[RESOLVED] Static crackling on Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum

I've asked many other places for this problem, but haven't got a solution for my problem yet.
So, I'm having this static crackling/popping on my audio card, and it seems the problem isn't at least caused by the drivers (I've propably tried every single driver there is). The crackling occurs only once in a while and might last for some time. This used to happen only when using EAX in some games, but now it seems to appear any time. I also thought that my motherboards integrated soundcard could cause this problem, so I disabled it from the BIOS. Unfortunately this didn't help. Someone also said that some motherboards might cause this, but I recently bought a new motherboard, so it shouldn't be the problem. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

This happens to me too. And just recently started happening..

One thing I am soon to check is how the power wires are in my case, it seemed to start happening when I had to rearrange wires in my case.

I get it when there is heavy CD-ROM or hardrive reading. I've read that processor temperature might have something to do with it, but I highly doubt that. I have also read that it happens on VIA motherboard chipsets, particularly older ones (Im using a KT600). And that there is a "latency" that causes it.

The crackling when CD ROM reads has always happened to me, the hardrive reading crackling happened when I rewired the power. Im going to try and get it on its own power cable sometime later today, and see the results.

Did you try disabling the "Turbo" setting in the registry?
That is a fairly old trick. For more info on the matter do a Google search. Or even try contacting Creative Labs for the matter. Check on their forums or ask for technical support.

Good luck!

Thanks for your replies, but still having the problem, even after disabling Turbo. I wouldn't like to think the problem is in the card itself because it isn't too old.

When this was a major problem around 1999-2000 with the Soundblaster Live! card, the problem was with the PCI latency setting mainly on VIA chipset based motherboards. Some people could solve it by increasing the PCI latency in the BIOS to 128, while some could solve it by lowering the latency to 0. There was a patch made available that almost always worked too. As far as today's hardware, I'm not sure anyone has ever fixed it.

The Turbo setting is associated with the PCI latency in the first place so it should have solved ur problem. Something else you can try is check if your soundcard is sharing IRQ's with another device. If so, try switching PCI slots and retry. Remember to reset IRQ's in the BIOS after every change to avoid any problems. (Rare but definately there!)
Good luck mate!

Yes, make sure latency is off in the motherboard.

Also download all the newest updates from creative
http://www.creative.com/support/

I've propably tried everything now. I decided to buy a new soundcard, Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi. Since nothing worked, the problem must be in the card itself. Thanks for your replies!

People have reported the same problem on the X-Fi as well. That may have been a mistake buying one to fix the problem.

i agree with wrath. just stay away from creative. far, far away.

why I have the elite pro from sound blaster and I think it's awsome!!!

I had the same problem with my SB Audigy 2 that came with my Dell XPS system. It was out of control. I think the sound card was garbage. Bought the new X-FI Plat. and solved the problem. Talk about being lazy; buying my problems away:(

i think the origonal poster's problem is he is running VISTA, i might guess. my audigy 2 has been HORRENDOUS ever since i installed vista. creative did release new drivers three days ago though, and they are seeming to be much better (took about a half hour to install :mad: )

for the people who like their creative cards, you simply havent used anything else. get a good quality cmi chipset card and it will be like that glob of earwax just fell out :)

I have an Audigy 2 Platinum, and did not have this problem until today, when I installed the newest drivers to try to get rid of another problem (after hours of World of Warcraft running, the sound would lock up in a fast stutter, not sure if it fixed that yet).

As soon as the new drivers were installed and I started WoW, the static started through the speakers, and didn't stop even after exiting WoW.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by krupted

i think the origonal poster's problem is he is running VISTA, i might guess. my audigy 2 has been HORRENDOUS ever since i installed vista. creative did release new drivers three days ago though, and they are seeming to be much better (took about a half hour to install :mad: )

for the people who like their creative cards, you simply havent used anything else. get a good quality cmi chipset card and it will be like that glob of earwax just fell out :)

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Really? I've always found cmedia cards sounded so flat and tinny

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Craig234

I have an Audigy 2 Platinum, and did not have this problem until today, when I installed the newest drivers to try to get rid of another problem (after hours of World of Warcraft running, the sound would lock up in a fast stutter, not sure if it fixed that yet).

As soon as the new drivers were installed and I started WoW, the static started through the speakers, and didn't stop even after exiting WoW.

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This is a problem through the motherboard mainly..

Have you installed any new hardware? Plugged anything new in?

Also, if you motherboard has a option that is like "PCI latency" try setting that to the lowest possible.

I did a Windows XP checkpoint restore to before the new soundcard drivers, and the static was mostly gone (every couple seconds a 'pop'). When I start World of Warcraft, while the login screen is loading up, the static now still start up (crackling sound, like 10 pops per second). It continues even after exiting WoW.

I don't know what to do now for this.

I doubt this will cut it, but try moving the card to a different PCI slot.

Thanks for the response; the thing is, the problem started right when I updated the driver (even though it's still happening with the old driver), and the cracking starts not with the system, which could imply a hardware issue, but only when world of warcraft is loading, implying a software connection.

When it happened to me it happened with nearly all opening. The CD drive spinning, a hardrive was reading, something was processing, etc.
This is a common problem with Creative cards.
Just wanting to make sure, have you set your PCI latency (Located in the BIOS) down to the lowest it can be? It can also be put in as "PCI delay" or something of the sort.

In my case static sound was caused by Asus MyCinema TV PCI card. At first there was no static when I installed TV card, but after installing newest Creative drivers it started. Also, at first static usually came when playing EAX games like BF2 or Total War, but later it started immediately with windows start. I tried almost everything: reinstalling drivers, degrading to lower version drivers, changing PCI latency, swithcing PCI slots, spreading spectrum in bios, moving all cables away from sound card - speakers cables, but in avail.
Only removing TV card solved the problem. Anyway this may be of help to someone who has similar issues.

My PC just started doing this a few weeks back. I have an Audigy 2 card, on a computer I built in 2002 and haven't changed any hardware on at all. I only ever used the Creative drivers. It started out as occasional popping but has developed into constant static. I update WinXP regularly but had not updated the soundcard drivers in a LONG time (a couple years possibly). I don't ever use the EAX effects for anything directly, and I live alone so I know nobody else is messing with my PC's settings.

What I have found causes this on my PC is a problem/bug with the EAX effects. Even if [No Effects] is selected but the effects mixer slider is not set to zero, I get the crackling.

If I set the EAX slider to zero%, and then start and exit a game (UT2004 for example) then look at the EAX slider again, it is at 80% and the crackling is back. And if I turn the EAX back down to zero, the crackling is gone.

Also I have seen that the EAX controls are not consistent: I have a copy of Creative Playcenter installed, and if I open the EAX tab of the Creative Audio Console and the EAX control of Creative Playcenter and move one slider, the other does not move as well. If I turn the Creative Audio Console slider up, I get no crackling, but if I turn the Creative Playcenter slider up, I get crackling right away.

Sometimes if I start a song in Creative Playcenter, the crackling is back--and if I check the EAX slider, it's back up to 100%.

At no time have I seen the EAX effects get set differently; it always stays on [no effects].

So basically--I can stop the crackling if it happens, but I can't prevent it from starting again later, because I can't force the EAX effects slider to stay at zero%.

(Creative Playcenter is the audio player program that came with the earlier Soundblaster Live cards. It will work on Audigy cards too, but you need to get it off a SBL installer CD, as the Creative website only ever offered updates for it--they never posted the program itself for download)

Hope this helps.
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I noticed that the static will work with the EAX environmental effects--but not on the Advanced EQ effects. When you open the Creative Audio Console and choose any of the Advanced EQ effects, the slider goes to 100% and there's no static. SO perhaps it might be easiest to just choose one you like and leave it on that.

I tried to play with some of the other EAX effects (the studio effects specifically) and the Creative Audio Console basically locked up on me, and I had to reboot.... :|
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I found the same thing... i didn't have the problem when i bought the card but when i did driver updates it just went into a constant static.... i did kinda figure out whats... CAUSEing it. if i disable the Line-in2/Mic2... it compleatly stops... but.. i use the 1/4 line-2/Mic2 for recording. so it's been an annoyince... just wondering how you would disable the " turbo " setting in the registris he so hey.. since i do have a Via board.

I have been fighting this crackling sound for a while when I found this thread.
I have a Creative SB Audigy 2ZS in a Dell 4700. The noise got so bad that we essentially had to stop listening to internet radio or any audio function.

Tonight I shut down and swapped slots for a Linksys Wireless G card and the Sound card. The crackling stopped and all was quiet for 10 minutes or so and then started crackling again.
I shut down and removed the wireless card. (I am plugged directly into a router, so I don't need the wireless) and am now back up with a very useable sound system, although no wireless network access. To be fair, I don't think the card had been working for quite a while, and I had just plugged a CAT-5 in to the router and forgot about the wireless.
I will be interested to hear if anyone is using the Linksys Wireless-G and has the noise problem.
I am enjoying great internet music for the first time in months.

Ok So I was premature in the post above. After several hours of crackle-free sound, the static crackling sound returned with a fury. Tonight I removed the Audigy card altogether and changed over to the integrated sound on the Dell motherboard. No problems since I did that but I am humbled by my incorrect and all too optimistic diagnosis of the problem earlier, so I will just say so far, so good. I wonder why I bought an extra sound card anyway?

Some people above mentioned that the problem might be to do with Vista. I can confirm that this isn't the case as I run Ubuntu Linux 8.04 and I've got the same problem with crackling speakers - although it only occurs when reading from the DVD and CD drives.

I've got an Audigy 2 Platinum and a Soyo DragonPlus motherboard with a Via KT600 chipset.

I'll have a look at some of the suggestions people have made about BIOS settings and so on and let you know if I get any results.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ThePerson98

This is a problem through the motherboard mainly..

Have you installed any new hardware? Plugged anything new in?

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You saved me some trouble. My SB X-FI gamer started to crackle through the speakers and left SteelSound headset cup. I read this post and remembered I had recently installed an MSI Star key Bluetooth dongle with Bluetooth stereo drivers (which added two other audio devices). Removed same and viola, no more static or crackles!

I just found this forum trying to fix this very same issue. After reading this thread, I decided to just play around with muting different things. About 2 days ago, I muted CD Audio in the volume control, and that seems to have fixed it. I have done everything I normally do and it seems to have worked. I don't ever use the CD drive for anything anyway. I figured that I would let you know - might possibly work for someone else also.

Hey Gang,

I registered STRICTLY to emphasize on this problem of Static Crackling with or without actual sound playing..

Go to your sound controls and Mute that what you are NOT using. Having them all unmuted would cause this "Static" problem for me.

Muted Line-in , since it's not being used and Static b' GONE..

:eek::rolleyes:

Hope this helps.

Problem is not the sound card or the motherboard.. Problem is while Creative are great at making hardware, they are not as good at development of software. Their drivers are just crap compared to the hardware they produce.

Instead, goto this site: http://kxproject.lugosoft.com and get the drivers there. Any Creative Labs Audigy or EMU10k1-based soundcard, or E-mu Systems APS soundcard can be used with these drivers. some card such as Audigy LS and Audigy 2 NX are not compatible, but the ZS, Platinum, etc.. are.

Give em a try...

I have the same issues with static. Just bought the card yesterday to replace the onboard card that died. Anyone else have solutions or try the KX Project drivers?
I tried lowering sampling, muting all unused features (CD,Line In,etc.) no luck.

I'm using XP on older Shuttle XPC.

D

Alright, I have been suffering with Crackling/Popping on my Audigy 2 ZS for about 6 months. It started small, but grew more and more intense each day until finally we could no longer do anything audio wise with our pc.

So I read some of the other posts on this issue and tried a few things, nothing helped. Today I decided to start yanking everything that said Creative out of my Add/Remove programs and it worked.

There were 2 entries, from a recent driver update, called Creative Audio Console, and another called Creative DVD Audio Codec Plugin. When I uninstalled these 3 entries the crackling finally stopped, forever.

I was just about to go buy a new card figuring this one was dead, hope this helps.

I have been constantly having issues with my Audigy 2 ZS Gamer card for years ever since i bought the card in 2005 after Iraq. I did not have a noticeable problem with the card at first. Then came the crackling. I did not know what had caused it and had tried many things to get it to stop. After a fresh install of Windows XP, it worked again. No problems. Then my hard drive crashed. Fresh install of the same XP and it started back again louder. Long story short, I still have the same system (Minus the upgrade from ATI X800 AGP to Radeon 3850 AGP, a thermaltake passive 500W to a OCZ active 550W, and from 1GB Corsair RAM to 2GB OCZ Dual Channel, and to Windows Vista.) Guess What. The crackling was still there.

I began scouring the internet in hopes to find the issue of the problem because I don't have the money for an X-Fi right now. Come to find out, VIA and Sound Blaster aren't too compatible. There is too much noise through the PCI slot from the Sound Blaster. There were some unofficial patches here and there, but none of them worked for Vista. So I went to the VIA Arena Website and downloaded the new VIA Hyperion chipset drivers. *knock on wood* Worked like a charm. I'm about to load up World of Warcraft in a minute and surf the internet to see if there is any issues ( I usually get the noise while scrolling in Internet Explorer.)

Hope this helps anyone out there. It seems retarded, but we all seem to forget the little things.

I had the exact same issue with my Audigy 2, I solved the issue by going into the Creative Audio console and switching my speaker/headphone selection to headphones.

In the creative audio console go to the "speakers" tab and then the dropdown box to headphones.

Heres a screenshot: http://imgur.com/TAPEC.jpg

Hope this helps some people!

Hi, what worked for me was to mute "Phone"(Not Microphone) in volume controls. You have to check it in properties for it to appear. not sure if this would work for people here, but it worked for me and I hope it helps atleast someone.

I was able to fix this problem by lowering the sample rate from 192,000hz to 96,000hz. The problem happened at both 16-bit and 24-bit depth in the 192,000hz sampling rate. Go to your soundcard properties in the control panel and under advanced properties you should be able to change the sampling rate to whatever works for you. You will instantly hear the crackling go away, i hope this works for you

What about radio interference and buzzing on the speakers? That drove me mad until I wrapped the wire around a ferrite ring.

In theory, you and I could have solved the same situation two different ways. By lowering the sampling rate frequency I could made it so electronics couldn't interefere with the higher freequencies above 96,000hz. At 192,000hz, there's a lot more potential for EMI causing sound problems because there is higher sensitivity in the signal receiver. Someone please correct me if I'm off base here

Got it to stop crackling. I opened up Creative's speaker settings ( C:\Program Files\Creative\SBAudigy2\Speaker Settings\SpkSet.exe ) and de-selected "Synchronize with Control Panel." Then I reinstalled the latest driver and restarted my computer. Static has not been heard (for a day so far).

Hi Folks;

I registered just to let you know that muting the CD Audio option immidately fixed my snap, crackle and pop.

I got the idea from this thread. It seems that the problem was already cased several posts back and that people are missing the solution and muddying the waters.

In my case muting the CD Audio option fixed it. Others are finding that muting other options fixed it. The common thread is that muting options that are not required seems to be fixing the problem.....

I'm running an Audigy 2 ZS with the latest drivers from Creative.

Thanks for fixing my problem! I was about to peel open the case and solder a ground strap onto the card :) You saved me the bother by enabling me to fix it just by muting the CD Audio option.

If I sound like I'm repeating myself, I am. It seems a lot of people in this thread missed the common thread :D

had constant crackling and popping after installed new vid card dont know why all i know is try to disable 1394 in device manager. go to device manager. click on + by IEEE 1394 bus host. right-click OHCI 1394 thing. click on Disable. restart your compooter. it worked for me hope it solves yer problem. if it does indeed help you out spread the word lots of people with these audigy 2 problems

Solved the problem after 10 years and reading much advice . . . I have Dell 8250 running XP with a SB Audigy 2 card.

1. I used Sysinfo and determined that there are 3 devices sharing the SB IRQ (network card and 2 USB controller).
2. Could NOT manually re-assign IRQs vis HW properties or BIOS, so . . .
3. I pulled out the Dell manual and they noted that there was only 1 preferred motherboard PCI slot for the sound card. I had inadvertently moved the SB card to a different slot some time ago to improve air circulation around the video card.
4. Made sure all PCI cards were in the Dell recommended slot.
5. Used Sysinfo again and determined that SB now shared IRQs with video card and 1 USB controller. (You may want to note which USB in case using that causes problems in the future.)
6. Uninstalled ALL SB software and used a registry cleaner to ensure no remains.
7. Installed Creative Sound Drivers [Daniel K] (1-April-2008) � DRIVER ONLY.
8. Under Hardware | Device Manager, made sure all IDE controllers used DMA (not PIO). (Why? Because the IDE controllers share the PCI bus.)
9. Under Hardware | Device Manager, made sure all CD/DVD properties had UNCHECKED digital audit and VOLUME slider set to min.
10. Using the XP Volume Control Panel | Options | Properties � checked ALL playback boxes (e.g. display all).
11. Open the XP Volume Control Panel and MUTE everything except WAVE, and put all unused sliders to MIN volume. Hopefully, all noise and popping has cease and the sound is clear.
12. You will notice noise & popping (sometime violent) during boot-up until all of the correct settings kick in.
13. If noise is still heard, it is because XP periodically un-mutes some of the devices. Just open the Volume Control Panel and mute everything except WAVE.
14. ENJOY pure sound again!!!

The final fix and MOST IMPORTANT of ALL . . . re-install the original Intel Chipset drivers from your Dell Resource CD or the Dell website.

Mine required R41334. The driver set includes setup for: AGP, PCI, USB, IDE.