Creative Sound Card Problem Thread

[thunder2008]

Yes I just had everything tuned in console with crystallizer eq bass delay etc. once set it I would only change it when going from say Bach in royal hall to drum&bass in theater surround sound modes.

Sometimes I would change the eq for a particular song that sounds so cool.

 

[generallyacceptable]

Here is what I did to solve my poping and crackling problems. I have a Dell XPS600 and did my intial install of win7 with 2GB of memory. Into my second week I decide to order 8GB of memory from Dell. Things ran fine until one of my video cards went out. Just about the time the replacement video card arrived the memory also showed up. Well, long story short... the creative X-FI win7 beta driver only work when I have only 2gb of memory installed. I get poping and crackling at 3gb, 4gb, and 8gb.

 

[greyeyezz]

So far so good

 

[thunder2008]

Here is what I did to solve my poping and crackling problems. I have a Dell XPS600 and did my intial install of win7 with 2GB of memory. Into my second week I decide to order 8GB of memory from Dell. Things ran fine until one of my video cards went out. Just about the time the replacement video card arrived the memory also showed up. Well, long story short... the creative X-FI win7 beta driver only work when I have only 2gb of memory installed. I get poping and crackling at 3gb, 4gb, and 8gb.

Sounds like your using a 32bit os, which can give problems when you have 3 or more gb of ram installed.

 

[wrathloki]

Getting noise on my x-fi titanium on 7 beta drivers. If I keep switching between modes or sample rates eventually I'll not get noise on the sample rate and mode I want to be on.

 

[generallyacceptable]

The unit in question is a Dell XPS600 running WIN7-64bit. All software installed to date works fine with 2gb memory or 8gb of memory. The only thing that doesn't work is the creative win7 beta driver when more than 2gb of memory is installed.

 

[joeazbill]

No Surround Sound

I have installed by X-Fi Titanium Sound works. I am having a problem with the Surround sound. I just get a stereo out of all speakers. I can hear the same sound. This is in MEdia Center and through power dvd. Have noticed that when I select the Spidf as default I get no sound when I select the Creative I get sound but can't get tru surround sound like in my Vista Ultimate setup. This completely ruins Blu-ray and is starting to make me mad I love all the other settings in Windows 7 but am stuck with crappy sound on movies and was hoping someone could help me figure out what is wrong.

 

[thunder2008]

To Generallyacceptable what is your audio card?

To Joeazbill same exactly what audio card are you using?

If not a pci or pcie card then what onboard audio chipset?

 

[dsopocy]

X-Fi Crackling and Popping

The unit in question is a Dell XPS600 running WIN7-64bit. All software installed to date works fine with 2gb memory or 8gb of memory. The only thing that doesn't work is the creative win7 beta driver when more than 2gb of memory is installed.

I have the same problem with a similar system (see my System Specs). Anything more than 2GB RAM causes problems in 64-bit Win 7 if you have the combination of an nVidia nForce4 motherboard and a SoundBlaster X-Fi card like Xtreme Music (I did not experience this problem in 64-bit Vista Ultimate with 6 GB RAM). See considerable discussion of this issue in the New X-Fi Win 7 Beta Drivers thread, including a reference to a Creative article addressing one element of the problem, a design incompatibility re PCI Bus latency (a complicating factor, not the root problem IMO), starting here. Most likely, some change in memory management and/or audio signal handling in Win 7 has exposed a problem that has existed since our systems were built.

Dale

P.S.
Note, if your system RAM is currently >3 GB, the easiest way to test whether your RAM is triggering this problem is to run MSCONFIG in Administrator Mode to limit Maximum Memory to 2048 MB or 3072 MB (Boot tab, Advanced Options).

P.P.S.
Please click on icon above and add to my reputation if you have found my posts to be helpful.

 

[LePoilu]

As I experiment the same probleme with my audigy platinium under Seven 64bit with 4GB, I will try with only 2GB.

We will see ...

 

[imacken]

OK guys, I resolved all my sound problems by dumping my Audigy and replacing it with a X-Fi Extreme Audio pci-e card.
Games, everything now work perfectly, so I don't have to go back to my Vista install any more!

 

[DukeX007X]

What's up fellow Windows 7 users? It seems I have the same problem like everyone else.

Issue: Distorted & Static sounds at random times with Audigy WDM drivers from Windows Update.

Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster - Audigy 2 ZS Gamer

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI

OS: Windows 7 32bit & 64bit

I attempted to resolve the issues by installing
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy series Driver for Vista (Release: 17 Jul 08) but no success. I currently have installed Creative Sound Blaster Audigy series Beta Driver (Release: 3 Sep 08) no success.

All drivers seem to distort and produce static sounds at random times. Sound card works 100% in Windows XP Pro SP3

-DukeX007X

 

[thunder2008]

To all W7 users with creative cards both original brands as well as vendor brands, list your cards model information along with your motherboard and operating system specs. such 32 or 64bit.

I have linked this thread to creative to better help show the many different issues going on with w7 and creative audio cards and softwares.

This thread is read by creative so be a descriptive as possible with your audio problems.

 

[dsopocy]

Documenting Your Problem

To all W7 users with creative cards both original brands as well as vendor brands, list your cards model information along with your motherboard and operating system specs. such 32 or 64bit.

I have linked this thread to creative to better help show the many different issues going on with w7 and creative audio cards and softwares.

This thread is read by creative so be a descriptive as possible with your audio problems.

Please also remember to note the amount of RAM you have installed. This is a trigger for the problem to surface in Win 7 for some motherboard/SB card combinations. Note that your member profile for Windows 7 Forums contains a form for entering this information (see My System Specs in the lower left corner of this posting for an example).

Dale

P.S.
Please click on icon above and add to my reputation if you have found my posts to be helpful.

 

[dsopocy]

What's up fellow Windows 7 users? It seems I have the same problem like everyone else.

Issue: Distorted & Static sounds at random times with Audigy WDM drivers from Windows Update.

Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster - Audigy 2 ZS Gamer

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI

OS: Windows 7 32bit & 64bit

I attempted to resolve the issues by installing
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy series Driver for Vista (Release: 17 Jul 08) but no success. I currently have installed Creative Sound Blaster Audigy series Beta Driver (Release: 3 Sep 08) no success.

All drivers seem to distort and produce static sounds at random times. Sound card works 100% in Windows XP Pro SP3

-DukeX007X

I see you have 4GB of RAM. Try using MSCONFIG to limit maximum RAM to 2048MB, restart, and see if the problem persists. If this resolves your sound quality issue, limiting your available RAM is the only workaround I've found to work until the root cause is resolved.

Dale

P.S.
Please click on icon above and add to my reputation if you have found my posts to be helpful.

 

[DukeX007X]

I see you have 4GB of RAM. Try using MSCONFIG to limit maximum RAM to 2048MB, restart, and see if the problem persists. If this resolves your sound quality issue, limiting your available RAM is the only workaround I've found to work until the root cause is resolved.

Dale

Dale, thank you for your response. I'll give your workaround a try. I will keep you and the thread posted.

 

[Ezzy]

Have same sound crackling issues.

Windows 7 Beta 64 bit
Sounblaster X-Fi XtremeMusic
ASUS A8N-E (nforce4 Ultra chipset)

I have 4G memory installed, so I tried dsopocy's 2GB memory limit workaround, and it cleared all sound issues, as far as I can tell.

 

[SirCag]

i also have sound crackling and distortion, cant even listen to music in winamp, media player, foobar etc. what is strange is that sound in games works great, dont get any crackling and distortion in them.

anyway i have:
windows 7 32bit build 7000
Intel’s D975XBX2 Bad Axe 2
Soundblaster x-fi extreme gamer
2GB Ram

 

[LePoilu]

I just tried with 2GB of RAM instead of 4GB... but it doesn't chance anything. Distorsion and cracking are still here !

 

[dsopocy]

I just tried with 2GB of RAM instead of 4GB... but it doesn't chance anything. Distorsion and cracking are still here !

Limiting RAM is known to be a viable workaround only for motherboards based on the nVidia nForce4 chipset - so apparently your motherboard uses another chipset.

One known root cause of crackling and popping on Creative X-Fi sound cards is excessive latency on PCI bus requests (see reference in one of my earlier posts). One thing that you can do to troubleshoot your issue is to check Device Manager to see if there is any resource sharing going on between your sound and video cards.

Dale

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