htpc audio pops whenever a sound stops playing

[chansigrilian]

htpc specifications:

amd athlon x2 4200+
gigabyte ga-m57sli-s4 v1.0
patriot 2gb ddr2 800
razer barracuda ac-1 (sending audio to my receiver via optical audio)
evga 7900gtx
rosewill 550w psu
windows xp sp2

basically 2 issues, the main one being whenever a sound stops playing (windows sounds, music, games video etc.) a couple of seconds later i get a pop on the speakers; it would seem the stream ending causes this. while playing the game or a movie, it doesn't interrupt the game/movie at all, but when you close the application you get the pop a couple of seconds later... so it isn't killing me but i sure would like to get it addressed. i did not have this issue when i was using the onboard audio. i have updated the sound card driver and the mainboard drivers. i have read somewhere or other that the sound card may basically hibernate when not in use and am wondering if this is possibly related, both to this and my next issue, which is...

second issue is a lag issue, sounds do not play immediately (or at all if it is a very short sound, such as the windows asterisk) particularly in windows. once the stream is initiated, it has no problems and everything is in sync. basically the first couple seconds of a stream are cut off, and if the sound (stream) is short enough it does not play at all.

i have also wondered if this is related to irq sharing, or a pci issue. specifically i mention the pci issue due to having 2 pci slots, 1 which has the sound card, the other has an internal usb hub. i have all 4 spots on the usb hub used as well as 3 of the direct usb slots on the mainboard. i do not suspect this is causing my issue but figured it may be worth mentioning; none of the other devices have lag issues. i have checked the device manager for irq conflicts etc and haven't seen anything that raised a flag. i'll be getting into the bios tomorrow to see if anything jumps out at me, but i'm thinking the irq sharing/mainboard resource configuration is likely part (if not all) of the issue.

any help is appreciated here, i have tried troubleshooting these myself and have not gotten far. i have also searched the net and the forums with little to no success. thanks at :wavey:

 

[chansigrilian]

argh no help

halp me at :x:

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

It's probably a problem with the encoding of a DD stream from your card taking a while to start (if you have it set to that). My X-Mystique had a similar problem. To solve it for my computer, initially I used a low-resource hogging program for playing sounds and ran it on an infinite loop playing something at 0 volume. This kept the soundcard "ready" while not interrupting anything else. Later I found out that there was a setting my particular card's settings that served the same purpose.

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
It's probably a problem with the encoding of a DD stream from your card taking a while to start (if you have it set to that). My X-Mystique had a similar problem. To solve it for my computer, initially I used a low-resource hogging program for playing sounds and ran it on an infinite loop playing something at 0 volume. This kept the soundcard "ready" while not interrupting anything else. Later I found out that there was a setting my particular card's settings that served the same purpose.

That would be enabling magic voice on the CMedia sound chipset.

 

[chansigrilian]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
It's probably a problem with the encoding of a DD stream from your card taking a while to start (if you have it set to that). My X-Mystique had a similar problem. To solve it for my computer, initially I used a low-resource hogging program for playing sounds and ran it on an infinite loop playing something at 0 volume. This kept the soundcard "ready" while not interrupting anything else. Later I found out that there was a setting my particular card's settings that served the same purpose.

i believe this is exactly the problem. where did you find this setting? i do not find anything in the razer software allowing this, nor is there anything in windows (where i would expect it to be). any help with this? or, alternately, what program did you use to always keep the sound card active? thanks for the help

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: chansigrilian

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
It's probably a problem with the encoding of a DD stream from your card taking a while to start (if you have it set to that). My X-Mystique had a similar problem. To solve it for my computer, initially I used a low-resource hogging program for playing sounds and ran it on an infinite loop playing something at 0 volume. This kept the soundcard "ready" while not interrupting anything else. Later I found out that there was a setting my particular card's settings that served the same purpose.

i believe this is exactly the problem. where did you find this setting? i do not find anything in the razer software allowing this, nor is there anything in windows (where i would expect it to be). any help with this? or, alternately, what program did you use to always keep the sound card active? thanks for the help

Try clicking on the little wrench next to the voume control for the microphone in the Razer drives. See if the magic voice option is there. I spent a while looking through the drivers as razer makes their own and does not use the standard UI.

 

[chansigrilian]

Originally posted by: PurdueRy
Try clicking on the little wrench next to the voume control for the microphone in the Razer drives. See if the magic voice option is there. I spent a while looking through the drivers as razer makes their own and does not use the standard UI.

great idea! i tried clicking on the wrench, i have driver version 1.2 (the newest one on razer's website) and the only options there are "microphone boost" and "monitoring (microphone to line out)"... unfortunately neither has helped one jot :| the one next to that, spdif in has a wrench and the advanced options there are "validity check" which is checked and monitoring (spdif in to line out)" and i've tried every combination of those with no success

i truly believe my sound card needs to be prioritized somehow or kept in a constant "on" state, this is killing me over here lol

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: chansigrilian

Originally posted by: PurdueRy
Try clicking on the little wrench next to the voume control for the microphone in the Razer drives. See if the magic voice option is there. I spent a while looking through the drivers as razer makes their own and does not use the standard UI.

great idea! i tried clicking on the wrench, i have driver version 1.2 (the newest one on razer's website) and the only options there are "microphone boost" and "monitoring (microphone to line out)"... unfortunately neither has helped one jot :| the one next to that, spdif in has a wrench and the advanced options there are "validity check" which is checked and monitoring (spdif in to line out)" and i've tried every combination of those with no success

i truly believe my sound card needs to be prioritized somehow or kept in a constant "on" state, this is killing me over here lol

Yes, that was an issue with the CMedia cards. Very easy to fix in any of their cards that use the default drivers...I just don't know if its in the razer drivers. I can't seem to see it anywhere in the menu's.

 

[chansigrilian]

welp i have been playing around and have gotten nowhere really.

originally i had simply disabled the onboard sound through the bios, figuring that was the best way to go. after some consideration i re-enabled it and went in, disabling it in the control panel. i tried removing it altogether, uninstalling the driver for it and all manner of other things... sometimes i had thought i had met with success only to have the vicious problem crop up once again

i have not found a solution yet, purduery i really do appreciate all your help, thank you. unfortunately my quest continues :|

 

[chansigrilian]

so i find out after some research that this card has the cmi 8788 chipset... the same one used in other cards that have reported this issue

 

[chansigrilian]

i wonder if it's worthwhile to uninstall the razer driver and install the cmi8788 driver? may be worth a try.

 

[chansigrilian]

did not work. i notice the pop is when the audio signal from my pc stops being received by my receiver. it goes from showing dts to not showing it, then it goes from 5.1 to 2.1 and there is a pop. the signal from the pc ending definitely causes this issue.

interestingly, the issue with the sound not being produced right when the sound is generated on the pc shows that the receiver is in fact receiving some information since it shifts into 5.1 as soon as i click a noise but there is a scratchy noise from the speakers and nothing else comes out. the sound will only be produced if it in fact shifts into dts.

there is definitely an issue with the card not outputting all the time to the receiver :|

when i go to digital audio but not dts/ddl (i.e. 44.1 khz) it outputs in 2.1 normally (even if i have it set to 5.1) but there are no end of stream issues, i.e. popping. the lag issue is still there, but seems reduced and does not produce the occasional scratchy sound when starting an audio stream.

just updating the thread really.

 

[chansigrilian]

so... i've made some progress. i've set windows media player to start when the system boots, running in the background at a zero volume with a short looped clip. the problem is gone. the receiver is constantly receiving a data stream, so no popping, no audio delay, no audio problems at all, except for a pop when shutting down.

now i just need to figure out a way to start media player minimized (hence the media controls on the taskbar and not an expandable window like a normal app), or in the system tray or something.

i've installed wmp 11, used the wmp powertoy to send it to the system tray, tried various things but soon as i reboot, there is wmp big as life. best i've come up with is the option under... well, options: "start the mini player for files that contain the text" and then i named my short looped clip. so it starts in mini player mode, which is better than nothing i suppose.

:| at having to make a workaround, wish i could find the original problem

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

I'm glad you at least have a messy fix going.

I don't remember what program I used when I used this same method, but I know it was something less obtrusive than windows media player.

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: chansigrilian
so... i've made some progress. i've set windows media player to start when the system boots, running in the background at a zero volume with a short looped clip. the problem is gone. the receiver is constantly receiving a data stream, so no popping, no audio delay, no audio problems at all, except for a pop when shutting down.

now i just need to figure out a way to start media player minimized (hence the media controls on the taskbar and not an expandable window like a normal app), or in the system tray or something.

i've installed wmp 11, used the wmp powertoy to send it to the system tray, tried various things but soon as i reboot, there is wmp big as life. best i've come up with is the option under... well, options: "start the mini player for files that contain the text" and then i named my short looped clip. so it starts in mini player mode, which is better than nothing i suppose.

:| at having to make a workaround, wish i could find the original problem

If you installed the standard CMedia drivers then just go enable magic voice.

 

[chansigrilian]

following the cmedia driver installation it promptly requested a cmedia device... which i do not have exactly. so... it stopped installation. basically it didn't go as well as it could have

 

[chansigrilian]

welp i've finished with this and here was my solution:

i created a web page with the desired wallpaper as background and an embedded muted infinitely repeating audio file.

no further delay when an audio stream starts and no speaker popping when the audio shuts down, except when the pc shuts down of course.

it eats up next to no resources and is no way visible or noticeable.

just figured i'd share since i found a workaround, saving it here for posterity's sake. i wish i could find the original issue but alas it was not to be.

thanks for all the help at