Audigy 2 crashes (or something)...

Blue Ion

I own an Audigy 2 attached to a ASUS P4S800 mobo.
Apparently these two pieces of junk can't get along, and from time to time the damned sound card crashes and after that every time something tries to play something a click and pops sound, and randomly very annoying hiss, crakcling sound comes out.

I enfatise the fact that is just the sound card the one that stops working since the rest of the computer works perfectly. Except that music players can't put any sound (music timers stay put or just play the first half of second, but the program keeps working).
In fact, I can just hibernate Windows and after that everything works fine.
I've been having these problems for a LOT of time (ever since I bought these 4 or 5 years ago I think) and for the record everything I can think of is updated.

It crashes earlier when I'm playing games that probably uses hardware acceleration, though since modern games (like Bioshock) stresses more the hardware I'm having one hell of a time with it, and I rememeber it wasn't that bad.

Recently, to try to finish the game properly I've installed the kx drivers in an attempt to avoid these crashes (at the expanse of hardware acceleration and eax for the games, the main reason I bought this thing in the first place) but today it crashed AGAIN putting me on the verge of throwing away the thing and using the builtin sound card, with all its AC'97 suckiness.

I've rememeber checking PCI latencies and some stuff from the bios settings and everything were fine, also doing fresh installs,... (seriously, I've been having these problems for so long that I don't even remember what I did).

I'm keeping the kx drivers installed in case there is a way to debug the thing using those drivers, so...
ANY help is really appreaciated, so at least I can desist trying to fix this in case we run out of ideas.

Thanks for your time.


PD: Forgot to mention that with the original drivers, when the thing crashes only one program manages to output sound. Open ModPlug Tracker when set to use the DirectX driver at 48000 Khz, Stereo, 32 bits, using the secondary buffers and a buffer of 30 ms. Even when the music is playing, the annoying crackling and hissing still appears randomly.
Now with the kx drivers, at least programs that uses ASIO works (and at least the noises no longer attack).

PDD: Mmmm, I've been reading the kx help and I may have trouble with my ACPI aware motherboard and HyperThreading enabled CPU...
I can disable those features, but I'm interested in them, as well as the sound card hardware acceleration and eax.

Robert McClelland

Did you try my drivers? If not wouldn't hurt get new xfi card like music or something there getting cheap.

__________________
"XTREME AUDIO IS CRAP!" "There no support for it. It's crapist card on face of the earth it should be throw into the sun"

http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2242746

tcman

Maybe more info or specifications on your pc system like:

- which Windows OS are you using: 98, ME, 2000 or XP?
- in which pci slot is it (your mb got 5 pci slots)? IRQ problems/conflict?
- You have disabled the onboard sound in the bios of the mb?

In case you are using Windows 9x OS you should try the vxd driver instead of the wdm driver which just works well under windows 2000/XP. The vxd driver is on your Audigy 2 install CD. With wdm drivers installed on a Windows 9x I experienced cracking and popping sound with the Audigy and soundblaster live series in the past.

Also try your soundcard in a different pci slot. And do not forget to disable the onboard sound in the bios.


Good luck!

Blue Ion

Thanks for the replys
ok, I'm running Windows XP SP2, the sound card is placed on top of the pci slots (right near the agp card) and the onboard sonud is disabled (it's not even installed in windows).
Right now I have no conflicts within the system, asaide from an unknown device that I can't figure out what it's for, but I believe it is something for the X800XL. One friend lend me this card 6 months ago, earlier I had a Radeon 9600 Pro and it was the same.

You mean the YouPax drivers, don't you?
I've just installed them, and so far so good, but I wont hold my breath.

I was holding back on buying anything new for the computer, since lately the thing has been having other problems of their own. And perhaps get a PCI-E version of the card (so I can use that spare PCI-E 1x slot).
I remember I used to have the card in the second slot (to keep it away from the graphics card that tend to heat up).

I have installed the 4.09A ones though now when I enable EAX under the game, the sounds pop in and pop out until it crashes...
Is there any issues I should be aware?

Thanks again for the help

tcman

You mean the first pci slot directly near the agp slot? the first pci slot shares irq with pci 5, wifi slot, and agp slot. Maybe try other pci slots like the second pci slot (since you already disabled the onboard sound so no irq sharing between the Audigy 2 and onboard sound) even when system information says there's no conflict.



Hope this helps!

Good luck!

Blue Ion

So...
Theoretically Slot 2 shoud have no shared irqs (since the onboard audio chip is disabled), and Slot 4 shoudn't have no shared irqs ever.

Results?
The card spent the first 3 years in Slot 2 and there where problems, now Slot 4 and situation have not improved...
This happens with the official drivers.
So far I haven't experienced any sound crash with the modded drivers when the card was in the slot 1.
I'll see if they work as well with slot 4.

Robert, does your driver support both EAX and hardware acceleration (unlike kx)?

The time I tried it with Bioshock, the game sounded real bad (with sounds finishing early, others starting late...) and a final crash of the game.

I'm going to try again the 4.09A form your page.

Blue Ion

Perhaps I spoke to early to soon about the youpax drivers.
They DO support hardware acceleration and eax, and they DO crash as well.
This time the card is at slot 4.

(what the hell is wrong with my system...)