connected to the power input but I still can get the noise in my left speaker...

The devil in me is so happy with this so I can justify my headroom micro dac purchase lol.

I also connected a audio cable from my dvd drive directly to my Xfi but how do i tell my xfi to use it. I still only can master the volume by wave and master shouldn´t I be able to use aux in or cd in knobs now instead? I suspect it still uses the PCI bus to transfer the sound.

As for my cd/dvd player should I enable digital output or only run analogue...

Quote:



No, the specs are there so that thousands of different PCI cards can work properly in thousands of different motherboards. They define the signalling, addressing and other specifics of how the PCI bus works. If you don't follow these, you risk having incompatible hardware, causing problems with other devices on the bus etc. If you violate an interface spec there's a good chance your hardware isn't going to work. The specs in question don't have anything to do with audio quality, they define the digital interface to the rest of the computer.

You might also want to have a read through this thread about the continued use of poor quality capacitors by Creative in these cards. It sounds like you're experiencing similar issues to those described there.

And for the record, I will never purchase another Creative card. Their business practices are shady, their products are sub-par for the price and they've stifled innovation in the market since they bought Aureal way back. It's very difficult to find any decent cards from competitors these days, not to mention that no competitor can really support 3D audio in games these days due to Creative's stranglehold. Not to mention that their drivers are complete garbage. kX Project is a vast improvement and exposes some of the vast functionality of the DSPs that creative hides away behind 'make all your sound echoey' presets, but it doesn't support the newer cards.

I believe it.

Another revelation: Windows "Sounds" are recorded in 32kHz, not 44.1. Whenever a Windows "Sound" is played, it could force the soundcard to try to change its sample rate sync if you are going directly to it (like via ASIO or perhaps via kernal streaming). When this happens, clicks will occur as the clock changes to 32kHz and back to 44kHz or 48kHz, whatever.

I had to disable accepting external syncing on my Direct Pro in its ASIO setup by checking "Refuse Sync Source Change Requests from ASIO applications". Just to be safe, I also selected "No Sounds" as the sounds-template from the Audio Control panel's Sounds tab.

I have the on-board sound disabled in the BIOS. I'm experimenting with turning the "Windows Audio" service off entirely in "Services" under "Administrative Tools", since the Aardvark card runs without it through the ASIO. Might need it, though, for other things, like programs expecting it to be there anyway...

Let me know if anyone tries this that it helps.

Terry

Bump for this thread - I'd like to hear more discussion of how people avoid crackles, clicks and pops on their machines!

Terry

I also got pops and clicks on the X-fi platinum. Got rid of that sound card (don't get me wrong, it's a nice one, but soundwise it doesn't cut the mustard, and I don't need its gaming proficiency) and installed EMU-0404.
No problem on it until, one cursed day, I reactivated the onboard sound card. From that moment on, the same old story, with sudden volume decrease on top. Uninstalled and disabled the onboard crappy sound card and everything is bliss. I've always been using Foobar2k and ASIO4All.
Of course, it may be my no-name power source unit in the PC, but my best guess is that I experienced some nasty software conflicts.

Sounds more like an interrupt conflict rather than a software problem.

On a sidenote: the X-fi's are PCI 2.2 compliant. You can't simply claim this as a manufacturer, compliancy has to be tested by approved firms. Some Via chipsets aren't 2.2 compliant, even though at the time of their introduction it was already out (and even in use). Most notable are the older versions for AMD CPU's: those had problems even with the amount of PCI streaming of a Creative Live. If you want the least amount of problems, you're best bet is an Intel chipset mainboard, simply because Intel invented the PCI bus.

Creative's driver quality (or rather lack of it) is famous, but what really puzzles me is the lack of PCI-Express cards. That would solve the problems of PCI streaming for good. Perhaps Asus' new model will be a good choice, at least Asus is using much more modern caps. Though I have my doubts about caps in the signal path. See: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multime...316205754.html

For those of you who have had the crackling/popping issue, how prominent is the sound? I think I am having the same problem but from the way some people describe it, it seems louder or more prominent than what I am hearing. I hear crackling in my left driver but it's faint enough that for a long time I wasn't really sure if it was there or not. I heard this on my Audigy 2zs and now I am hearing it on my new X-Fi Xtrememusic. It's really frustrating.

I've tried some of the stuff people have suggested but nothing seems to be working. I'm on an nforce 3 motherboard. I want to upgrade my computer and try a new motherboard to see if that is the problem, but I don't know when I'll have the money.

Very interesting - this just started happening to me as well. I have a Juli@ and I didn't add any hardware or change anything on my PC and I'm hearing subtle and sometimes not so subtle pops and clicks. For me it happens when I start up a program or surf.

I'll try some of the recommend solutions and see... uh, hear what happens.

Interesting.

Within the last month I had installed the X-fi XtremeMusic (one of the few). I had NOT had the crackle issues that people had been talking about (at the beginning). The creative software was killing my computer performance, so I got rid of all the extra garbage that it installed. Which made my computer happier.

Anyway, about a week ago, I started to hear the dreaded crackle start to happen. I have been pushing FLAC files through foobar. I was using the output level control from foobar to control the volume, speaker volume was maxed, and computer volume was maxed.

foobar signal......PC volume........Powered speaker volume.....Result
-40db to -60db......100%.........................100%....... ........Crackle = me

So, it seemed to be when I was feeding x-fi with a very small signal that it would have a problem. So after experimenting a bit. I set the foobar output to 0db (max) and then adjusted the PC volume to about 75% then controlled the sound level with my speaker volume. Crackle is gone.

foobar signal.......PC volume...Powered speaker volume.....Result
......0db..................75%............whatever I need.........No Crackle = me


So, it seemed as if the X-fi could not handle a weak signal strength.

Other thoughts on this? Other experiments?

Cheers,