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Sound problem - out of ideas

C

cardboardbox

Member
For some reason that I cant determine, I'm getting static instead of nice crisp sound. Its most evident in a game like Civ3 but it also shows up during mp3 playback, media player, etc. I've tried reinstalling original drivers, installing new drivers, formatting my hd :|, different speakers, and different sound card. No soup. Any ideas?

thanks
 
What slot is the sound card in? The PCI slot directly below the AGP slot shares an IRQ with the AGP slot, that may cause minor problems.
 
it 2 over from the agp slot

also i forgot to say this... it was working fine until about a month ago and the static has gotten steadily worse.
 
what's your soundcard?
i had that problem with my Hercules Game Theater XP,
i fixed it by going to win2k's sound and multimedia properties
set Preferred hardware playback to be GameTheaterXP instead of YamahaWaveSynth

somehow it switched itself to use the MIDI drivers, which make game sounds choppy etc. etc...
make sure your MIDI drivers arent chosen
 
i have a sound blaster live value and i also tried my older sound blaster pci512.... same problem for both so I dont think its the sound card. I looked in my sound and multimedia properties. Everything seems to be in order.

Thanks for trying though.
 
What m/b and chipset?

Read my post right here near yours about my similar problem.

With major tweaking you can get the SB cards to function, not great but acceptable, with via's chipsets. But for the most part it is a night mare.

CyBOrz PaCe
 
i forgot what the model was but its an Asus KTsomethingorother.... VIA chipset. K7 1.33 cpu. It was working fine since last april but about a month ago i started getting static.
 
Chances are it didn't "just start happening" a month ago. You must've done something that triggered this. Can you recall what you might've done?
 
This right here might be the patch you are talking about. KGBMAN posted it on my thread on the Sound Blaster and VIA problem. I haven't had a chance to try it yet but I will and I'll let you know.

CyBOrz PaCe
 
If anyone gets a chance to try the solution from VIA's site, I would be interested in knowing how it worked. The link is in my post above.

CyBOrZ
 
I think everyone is going about this problem all wrong. The issues would not have just started if it was the results of issues with the motherboard chipset, you would have always had that problem. This must be hardware related (or is most probably hardware related).

The obvious reason is your speakers. Try using the speakers you have on another computer or try hooking up a portable CD player to them and see how it sounds. You might also want to check your connection with the speaker lines (I do not think it is the connector but more probably the line itself).

Always check the little things first, they tend to be where the problem is.
 
fallen kell: yes!! you get what im saying now... of course the speakers were the first thing i checked 😛 Ive also swapped out sound cards and video cards. Next up is the nic. I know its strange but it really did start a month ago without any changes.

Ive noticed that it happens when im theres Im accessing the hard drives. So naturally I checked for dma and its enabled on both primary and secondary. It also seems to happen more when playing mp3s.

could my mobo be dying?
 
i have a dual boot on my system with win98 and win2k so i decided to try win98 and there was no static!!! Again, I didnt change anything to make this happen. Now I'm really confused. 😕
 
just in case anyone is still reading this thread...

I took out my nic and disconnected my 2nd hd and both cdroms. I took out both sticks of ram. Still have static. I tried moving my computer to where my other computer is and plugging it in there. Static is still there. 😕 😕
 
maybe your sound card is bad. Try another card. If it's the card, I would suggest getting a hercules game theater xp. I have had no problems whatsover.
 
i have tried another card... its also a creative card though... maybe after christmas ill grab a new sound card somewhere...

maybe ill blow away all the partitions on my main hd and start from scratch.
 
I have got the same static and I simply cannot find the problem . It started when I had DSL installed so I suspect that it is the Netgear NIC card
 
hmmm.....

You just said that it mainly happens when accessing the harddrive. I would say try moving the CD-Audio cable that connects from your CD-ROM (or DVD-ROM, or both if you have them) as far away from your hard drives as you can. Basically re-route the wires so that they do not travel close to the HD's that you have. It is very possible that these lines are picking up noise from the magnets in the HD's, basically the moving magnetic field in the HD's are causing and electro-magnetic current in the stationary metal wire that the CD-Rom audio uses, and this current will basically be interpreted by the sound card as sound input, but it will just sound like clicking and popping sounds. See if this helps you out.
 
good idea but i tried that a few days ago... Heres an example of what happens: If I play Civ 3 I get a ton of static when the music is playing. But if i play those same mp3s when im not in the game, no static. It seems like resources have to be in use for the static to occur. Hard drive access gives me static among other things. I've already checked my ram. Its ok.
 
have you checked your Mixer to see what options are there (the speaker icon). Doubleclick on it, choose Options, then Properties. Put a checkmark in EVERY box so they all show up. One by one, start muting all except your master and wave outputs. See if static is still there or gone. You might have something in the "potted up" position that's not even showing because there's no checkmark in the box to make it appear on the mixer. Muting it may solve the problem.
 
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