thedarkwolf25

Ok this has me baffled:

I have a Sound Blaster Audigy 4 LS series that I have had for about 3 years with no problems.

Recently I have started to have intermittent sound degradation. Whether the source is coming form the internet such as a live radio, or from my own music library, the sound will sometimes start to crackle and pop, OR it will stutter as if it's lagging.

I have updated the drivers, which did no good. I rolled back the drivers and the problem still exists. I completely uninstalled the device and all drivers and did a reinstall and still no-go.

This problem has even occurred in Battlefield 2142. I have also noticed that it SEEMS to be related to high CPU usage, what I mean is when my CPU usage spikes the problem occurs and then vanishes as the usage lowers.

I can even simply restart the program, or sometimes the computer, and the issue is gone. At this point I am completely lost, search via google yielded nothing.

Any help would be appreciated. Here are the rest of my specs:

MOBO: Abit IP-95
RAM: 4GB PQI DDR2 533
CPU: Intel Core2 Duo E6600 2.4GHz
Video Card: GeForce 7950
Sound Card: Sound Blaster Audigy 4 LS Series
HDD: x3 (2 WD ATA Slave drives, 1 Maxtor SATA System drive)
Optical Drive: Samsung DVD Burner (I forget the model and it doesn't really matter lol)
Case: Xclio A380 Black Full Tower

zerofire

Sound Blaster Audigy series cards perform all of their sound correction in software so maxing out the CPU can at rare instances cause issues such as yours. You might want to replace your card with a Sound Blaster X-Fi series card other than the Xtreme Audio. Additionally you could upgrade your CPU although a new card would be cheaper.

Before you go and do the above you should make sure that the integrated video card and sound card are disabled in BIOS. If I know many people then the inside has not been cleaned recently. Clean the dust out of the case especially considering the circuits of the sound card. Visit Creative's website and use the auto update feature. Make sure to download all the stated packages even the ones labeled optional.

thedarkwolf25

Thanks a ton Zero, I'll look at maybe getting a new card. Computer is clean and I am pretty sure that the default sound is turned off, but I'll check anyways.

Riskyone101

Hello,

Did you go here for the audio driver:
http://support.creative.com/Products...prodName=Sound Blaster Audigy LS&subCatName=Audigy&CatName=Sound+Blaster

Note: Did you uninstall the previous audio driver and software before installing the sound card?

Go here for drive sweeper:
http://downloads.guru3d.com/Guru3D--...er)_d1672.html

If you would like to try and reinstall it again?

zerofire

Here is a link to the Auto Update feature on creatives site:
http://support.creative.com/download...utoUpdate.aspx