[Rainjam]

Had it happen today the first time. Just restarted my PC, suddenly that sound scared the **** out of me. Luckily I could turn down my speakers quickly. But oh wow, that was frightening. The card played fine for ~3 years, should I eventually get rid of it?

 

[MajesticTwelve]

  Had it happen today the first time. Just restarted my PC, suddenly that sound scared the **** out of me. Luckily I could turn down my speakers quickly. But oh wow, that was frightening. The card played fine for ~3 years, should I eventually get rid of it?

It's rather Windows 10 fault because I had it two times with my external USB DAC while watching youtube videos. Fortunately it wasn't as loud as with my previous Asus D1 soundcard. I noticed it always starts with muted audio in video, then white noise.

 

[bcschmerker4]

  Had it happen today the first time. Just restarted my PC, suddenly that sound scared the **** out of me. Luckily I could turn down my speakers quickly. But oh wow, that was frightening. The card played fine for ~3 years, should I eventually get rid of it?

 
 

  It's rather Windows 10 fault because I had it two times with my external USB DAC while watching youtube videos. Fortunately it wasn't as loud as with my previous Asus D1 soundcard. I noticed it always starts with muted audio in video, then white noise.

 
Indeed the Microsoft® Windows® 10.0.n audio stack has a regression from 7.0.8001/6.1.7601, which is the reason for puiling the STX from my Asus® CM1630-06 as upgraded and substituting a Creative Laboratories® SB1550, as the Creative CA10300-IAT is not affected by this regression.  The STX has a new home in my Hot Rod gPC and so far I've only had side benefits in ALSA 1.0.25 while fine-tuning the Hot Rod under Ubuntu® 16.04rc (LinUX Kernel 4.4.0-18-generic as of 17 April 2016) - ALSAmixer has access to features of the AV-100 DSP not even available in MaxedTech® UNi™ XONAR® Audio Software™ 1.90.

 

[mindbomb]

even within windows, it only affects applications that use the wasapi api. And spdif output is immune. And only the av100 soundcards are affected, so the xonar dgx is also immune.
 
So if i had to speculate, something about wasapi makes the av100 not convert to i2s properly for the input to the dac.

 

[powerincarnate]

I have had this problem for a while now.  It use to be very infrequent, but not it is happening much more frequently.  I can't remember if it happened in Windows 7, but my guess is it did.  It definitely happens under windows 10.  It also seems to be even lounder now, the last two times were really really loud.  It even happened to me last night.  I went to sleep and the computer didn't fully go to sleep because of some things running in the back ground... well around 3 am, I heard the very loud sound again.  Again, I heard the sound while sleeping 15 feet away, despite the sound coming through my headphones, that's how loud it was. 
 
prior to the STX, I had a Xonar Xense, and I don't ever recall that happening, and was wondering if I should try it.  I didn't sell the Xense so I still have it hear.  Any thoughts??
 
I thought the issue was the opp amps that I swapped in and was going to put in the original lm4562's back in, but after reading this thread, it appears some windows driver issue is the problem.  

 

[Aray]

Literally just happened again. I've been using the UNi drivers but sadly the problem still persists. This is absolutely ridiculous. Never going back to an ASUS product regardless, their Essence STX drivers make it clear they don't care about their products.
 
Normally I'd say screw it and 'downgrade' to Windows 7 but the hassle..

 

[bcschmerker4]

  I have had this problem for a while now.  It use to be very infrequent, but not it is happening much more frequently.  I can't remember if it happened in Windows 7, but my guess is it did.  It definitely happens under windows 10.  It also seems to be even lounder now, the last two times were really really loud.  It even happened to me last night.  I went to sleep and the computer didn't fully go to sleep because of some things running in the back ground... well around 3 am, I heard the very loud sound again.  Again, I heard the sound while sleeping 15 feet away, despite the sound coming through my headphones, that's how loud it was. 
 
prior to the STX, I had a Xonar Xense, and I don't ever recall that happening, and was wondering if I should try it.  I didn't sell the Xense so I still have it hear.  Any thoughts??
 
I thought the issue was the opp amps that I swapped in and was going to put in the original lm4562's back in, but after reading this thread, it appears some windows driver issue is the problem.  

 

  Literally just happened again. I've been using the UNi drivers but sadly the problem still persists. This is absolutely ridiculous. Never going back to an ASUS product regardless, their Essence STX drivers make it clear they don't care about their products.
 
Normally I'd say screw it and 'downgrade' to Windows 7 but the hassle..

Just as I suspected:  A regression in the Windows 10 audio stack.  I don't remember running WASAPI in the Asus® CM1630-06 as upgraded, is the thing, but OS events turned the 6 kHz howl on and off.  Microsoft Corporation has made Win 10 partial to Intel® High Definition Audio™, so it is possible that the Creative Labs® SB1550 (Creative Technology CA10300-IAT) and SB1570 (Realtek® ALC899) might run reliably where the OS is fighting the C-Media® CMI-8788 driver(s).  I've no problems to date with the STX under Ubuntu® 16.04.0-LTS, and ALSA has more controls in snd-virtuoso than the C-Media drivers have in any of Win 6.n or 10.0.

 

[mindbomb]

So yea, I don't know if we are talking about the same issue. But the full scale noise bug happens with the asus av100 processor and applications that use wasapi as the audio interface. It won't happen on linux or windows xp because wasapi doesn't exist on those operating systems. It also doesn't happen with the optical out, if you want to use an external dac. Also, the cards with the actual cmi8788 processor and not the asus processor actually work with wasapi for some reason. It's like they didn't copy the chip exactly but forgot to account for that in the drivers.

 

[Stalkholm]

Just created an account so I can participate in this discussion!  
  
I'm (almost) glad to see that I'm not the only one having this problem.  I've fought driver installations and audio settings and running in compatibility mode to no avail, thinking this whole time that I had severely messed something up.  It's nice to know that this isn't my fault, for a change.    
 
I've seen the suggestion of using an external DAC through the optical-out, I've got a Turtle Beach Ear Force DSS 7.1, would that work?  If not, could someone offer a suggestion for something that would?  
  
While we're on the subject: Would I still get the benefit of custom settings in my Uni Xonar drivers if I installed a DAC, or would it be a bitstream?  
  
I'm sure I have more questions to ask, but for the moment I'm just giddy to find out that there is a known cause to these issues.  Maybe it's dumb, but "Sir the giant lump in your side is cancer." is somehow more reassuring than "Sir the giant lump in your side has no known cause or potential treatments."

 

[BBr0ck]

Hi everyone.
 
This issue happened to me last night for the third or fourth time since january. I'm using an Asus Essence STX II, using studio monitor on balanced outputs - Win 10 x64. It happened lately either with the standard Asus driver or the UNi Xonar STXII 11.5 v1.80b r3.
 
Like many of you here, the ultra loud screeching noise only occured when skipping some random video on youtube (Firefox); it's totally random and quite frightening.
 
I bought the card in october 2014 (release), was on Win7 and never had the issue before I installed Win10.

 

[F4NAT]

Essence STX here too. And I think, I know the Problem very well. Unsuspectingly you're clicking through Videos, as you suddenly get raped by a Krrrrrrrrrk EEEEEEEEE!!!!!!
The solution for me is to unregister the asio drivers. This is how to do that:
 
- Press the Windows-Key
- Type: cmd
- Hold CTRL+SHIFT and press ENTER
 
------------ 64bit ------------
- Type: regsvr32 /u "%SystemRoot%\System32\cmasiopx.dll"
- Type: regsvr32 /u "%SystemRoot%\SysWOW64\cmasiop.dll"
- Press Enter.
 
 
------------ 32bit ------------
- Type: regsvr32 /u "%SystemRoot%\System32\cmasiop.dll"
- Press Enter
 
 
I created a small batch file as a one-click solution, but the Forum don't want me to attach it to this post. Not even zipped.

Spoiler: So I need to paste the code:

@echo off & whoami /groups /nh | find "S-1-16-12288" > nul ||(
 echo createObject("shell.application"^).shellExecute"%~s0",,,"runas"^&createObject("scripting.filesystemObject"^).getFile("%tmp%\.vbs"^).delete > "%tmp%\.vbs"
 start "" "%tmp%\.vbs" & exit
)
wmic cpu get addresswidth | find "64" &&(
    regsvr32 /u "%SystemRoot%\System32\cmasiopx.dll"
    regsvr32 /u "%SystemRoot%\SysWOW64\cmasiop.dll"
 )||(
    regsvr32 /u "%SystemRoot%\System32\cmasiop.dll"
)
timeout 5 > nul
 

 
Create the file: STX_Eeeek-Fix.txt and paste the code into it. Save, close and rename it to: STX_Eeeek-Fix.cmd  then execute the file.
 
 
Hope it works for you guys as well.
I recommend to remove the GX-Feature also. You will find it in Windows autorun and it can disabled by using tools like CCleaner or Autoruns. Or the Windows-Taskmanager, if you run Windows 10. The relevant entry should be named: Cmaudio8788GX(64). And should link to: HsMgr(64).exe. It's not related with the Problem described here for me. But I've experienced trouble with some programs, even if the GX-button is not marked in the Xonar-Center. And practicaly, it's useless anyways.

 

[BBr0ck]

Hey. I'll give your solution a try and do extended tests using earplugs Thanks.
Any idea what is causing this in the first place and why unregistering asio could help ?

 

[F4NAT]

I don't know which part of the driver exactly could trigger this behaviour. But I think it's also limited to a bunch of systems.
I just can say, that my STX got this problem from very first moment and from Win 7-10 (Board/CPU didn't change). And I always thought this is due to my overclocking or a little issue with my personal card. How ever, some day I started to modify the official Asus driver setup, just because I'd want to strip it down to the very basic needs of mine. So ASIO, GX and some other stuff done by the standard-setup, didn't even got installed on my machine. A very long time the problem didn't appear and I thought it's gone for any unknown reason.
 
Way later I registered the asio drivers for a testing session and forgot to unregister it after.
Some shocking krrrrrk eeeeeee-moments later I went crazy and asked my self: What did I do that this old mate suddenly thinks we could get friends again?!?!
It took me a while until I remembered of the asio driver registering. Unregistered it and... silence! - So good luck to you and all others.

 

[Aray]

just randomly did it again now.
 
it sounded like a jumbled mess for half a second before emitting a high pitch noise (imagine flashbang on CS)
 
i cant believe asus cant do anything about this. ill try your fix F4NAT

 

[techboy]

Did anybody try the fix?