Crappy Audigy drivers

[Jon P. Inghram]

Raises hand. Problems with ASUS TUSL2-C (Intel 815EP) and SBLive! here too. Reverb and other EAX effects suck up PCI bandwidth like you wouldn't believe.

[Indiana]

Even ETG said he had problems in a BX based board. I've had the stuttering and bus-hogging on a BX board as well.
You can't have a chipset that's more stable than the BX, or would you like to disagree?
And those frame-dropping issues are for real, on all chipsets (maybe worse on VIAs). Non-working AC3 out on the SBLive was real for EVERY user. Having to boot into Win98 to be able to watch DVDs - great
Registry-trashing (and the system32 folder,too) due to the install of Creatives Virus called LiveWare. Try to uninstall a Creative card without a complete Windows reinstall. How on earth can a soundcard driver be a whopping 30+ MB archive?!?

A strange thing: When you didn't install any of the Creative packages but just used the drivers delivered with Win2k, you actually had stable operation and nearly no more stutters - on a VIA chipset. When compared here It was the following: Win2k-included drivers + VIA chipset = more stable than Intel BX + Creatives drivers.

[Liquid Snake]

Had problems too. I had a SBLive! 5.1 Platinum on my Abit BE6-II mobo. Not as severe as has been described here but under Win2K I did get occasional stuttering when listening to MP3s. The stereo system isn't hooked up to my PC so the poor sound quality didn't really bother me since my speakers were holding me back more. I did notice a difference in the sound quality going from the SBLive! to a Santa Cruz though. I haven't heard the latest versions of EAX but I liked A3D 2.0 much better than the earlier versions of EAX. A3D was much more convincing than EAX was. Sucks that Aureal is gone

[Gurm]

Grr...

Ok, to address your problems.

Liquid Snake: You have an ABIT BE6-II. That has a Highpoint chipset on it. Highpoint controllers are known to cause audio problems with ALL audio cards, not just Creative. Check the 3D Sound Surge forums sometime if you don't believe me.

Others: SB Live cards (not Live 5.1 or Audigy) had an ACPI problem where they would skip and stutter and crackle on ALL chipsets. Creative has admitted to this. Additionally, MS's drivers (NOT Creative's) which are available from Windows Update for those cards fix this problem.

Wombat: What else is in your system?

- Gurm

[Wombat]

Other components: GF3Ti, Promise Fasttrak TX2, NIC (Tulip based), sound card, on-board USB.

I found some Usenet posts that the Audigy doesn't like to share IRQs, but I can't get it on its own, and the best I can do is have it share with USB. It isn't happy like that. The MS drivers work nicely on it, but they leave the digital out broken.

[Liquid Snake]

The Highpoint controller has always been disabled, so that's not the problem. I didn't have the sound stuttering issues when I had Win98. They appeared when I upgraded to Win2K. Honestly though, they were never a huge problem, so I just lived with it until I got a Santa Cruz.

[[Ch]amsalot]

Wombat,

After scouring with Google, I found these tips. No comment from me whether they'll work or blow up your system. Use your discretion, and remember, I'm just cutting and pasting suggestions from others:

Suggestion 1:
JUST ADD THE FOLLOWING IN SYSTEM.INI (ANY KIND OF WINDOWZ YOU HAVE, ALSO FOR WINDOWS XP!) AT THE [386Enh] section:
"DMABufferSize=64" without the two "" !!!!


Suggestion 2:
DISABLE ACPI ON WIN XP AND ASSIGN ONLY ONE IRQ TO EVERY PCI CARD, THAT CAN ADD A 20% SPEED UP TO A VIDEO CARD, SOLVE ALSO CRACKLING CAUSED BY IRQ SHARING!!!!

[and, from the same guy who insists on typing in all CAPS...]

I FOUND LESS OR MORE CRACKLING AT THOSE DIFFERNTS OVERCLOCKS! FOR EXAMPLE AT fsb 130MHZ AND PCI AT 33MHZ WITH PCI LATENCY (FROM BIOS) = 0 I GET A REAL LATENCY OF 0!!!!!! CRACKLINGS GETS RARE, BUT ON HARD DISK INTENSIVE READING/WRITING I STILL GET A VERY RARE CRACKLING

Suggestion 3:
You know, I had some crackling as well....

Found out it was a bad speaker connection...=P

Suggestion 4 [all you Matrox fans will love this one...]
crackling on my machine was caused by the MATROX G400 that is hogging my pci bus to get faster, infact by disabling "BUS MASTERING" from the matrox try icon i get no more cracklings on my sond devices...

Wombat, I'll try to do some more searching for you tomorrow,

Good luck


-[Ch]ams

[The PIT]

Microsoft left the debugging in on in dx8.1 or was it dx8.0. You can turn this off and this solves most of the crackling. I've also noticed on earlier Via chipsets that enabling dma on CD drives on the secondary ide can also cause crackling while it doesn't on the primery.
The only stuttering I've seen is under 3dmark and easports football manager 2001 under 98. Just the odd one hear and there. Under win2k 3dmark is smooth as hell.

[Gurm]

BuddMan:

Warbling on ALL Crystal chipsets. When the characters talk it sounds like they're talking through a spinning fan.

Instead of "Get them!" it's "Gbrebt Thbebmmm!"

Better and worse depending on the game and the card, but they all have it if you turn off the ambient sound and music and just listen to the voices.

- Gurm

[az]

I have these issues with the demo version of "Hyperspace Delivery Boy", a new game from Romero's new firm. I also have them with Winamp 2.8's crossfading DirectSound, and with Winamp 3's DirectSound output. I didn't have them with Winamp 2.78s old DirectSound (without crossfading). It's unbearable, as you can understand NOTHING. Turning down DirectSound hardware acceleration all the way (or one notch over nothing, can't remember) cures the problem. Does this hinder system performance?

I'm using a Terratec 512i Digital, it was cheap, but unfortunately not very good. Dunno which chipset it uses though. Ah, and I have an ECS k7s5a.

If anyone could help... I thought this thread was enough off-topic to throw in my problem, too

AZ

[Gurm]

AZ:

Yes, it does hinder system performance, especially games. I decided that it was just unacceptable. It was, however, due to my chipset... since I have none of those problems with this SiS-based board.

You, on the other hand, could have any of a number of problems. More info, please? Card/board/drivers/OS?

- Gurm