards, I went from the Live card to the Audigy Gamer, and it also eventually started to develope the same issues, not as bad as the Live 5.1, but definitely irritating.

I gave up on Creative for about a year and a half and went to the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, its a great soundcard, no popping or crackling ever, but the Turtle started falling behind in the EAX field.

I took one last chance with Creative and bought an Audigy 2 ZS soundcard, now we're talking, this is the best soundcard I've ever gotten from Creative, no popping, or crackling what so ever.

So if you want to totally resolve your problems get yourself a new soundcard, either the newest Turtle Beach Release, or M-Audios Revolution, or Creative Audigy 2 ZS line.

 

[SOcRatEs]

Howdy

What version SB live are you talkin about,
Live retail (boxed) or OEM (non-boxed)?

Creative has a live web update similar to MS
that won't update oem cards, and finding drivers
for oem can be a pain in the ****...most drivers
from the web for oem don't quite work right.

Tho I don't use eax, I am converting my cd collection
to mp3 and had a prob like this with oem card.
So I bought a boxed retail no futher prob.
Just curios....

 

[Aliengeek]

The Soundblaster Live 5.1 was an OEM card, the Soundblaster Audigy Gamer was Retail boxed, hardware wise I don't see what it would matter, they're the same cards the retail version may have additional software, better warranty, and a nice box its packed in, but I've never seen any difference in the hardware of the card, unless you know something I don't about the hardware aspect of the OEM and Retail versions of the cards.

My experience has been with OEM and Retail cards developing the popping and crackling and I think its a hardware issue not driver related, I've talked with others and we came to the conclusion that possibly the capacitors somehow developed an overcharge maybe from faulty shielding or something, [This is Speculation now], and once this charge gets to a certain level the popping starts.

Its not speculation that you can leave your drivers as is, pull the card and lay it flat backside down on a metal grounded surface, put it back in the machine and for a while the popping and crackling will go away.

Why? I don't know.

The Audigy 2 ZS has never developed any noises, maybe Creative finally figured it out.

 

[SOcRatEs]

Yeah there are differences, some small and some
much bigger. I think it was dell who crated the biggest
oem diff, proprietary driver dell oem 5.1 live.
model# 0220 oem SB live value 5.1 has similar drivers.
I believe Creative will not support some of the value live.
cards.
Not to matter tho, I still us creative for lack of
affordable alternative. Turtle Beach really needs to catch up a bit...
Thanks for info exchange :bounce:

 

[Aliengeek]

Thanks for that info!

I will pass this along to you, my second rig is my Mobile DJ rig and I acquired an M-Audio Delta 1010LT soundcard for it, way more of a soundcard than any you would need for your regular home PC, but the reason I mentioned it, is its such a high quality product for stereo interaction with the computer, and external powered equipment, its literally Crystal, and when the time comes for me to replace the Audigy 2 ZS, I am going for one of their Revolutions Solutions.

Turtle Beach does have out a competively priced up to date Soundcard right now, I don't remember the name of it right off the top of my head though.