Son_of_Thunder

ok, the other day i bought an audigy 2 ZS (a few other posts about it) but had some fairly major problems w/ it in cs:s and cs and also w/ mic quality.

today i returned it and bought a sblive 7.1, out of game sound is the same as the audigy as far as i can tell, mic quality is BETTER but game quality is worse. also in cs:s where i had popping and snapping w/ the audigy, i now have stuttering and reverberating sound effects, but only on aztec. also whenever someone fires the famas in 1.6 my sound dies until they stop. every sound in the game just turns into popping.

now here's my main reason for being lost:

when i balance out the good and the bad for these newer cards, my 6yo ess solo-1 breaks even w/ them. am i doing something wrong? it doesn't seem right for a 6yo card to have advantages over a newer 100 dollar card. or for a 30 dollar card to have advantages over a 100 dollar card.

what should i do? my old card is too old...it puts too much stress on the processor, but the new cards both have audio errors that i can't tollerate. what should i do? return the sblive and pick up a turtle beach santa cruz? stick w/ the old ess solo-1? get a different audigy?

please help!

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CDsDontBurn

have you disabled the on board audio when you have either of the two newer cards plugged in? Have you tried the on board audio? Maybe you just happened to get two bad cards? all are possibilities.

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Son_of_Thunder

the onboard audio can't be disabled via bios, so i uninstalled it and then didn't allow it to re-install, then disabled it in device manager.

now i just re-installed my drivers for the sblive, and cs 1.6 is all cracks and pops and distortion...damn this sucks...

--edit--

other than the mic being worse, the onboard audio is exactly like my ess solo-1

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CDsDontBurn

why can't the onboard audio be disabled? it should give you the option to disable the on board audio under "integrated peripherals" menu of your BIOS. if it doesn't have it, try flashing your BIOS to the newest available BIOS.

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Son_of_Thunder

i actually have the newest bios for my mobo...they just suck really bad.

my mobo sucks horribly, no advanced options really, just ram timings and processor speed, no agp/pci locks, no agp aperature size, no onboard sound options, hell, it has cpu overheat protection, but the minimum temp is 85 degree's celcius.

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CDsDontBurn

damn, i'd say change out the MoBo then. it's really lacking in options overall, not just advanced options.

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Son_of_Thunder

i'm planning on changing the mobo very soon, as this one seems to be dying. that's another strange thing, i'd like to get the neo2 plat, do i even need a new soundboard or is the onboard good enough on that?

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dj_stick

no PCI lock? that's your problem

reduce your overclock until the PCI bus is at 33mhz

then your sound should be fine

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Son_of_Thunder

bleh, still haven't updated my sig, my overclock has been undone because my mobo can no longer handle ANY overclock and constantly freezes.

do you guys see why i want a new setup

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CDsDontBurn

of course we do. Well, i'd say get an Abit NF7-S (not NF7-S: S2) MoBo or an ASUS A7N8X-E Delux MoBo. Both are awsome boards, and you still get to keep your xp2800 and everything else as well.

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Son_of_Thunder

true, and i do need to save some money, but since the 2800+ is getting old, and isn't really great for newer games, wouldn't it be better to upgrade to something that will last a while?

i'm still looking at a 90nm 3200+ setup, but now i'm also looking at my wallet.

i just had my car insurance bill come in and i paid half of it today, and another half in a month. then my car got in an accident and i had to pay a 100 dollar deposit on it, now it's not running right and so far just the diagnosing is costing me 225 bucks...and now school is coming around and i'll be putting about 800 in just for part time classes at the local CC.

so one of those boards might be a good idea...but i don't know...i'm so broken up about all this stuff...

real life sucks.

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CDsDontBurn

ahhh....dude, i know exactly what you're talking about. Just see what you can afford. Even if newer games don't play all that great on your xp2800, be greatful that you can still play them at least. If worst comes to worst, bust out a small loan large enough to get yourself a s939 3200+ 90nm, and a board to go along with it. You can still still keep everything else. Looking at your siggy there and really, besides the MoBo CPU upgrade, i'd also look into another gfx card. Again, if you don't want to break the bank a 6600GT would do you fine.

But whatever you do, take it one step at a time.

EDIT: oh yea, you can also sell off some of your old stuff to some peeps you know to help pay for the expenses.

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Son_of_Thunder

ok...um...i got an email telling me there was another response...but it's not there now. anyways.

yah, i do have another vid card somewhere. it's been a while since i posted anything about it though. i bought a x800xt from xpcgear.com...when i got it the ESD bag was torn open and the card was loose in a bunch of styrofoam packaging peanuts. but i tried it out anyways and it crashed a lot and gave missing textures and overheated and glitched up and artifacted in windows. i sent it back for a replacement and they refuse to replace it. they say that other than a few minor errors it works great and gets a whole 8000 points in 3dmark03!!! yippee!

so now the credit card company is "investigating it" of course it's been 3 months now w/out a word about it...and we've got 460 dollars of temporary credit on our card...but we don't dare to use it. i was satisfied using my r9000 128MB, but then that died, and my old fx5600xt was crap...i sold it to a guy for 95 bucks and bought my 9550XT.

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Mr_sampler

Dear thunderstorm errr... Son of Thunder:
U already partly pinpointed the cause of your problem: -that the old soundcard
was already overtaxing your processor..

So it's only normal u get all manner of clicks and pops with the Audigy 2 zs!

Strange still for i'm using a P III celeron 900Mhz overclocked to 1.1Ghz, mere
SD RAM set to "turbo",etc etc and I dont have these problems with my Aud. 2 zs plat. pro!

Well i used to have clicks and pops when playing MIDI in my sequencer with
my older card ( - V.I.A "southbridge" problem, so they say....)

But now i DONT use the soundfonts on the card anyway: I use VST or DX synths, even soundfont players in vst versions!! - no clicks whatsoever!

So ensure these (though i'm not into games ...i'm into audio-sequncers):-

1: dont use the card soundfonts in yr games.Ensure the sound comes somewhere else, like the sounfonts triggered by a dedicated sequencer/ SF2 player coupled to yr games

2: U may also check LATENCY isnt too low, overburdening yr processor.I dont know yr setup, but look for things like "number of buffers, latency time to be 5mS, etc)

3: RAM should be at least 512Mb

4: antivirus and firewall MUST be off -running them in parrallel only taxes the processor and hence the sound further.Very often we forget to disable them
when running heavy programs...

Son_of_Thunder

hey sampler, thanks for responding. i know that numbers 2-4 are all good, but don't know anything about soundfonts...

i'd ask for more help but have decided to return the sblive that i bought. i'm just going to run w/ my onboard audio for now.

also, what i meant by the old card being to taxing on my processor was that the processor was devoting too much power to keeping the sound sounding good. from what i've read the newer cards take a lot of stress off from the processor, and in a game like CS:S you need all the processing power you can get.

anyways, as soon as i get the money together for a new mobo i'm going to get one...and good onboard sound is something i'm searching for.

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