Audigy problems

Dustaz

I have an audigy platinum and it behaves a little strange. On startup when it plays its little tune, it crackles a little.
This was never a huge problem, until over the last few months i started getting very strange digital bursts while playing CS. it hasnt happened in other games, but 1. i play cs more than any other, and 2. it seems related to the startup crackles. These are really loud bursts of digital distortion which almost deafen me when im wearing headphones.

I know the first advice would be to re-install, but due to an 'Error 410 - Moron Flatemate too close to bin error', i have lost the cd wot has the drivers. Theres a new one on the way from creative, but im just wondering has anyone else noticed anything like this from the audigy cards?

TacT

c'mon busty dusty you're gonna have to give us more than that to work with mate
Motherboard specs etc pls sir!
Try a different pci slot.
If your using a via chipset you could try the pci latency patch from george breese available at www.viahardware.com
If you can't get it to work with no crackles/slight noise in a different pci slot and in combination with the above patch then you could try rma it for game theatre or a turtle beach santa cruz.
As a matter of interest what pci slot is the card in?

koneko

Yeah buddy, more system details!!

Anni covered it realy though. Diff slot, via updates. That thingee at startup, do u know what it is? Is it that little logo thing? If so, disable it. It's useless and annoying, I got rid of it asap (run> msconfig).

JustHalf

He's got a KG7 (RAID I believe).

Gerry

Hmm, well since I built the machine for you, perhaps you could have mentioned this to me before now? The chipset is the amd 761, with the infamous via 686b southbridge. Normally this amd/via combination is supposed to give less trouble than the via/via combination. Still, the pci latency patch should help, and the latest via 4-in-1 drivers.

astrofool

creative have launched new audigy drivers, but u have to order them from the creative site for €2. 300 megs worth, they won't launch them in patch form till august at the earliest, got them here, and seem to have fixed most problems I had.

Lemming

I've noticed similar issues as Dustaz before with my Audigy Platinum.

BUT, only with RtCW and JK2 (and ONLY at very certain times).

I think its something to do with the games themselves, and not the card, since with everything else it seems to be fine, and even during the games, for the most part, seems fine too.

BKtje

It appears to be the card/drivers as i got a problem with the AUDIGY where i suddenly lose sound in SOME of my programs that are running. Or the sound goes in all programs but if i start up a new one it works fine but the ones effected dont until i re-log onto the system.

I hope as you say that its just the drivers.

TacT

I'm gonna have to say, flog it on and ditch it for something like a turtle beach santa cruz.
Stay clear of any sblive cards with that setup

You may wish to have a read through this list of faq's for your motherboard, should find a fix in there if your not willing to replace the card for something else.

godsake gerry, how could you plaguerise poor old dusty with a 686b bug issue

Gerry

ah the 686b was inescapable at the time, I thought his machine was ok

_CreeD_

Installing Win2k/Xp (Which Im presuming it is) without ACPI usually does the trick (Did for me when all other patches/4-1 drivers failed). Though I'd give those new drivers a go first, the existing Audigy drivers are kak on all levels.

Dustaz

Eeek! Sorry, i seemed to have caused a bit of confusion!

Originally posted by Gerry
ah the 686b was inescapable at the time, I thought his machine was ok

Its absolutly perfect, the only reason i didnt contact you about this was i didnt realise the problem extended to motherboard issues.

Before i go on, i should point out im a complete luddite. I ask gerry about stuff, cos i know posting to this board will only end in embarrasment (random example: I cant hear stuff thru my cd drive <gerry>: Have you enabled Digital Audio playthrough? <me>: err, no ) I thought the crackle at startup was a corrupt audio file tbh

Anyway Specs are:
Win2k
amd xp1600
Kg7a raid (bloodyhell justhalf, how did you know?:) )
Audigy plat
gf2mx
512 ddr

The audio wierdness only occurs in counterstrike that ive noticed. I dont remember any lasting problems with other games and certainly never with mp3's or video.
Thanks for the help folks, ill try the patches mentioned - er, for the benifit of curiosty, what do they do?:)

Gerry

Ah, fair enough. Its actually both creatives and via's fault, but since you can't change the low level config of the sound card, the fixing has to be done on the motherboard side.

The pci latency patch changes some of the pci configuration registers, basically how long each device is allowed have the bus for.

afaik, the reason for the disagreement between the 686b and the sblive/audigy is that the sblive is very wasteful of pci bus bandwidth. It also takes too long to complete its transactions, and the via 686b is unwilling to give it the pci bus for that long, so you get incomplete transfers, and crackles.

On the via side, I think the chipset is slightly outside of the allowed latency for a particular request ( possibly a pci GRANT signal ). This causes problems not only with the sblive, but with any card that makes intensive use of the pci bus. Video capture boards drop frames, etc. The pci bus is supposed to have a bandwidth of 133mb/s, a german site measured this, and found that via chipsets up to the 686b era had about 60-70mb/s.

The pci latency patch brings this up to about 80 - 100, and also works around the other issues mentioned. Sorry for rambling post, head is very sore!

astrofool

the fault is actaully Via's, they left out a feature of the PCI bus in the south bridge, that some pci cards use, hence when it's not there, you get problems.

They admitted it a while ago.

TacT

finally astro, I blamed via myself and got flamed when I first joined up at viahardware
Although creative's driver support is shoddy at best imho.
Anyway dusty, try the pci latency patch, there are two of them try version 0.19d first or alternatively install powerstrip and change your pci latency bus manually yourself, that way you get to mess around with all the different values from 32-248 for the pci bus.

Diarmuid

Originally posted by _CreeD_
Installing Win2k/Xp (Which Im presuming it is) without ACPI usually does the trick (Did for me when all other patches/4-1 drivers failed). Though I'd give those new drivers a go first, the existing Audigy drivers are kak on all levels.

on that note, how do you do this? Supposedly it reduces the latency when recording? I've got a KT7a + Audigy and have had some problem (mostly fixed with latest bios + 4-in-1) but I cant upgrade my Audigy drivers as that f**kin installer with the latest audigy drivers doesnt recognise that I installed the original drivers from a the Audigy cd. but I digress. back to ACPI. Can I disable it or is it an install from scratch option.

JustHalf

Originally posted by Dustaz
Kg7a raid (bloodyhell justhalf, how did you know?:) )

Talked to Gerry about it a while back when he was building it for you. He said it was a very sweet board.

I also remember far too much of no real importance.

_CreeD_

There'sa good guide for this at www.viahardware.com, there is a method to replace your ACPI HAL with the STANDARD PC one without a reinstall but I don't recommend it. You're far better off biting the bullet and reinstalling without it.
You mentioned record latency, if you're mainly using it for music, and don't mind losing EAX then why not give the latest Kx Project drivers a go? I've found them to be much better than Creative's for audio applications.