Soundblaster Z crackling sound

[EsaT]

Crackling sound is HW issue in 90% cases with sound cards. Since I kinda collect and dissect them a lot. I had most of them. Crackling is latency issues due to some fault, mostly HW or HW conflict. If you don't hear it doesn't mean it is not there. The budget time is exceeded on some processes, or the driver is not compatible with latest WIN10 builds. Mostly none of them are.

For any suspicision of latency issues DPC latency should be checked first instead of always blaming single thing.
Whole lot of other stuff which can be the culprit instead of sound card.
http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

 

[Ferrum Master]

For any suspicision of latency issues DPC latency should be checked first instead of always blaming single thing.
Whole lot of other stuff which can be the culprit instead of sound card.
http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

Did you read actually the thread, including how many builds did he try? What he will see there now? On average it will show the same obvious things as it works fine.

The only real debugging could happen with trying the card in an another PC.

 

[Boombastik]

Disable the cpu package support in bios and it will be fixed.

 

[speedy77]

I can’t find anything about “cpu package support” even by Googling it. Do you mean your onboard audio drivers on the motherboard? I’ve turned this off, still with no luck.

 

[Boombastik]

 

[eidairaman1]

I've had problems similar to this with my last three Sound Blaster cards. X-Fi, Audigy Rx, Z. The only way I found to fix it was to clean out the drivers and reinstall them from scratch. That would stop any issues for several months, but they'd always come back again. Creative's drivers really suck.

Was this all in the same motherboard with same power supply and was onboard audio enabled were you using the same speakers across all those cards?

Because I've never had a problem with any of their drivers and I had a PCI 512, xfi and zxr

 

[natr0n]

Here is one some may remember. Many moons ago nvidia chipset boards nforce 2/3 with 4 gb ram and creative card would have all sorts of issues and cracking sounds.

 

[eidairaman1]

Here is one some may remember. Many moons ago nvidia chipset boards nforce 2/3 with 4 gb ram and creative card would have all sorts of issues and cracking sounds.

My board was nf2, only trislot.

 

[speedy77]

Yeah not seeing that option in my BIOS, and honestly it seems like a strange setting to switch off to improve the issue. Do you have any reasoning to turn it off or is it just a guess?

I'm guessing more than likely it's the Creative drivers interfering with some piece of hardware and/or driver on our systems. There's no reason that both my Elite Pro and ZXR aren't working unless they're both dead (which I find unlikely). If I were to guess different drivers are updating within the system at different times, causing some sort of conflict with the Creative drivers, which makes the sound card stop working after a few months just to be fixed once the appropriate driver is installed. Not sure what I can do besides carefully nurse the issue until they come out with new drivers or I can figure out what it's conflicting with. Super dumb if you ask me, and at this point I'm not sure if I'll be buying Creative again unfortunately.

 

[spectatorx]

1809 released, i'm going to install it on friday and after few days of testing i will let know if problem still exists like it was on 1803.

 

[Regeneration]

Try to use the latest official driver from Creative's website (blacklist the deviceid so Windows 10 won't update the driver automatically), disable C-States and try to plug the card to another PCIe slot (it should work on PCIe X16 slots). And last but not least, ensure the card isn't sharing IRQ with another major device (run devmgmt.msc > view > resources by connection).

 

[spectatorx]

Try to use the latest official driver from Creative's website (blacklist the deviceid so Windows 10 won't update the driver automatically), disable C-States and try to plug the card to another PCIe slot (it should work on PCIe X16 slots). And last but not least, ensure the card isn't sharing IRQ with another major device (run devmgmt.msc > view > resources by connection).

Haven't seen you in years, man, where have you been? Pls pm me, i have few questions to you.

 

[SKD007]

Try to use the latest official driver from Creative's website (blacklist the deviceid so Windows 10 won't update the driver automatically), disable C-States and try to plug the card to another PCIe slot (it should work on PCIe X16 slots). And last but not least, ensure the card isn't sharing IRQ with another major device (run devmgmt.msc > view > resources by connection).

Oh my god.. you are alive... happy to see a post from you man.

 

[speedy77]

Thanks for the reply Regeneration, super solid advice. Unfortunately I tried all of the above advice with no luck except blacklisting the deviceid as when I googled how to do it I couldn't find anything using that particular phrasing. Do you have a tutorial you could point me towards? The Windows auto-installed drivers may in fact be the issue.

 

[Regeneration]

Thanks for the reply Regeneration, super solid advice. Unfortunately I tried all of the above advice with no luck except blacklisting the deviceid as when I googled how to do it I couldn't find anything using that particular phrasing. Do you have a tutorial you could point me towards? The Windows auto-installed drivers may in fact be the issue.

You can download Microsoft's show or hide updates tool here: http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/2/2/f22d5fdb-59cd-4275-8c95-1be17bf70b21/wushowhide.diagcab

And if you have Windows 10 Pro, you can do it from the group policy editor (run > gpedit.msc).

Haven't seen you in years, man, where have you been? Pls pm me, i have few questions to you.

Oh my god.. you are alive... happy to see a post from you man.

Good to hear from you. I've been busy at work, life, dealing with terrorists, sport injuries, crazy girlfriends, crazy neighbors (don't know why, but I always attract the mentally ill) and time to time, beating cheaters on PUBG and trolling them by pretending to be a Chinese cheater.

 

[spectatorx]

You can download Microsoft's show or hide updates tool here: http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/2/2/f22d5fdb-59cd-4275-8c95-1be17bf70b21/wushowhide.diagcab

And if you have Windows 10 Pro, you can do it from the group policy editor (run > gpedit.msc).





Good to hear from you. I've been busy at work, life, dealing with terrorists, sport injuries, crazy girlfriends, crazy neighbors (don't know why, but I always attract the mentally ill) and time to time, beating cheaters on PUBG and trolling them by pretending to be a Chinese cheater.

I would love to talk to you in private mostly about things related to ngohq.com but not only this, pls pm me here or mail or at steam where i'm using same username as here.

 

[SKD007]

You can download Microsoft's show or hide updates tool here: http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/2/2/f22d5fdb-59cd-4275-8c95-1be17bf70b21/wushowhide.diagcab

And if you have Windows 10 Pro, you can do it from the group policy editor (run > gpedit.msc).





Good to hear from you. I've been busy at work, life, dealing with terrorists, sport injuries, crazy girlfriends, crazy neighbors (don't know why, but I always attract the mentally ill) and time to time, beating cheaters on PUBG and trolling them by pretending to be a Chinese cheater.

Same here my friend. Anyway. It’s so nice to catch you here.

Chinese cheater ? Lol nice

 

[Laurijan]

Ok with new soundblaster Z its a little better with the crackling. i only get crackling now when i stream something, videos and music when the connection is not perfect. So using a slow VPN makes it next to impossible to use the soundcard. most times with spotify and youtube without vpn i have no problems.

 

[spectatorx]

I'm after fresh install of windows 10 1809, listening to music since few hours and no issues, no crackling, no distortions, etc. Seems like this build is free off this issue. In few days i will report again if nothing has changed. Anyway so far so good.

 

[spectatorx]

Few days have passed and so far i haven't heard a single crackling nor distortion in audio and that is with 1809 and a regular driver for my x-fi titanium. Seems like audio issues are finally fixed in 1809 and were present only in 1803.

 

[speedy77]

Glad to hear you're clear of the issues! I am still having problems, though I found an interesting but seemingly temporary solution. It seems as though when I end the process "audiodg.exe" in the "Details" section of the task manager, my audio goes out for a split second, then it returns without any issues. Anyone have any info on what this process does?

 

[E-Bear]

Just a question : Why does people still buy sound cards when the onboard ones are really good now? We are not in the 90's anymore.

 

[Athlonite]

Just a question : Why does people still buy sound cards when the onboard ones are really good now? We are not in the 90's anymore.

Yeah na onboard is only OK if you have decent speakers a decent sound card is a must

 

[E-Bear]

Yeah na onboard is only OK if you have decent speakers a decent sound card is a must

In my case it's not a problem the quality. One ear I have difficulty catching the high and the other ear have difficulty catching the lows.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Just a question : Why does people still buy sound cards when the onboard ones are really good now? We are not in the 90's anymore.

Because good onboard sound is “good enough” for basic use, but not as good as it can be.