Anyone know a good soundcard for a VIA chipset?

[Grminalac]

I am looking to buy a new soundcard, i have tried a endless number of times to fix the problem of my sound crackling and popping on my SB live. Believe me I have done everything imagineable. I broke down, (after finding little to no hope from any member of the forum) and called creative. The tech told me; after I rambled off everything I had done, that yes people were having the same problems as i am. The matter is being looked into and will possibly be corrected in a driver update... I don't care to wait thas long, i want that annoying as heck card out of my system once and for all.
I was looking into the new philips line of cards, has anyone looked into them and know how compatible they are. I thought Aureal, but I'm unsure now that creative bought them... As for now its off to integrated sound land.

 

[jinsonxu]

Cracking and popping? When do you experience that? I only get a slight hissing sound from the speakers once the drivers are installed for the SBLive.

 

[Grminalac]

It basically happens anytime several wav files are played simultaneous.... It is BRUTAL in DIABLO II and baldurs gate II, dear god it made me stop playing the game... I did everything humanly possible, tweaked with settings. moved the card to different slots, changed computer to standard pc (instead of acpi) made sure it was on its own IRQ. Turned the cards acceleration down, made sure settings were for play only specified devices. so on and so on. Creative admitted to me something was up, they didn't say what they just said stay tuned.

 

[jinsonxu]

Several wave files played simultaneously? How many streams? Did you isntall Liveware?

Did you change the setting to increase the number of streams that can be played simultaneously?

 

[Grminalac]

Yes i have liveware 3.0 running Win2k pro.
The same problems occured with windoes 98 as well as millenium.
I have messed with the number of simultaneous wav files.
Actually this is what happens. Baldurs gate for instance.
I shoot a magic arrow, the sound works fine...
i shoot a magic arrow while someone is talking or another sound is played (not music) crackle pop crackle, sounds like a radio station recieving bad reception.
this happened before on my older system a PII 400 on a BX board but I only really remember it occuring during NFS IV; hearing the multiple car sounds caused glitches in the playback. i know there was a problem with Mechwarrior 3, when it was released that caused this to happen but it was supposedly fixed.
I have had no problem with playing dvd or listening to MP3's my only trouble seems to be with games, occasionally i get static while browsing or something, but not often. My only other guess is that possibly the board itself is bad, i admit I have not tried another board.

 

[jinsonxu]

Hmm, how about trying Quake3? I've played it like mad on 4 systems on a lan and 3 are using the SBLive. No problems there.

 

[Grminalac]

Unfortunetly I have... it pops and clicks and pops... driving me up the wall. i also tried removing every card in my system except the video card, and have tried 2 cards a v5 and a v3.
Just wondering what motherboard your computers are using, mine is running a GA-6VX-4X.
I have tried multiple bios updates as well as the IRQ miniport driver from VIA.

 

[Grminalac]

thanks for all the help, i'll tell you what, i'm going to go dig up a crappy hp celeron 500 my brother has packed away for going to college. i'll install my card and see if i get pops and crackles... If i do i suppose tyhe card is bad. too late to RMA i guess I have had it for some time.

 

[jinsonxu]

I tried them on the A7V, KT7 Raid, K7T Pro2.

 

[jinsonxu]

Not sure what's up. Did you install the Via4in1s?

 

[Grminalac]

yes, i have installed the 4 in 1s. Last ditch effort i can think of is to uninstall the 4 in 1's uninstall my drivers, reinstall the 4 in 1s then reinstall my driver. Although I'm pretty sure I have done this a while back. I have not tried the VIA 4.25 version, but I do not believe it updates the 4 in 1's

 

[jinsonxu]

I've been using 4.24

Usually install the sound card drivers from the CD first. Then the via drivers. Then Liveware.

 

[Grminalac]

sweet jesus. the clicking stopped, on one last try i turn the hardware acceleration down the entire way. and from what i can see quake has stopped clicking... I would like to try diablo II, the click champ, but it does not want to work right since i installed directx 8, and I cannot remove it without a reformat. I guess the card is basically worthless though considering it taxes the cpu about as much as the onboard would.

 

[Grminalac]

you say you are hearing hissing, have you gotten it to stop?

 

[jinsonxu]

Hardware acceleration? Hmm, interesting idea!

Well, the level of that irritating hiss varied on 3 different systems.

Was barely noticable on 1 of them and particularly irritating on another. No idea of the fix but i noticed that it appeared right after the drivers were installed and initialised. I had my speakers to full volume when installing the drivers, golden silence, then when the drivers were installed, wham!

 

[Mem]

Grminalac Very strange I`m using the following ,MSI K7T Pro(4.25a drivers),Geforce2 MX(6.31),& SBlive,with Win98 os1,been playing Baldur`s gate 2 for hours with no problems so I`m wondering if it could be a issue with certain boards?Anyway if you tried the usual like latest drivers,Irq`s ,moving soundcard to a different slot then I`m stumped.

Btw using DirectX 8 as well.

 

[Grminalac]

Yes a very strange problem, it seems as though a lot of people have problems with the sblives.
I had a hissing problem with my old awe 32. (when it was hooked up to my stereo system) I had problems due to the fact I had 3 different means to control volume, I completely got rid of the creative mixers and used the default windows one; the problem stopped. I would try getting rid of the audioHQ and all that stuff, maybe even check the environmental settings and make sure no effects are on... Then again you probably already tried that stuff. Have you tried the default windows 2000 drivers? They don't do anything special but they'll give you sound without all that super environment and mixer junk. Give it a shot and see what occurs.

 

[jinsonxu]

Well, for me, the hissing begun even before installing the Liveware crap.

 

[JellyBaby]

SB16 DOS emulation disabled in autoexec.bat/config.sys and in Device Manager? It should be. When enabled on my Via 133A mobo while at the same time I use a USB mouse, for whatever reason, I ran into trouble.

 

[AmdEmAll]

could it be his speakers possibly?? And doesnt turning Hardware accel down slow down games, etc?

 

[Grminalac]

Yes, it should put more of a load on the processor, but its better than hearing clicking and popping, i had turned it down to basic levels before with no luck, bit it does seem to work well with the software setting. Although it somewhat negates the point of buying a card when my software onboard sound would have worked just as well.