X-Fi XtremeMusic hisses, crackles and pops

[Clay]

Ok, weird problem here - I've got a Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic and Win7 will detect it, and I've installed the latest drivers (2.18.0008?).

When it first installs, things are fine. I get sound through iTunes and System sounds.

But after the first reboot, it hisses and crackles and pops.

If I go Control Panel -> Hardware & Sound -> Manage Audio Devices, hit configure and try to run the little sound test, it usually hangs and doesn't even get through the test.

I've tried turning of EAX Effects, CMSS, etc and nothing seems to change it.

Any ideas?

 

[swarfega]

latest driver is 2.18.0013 so try that.

 

[Clay]

yeah, it's 13, I was looking at the wrong file name, heh.

 

[Clay]

As it turns out, this seems to be caused by turning on the "memory hole".

Sound works, just lost 1GB of memory :|