[fyleow]

I just got my Sennheisers 580 recently and finished building my CMOY amp. I'm using my SB Live and I notice ALOT of hissing in the background. Now, I didn't notice this before with my HD 497s and I'm wondering is this because of my amp or the SB Live? If I mute the volume (master) I don't hear it so I'm thinking it's from the SB Live?

 

[Vertigo-1]

Try muting the Aux and the Line In jacks. If you mute the Master and it kills the hiss, then the problem is definitely with the Sblive.

 

[jlo mein]

the soundblaster live is reknowned (i dont think i spelled that right

) for its hissing...

 

[fyleow]

I've muted every single thing except the Master and Wave and I still get the hiss. Guess it's time for a sound card upgrade....

 

[Maxi]

Quote:

Originally posted by jlo mein the soundblaster live is reknowned (i dont think i spelled that right ) for its hissing...

You are right there. With me after a sound card upgrade the hiss was gone. Besides, the Live! cards are known for another nasty thing; resampling everything internally to 48 kHz. The Audigy suffers from this too. No hope of getting bit perfect output there

Maxi

 

[fyleow]

This is so messed up, I returned my Santa Cruz about 3 days before I recieved my Sennheiser 580s. Sure the equalizer on the Santa Cruz was cool and stuff but I never had any driver problems etc with my SB Live (using Win XP default drivers with an Intel chipset motherboard). I never heard the hissing problem with the Live either, the only difference in quality between the Live and the Santa Cruz was that the Cruz was less boomy. Boy did the 580s change all that. Now I'm debating whether or not to go back to the Cruz. Is there any hissing at all on that?

 

[SumB]

The Santa Cruz is quiet Just so happens it has the highest S/N ratio and most linear frequency response of any consumer card.

 

[fyleow]

Sounds good, perhaps I will uhh "borrow" it from Fry's to give it another shot. I just tried my 580s + CMOY on my mp3 player and I'm spotting flaws as well

 

[JaZZ]

fyleow...

...with my SB Live Platinum, the hissing only appears under certain circumstances, e.g. activated CD or Line In. Try muting momentary superfluous inputs (setting the respective cross in the Windows mixer)! Maybe that helps.

JaZZ

 

[ahdat]

I have an audigy and a hd280. I used a spitter (im only using the front channels) to split the headphones and my cheapo speakers.
I tried hooking up the phones for the first time today straight from the sound card and i didnt hear any hiss at all. the hd280s are pretty revealing so i was kinda surprised that there wasnt any. the volume was set an normal and didnt throughly test it or anything but my initial impressions were impressive. Dont the audigy have something like a 100 s/n ratio? just remeber to mute EVERYTHING (mic, line-out, etc) except the main volume control and the wave vol control. Also try to isolate the card inside ur computer (put it far away from other cards) to reduce electrical noise. Not sure if the last one's true but i read it somewhere once.

 

[Born2bwire]

That 100 S/N stat is under rather ideal conditions. Muting all the inputs and using the digital signal and stuff. I don't see it as a real life stat because most people wouldn't be operating under the same settings (particularly using the digital output).

 

[klipschter]

move the sound card to a PCI slot far away from a video card, modem, NIC. in that order.

the satna cruz is the best musical soundcard for the consumer. next is the acoustic edge, then hercules gtxp and then creative. you can put the audigy whereever you like, but issues with creative keep it from being on the top of my list.

 

[fyleow]

Everything is muted and I moved it as far away as possible (that isn't too hard I only have 2 cards including my SB Live!). I'm using the drivers that come with Win XP, are there better ones out there that might fix the problem?

 

[Wykid1]

it's been a while since I had a SB Live! (had the Platinum with the breakout box), but I seem to remember that they did sound MUCH worse with the default drivers - try downloading the 'real' ones from www.soundblaster.com and see how it goes?

Swapped over to my current Hercules GTXP and have been overwhelmingly pleased by the results... OK, so it's not HiFi, but it's damn good anyway.

PS Woohoo! First post.

 

[klipschter]

i think creative charges now for the driver upgrades and updates.

GTXP FOREVER