Sound distortion when CPU is busy

[king4lex]

Hi,

For the past couple days I have had a weird problem with the sound on my comp. The speakers often crackle when any sound/music comes out of them. After poking around, I figured out that the crackling starts occuring whenever the CPU gets busier than about 50% and gets even worse as the CPU usage appoaches 100%.

Any ideas what could be causing this? It just started doing this a couple days ago for no apparent reason.

I've tried uninstalling the sound drivers and reinstalling the latest ones, but that did not help.

Any comments would be appreciated! :thumbsup:

--king4lex

 

[T9D]

It's most likely just electical noise coming back through the power supply. Mine has always done that. I can hear my harddrives too even. It's not really noticable unless I put my ear to the speaker though.

Some things that can help is trying moving some wires around. They can be to close to something on the motherboard thats putting out an electical or magnetic field.

Sometimes a line conditioner can help. But a better quality power supply might be the answer. I've been meaning to upgrade my power supply.

 

[king4lex]

I don't think that's it.

When I boot using an Ubuntu live CD, the sound works perfectly--no matter how busy the CPU is. It's only in Windows that it doesn't work right.

Let me preempt anyone from posting "just use Ubuntu all the time" by saying that I need to use Windows because of certain business programs (and also some, erm, you know....games ) that are only available on Windows.

 

[Ultralight]

What make is your sound card? Mine is an M-Audio Revolution 5.1 and I was having the same problems. Seems all I had to do was mute the CD/AUX box in my sound card control panel and it stopped. For some cards it is the In Line that needs to be muted.

 

[xolisaxo]

well i know i had almost this exact problem a couple of days ago, if what you're referring to is a stuttering/freezing type sound that occurs

what motherboard do you have? i have the P5B-D, and i'm guessing that it's more than likely due to the audio chipset onboard - i ended up having to install the 888111 hotfix from ms to fix it - i did some searching and it seems to have something to do with the HD audio bus...

usually this occurs BEFORE you are able to install sound drivers (meaning that technically if you can hear sound, this can't be the problem) but i encountered the same problem seemingly out of nowhere after it playing sound fine for a week or so... ended up having to reformat, installed the hotfix straight away and everything seems fine.. for now

i can send you the hotfix if you would like (not available for d/l on ms site).... sorry if this isn't your problem lol but thought i'd type this up just in case

 

[mindless1]

Post concise but complete details about your hardware.

 

[AllGamer]

re: tittle

Have you tried using a Sound Blaster Audigy or X-Fi, else you'll always get that using onBoards

 

[crimson117]

Originally posted by: AllGamer
Asus P5B Deluxe, Core2Duo X6800, 4GB (2x) OCZ Gold XTC PC6400, ATI AIW X1900 256MB, SB X-Fi XGamer Fatal1ty, LG GSA-H22L, 1TB (2x) WD5000YS RE2, 150GB (2x) WD Raptor 74GB, 600w Xion, Dual 19" HannsG HW191D, Sunbeam UV Acrylic, (5x) SilentX 14db Fan

Damn man sweet rig... but you need an nVidia 8800 series to top it off

 

[king4lex]

Originally posted by: xolisaxoi can send you the hotfix if you would like (not available for d/l on ms site).... sorry if this isn't your problem lol but thought i'd type this up just in case

Yes, send me the link. :thumbsup:

Originally posted by: mindless1
Post concise but complete details about your hardware.

Motherboard: PCChips M861G v1.6a w/AMD 64 Athlon 3000+ and 1GB RAM
Chipset: VIA K8M800
NVIDIA Geforce 4 Ti 4200 128 MB
Sound: on-board. VIA AC'97
HD: Maxtor 6B250R0 250 GB

Anything else?

 

[king4lex]

BTW, I added another hard drive to the system and did a fresh Windows install on the new drive. In the fresh Windows installation the sound works perfectly. So the problem is not that the on-board sound chip is screwing up--something must be wrong specifically with my old Windows installation.

Any ideas?

 

[crimson117]

Originally posted by: king4lex
BTW, I added another hard drive to the system and did a fresh Windows install on the new drive. In the fresh Windows installation the sound works perfectly. So the problem is not that the on-board sound chip is screwing up--something must be wrong specifically with my old Windows installation.

Any ideas?

With the fresh installation, perhaps you or windows installed a different driver for the sound chip? Or perhaps it was a corrupted driver or something in the old installation?

 

[imported_Imp]

SO what exactly are you running in conjunction with music/sound that's making the CPU reach 50%-100%?

If it really IS reaching 50%-100%, you've got the cause. Same thing happens with my system whenever somthing 'heavy' hits the CPU like a stupid browser flash ad/icon, while I'm playing a movie or music. I think Creative explained it best in 'trying' to tackle the snp, crackle, pop. ~When a video card or CPU takes on too much, it 'lags' by turning into a slide show. COnsequently, when a sound card 'lags', it responds by popping and cutting out. Essentially, I doubt you can do much about this, just try to ease down on running so many things at once.

 

[king4lex]

Originally posted by: Imp
SO what exactly are you running in conjunction with music/sound that's making the CPU reach 50%-100%?

If it really IS reaching 50%-100%, you've got the cause. Same thing happens with my system whenever somthing 'heavy' hits the CPU like a stupid browser flash ad/icon, while I'm playing a movie or music. I think Creative explained it best in 'trying' to tackle the snp, crackle, pop. ~When a video card or CPU takes on too much, it 'lags' by turning into a slide show. COnsequently, when a sound card 'lags', it responds by popping and cutting out. Essentially, I doubt you can do much about this, just try to ease down on running so many things at once.

Ya, but here's the deal: it didn't do this last week *no matter how busy the CPU was*. Something changed, and I don't know what!

 

[king4lex]

I did a Windows Repair Install and now everything works perfectly.

 

[SparkyJJO]

My guess is it must have been a driver screwup

 

[RaiderJ]

I had a sound issue years ago with hard drive activity causing audio distortion. Hooray VIA chipsets!

I used Powerstrip to adjust my PCI latency and it helped quite a bit. Might help you out too?