Windows XP Audigy crackles

[tlx 0]

I just got my Soundblaster Audigy today and must say it has the crispiest sound i ever heard on a PC. I installed the shipped Win2k drivers and updated to the current XP drivers from www.soundblaster.com as proposed. It sounds awesome compared to my previous card with HW acclearation and EAX enabled in OFP.

However i still suffer from the sound crackles on Apache Rotor etc.. There are a couple of threads dealing with this crackle but none of them seems to propose a solution for me. The card has it's own IRQ assigned and i can't believe that current cards suffer from PCI hogging as mentioned elsewhere. My framerate also improved thanks to the great processor of the card. I tried all possible settings in OFP: HW Acceleration/SW Emulation, EAX disabled and enbaled but none of them solved the problem. I have to add that there are no crackle problems at all with other software as RtCW and Media Player etc. So i guess this might be an issue with OFP/DirectX only.

Any help greatly appreciated.

My specs

Asus CUSL2 (i815e) PIII

Windows XP Professional, GeForce 2 GTS 32 MB Detonator 23.11 XP, SB Audigy, Intel 100/S Desktop Adapter

[tlx 0]

Update: Found a cure for it... Setting PCI Latency timer to "0" (Default is "32"). Does this have any side-effects?

[ALDEGA 0]

http://www.reric.net/linux/pci_latency.html

take a look here, it explains everything you need to know about pci latency

[Placebo 30]

And some more info http://www.deinmeister.de/mvp3_zlt_e.htm

[tlx 0]

Thanks for your links both. What i make out of it is: setting it too low isn't good either as setting it too high. So it should be well balanced somehow.

Now comes the funny thing. It reverted to 32 and switched out my box for bout a minute. As it booted afterwards all that crackling was gone. Me must not understand my computer? Must I? Probably the BIOS/card configures it automatically then.

[Placebo 30]

And yet more info........

PCI Latency Timer. For the maximum number of Reverbs, you'll want to go into your BIOS, and find a setting called "PCI Latency Timer." Set this as high as possible--only if you have no other cards except Creamware cards and an AGP card--otherwise, set this to 64 or 128. Higher numbers mean that each PCI card is given a "longer time slice" so setting this as high as possible without any problems is best, but setting it "too" high can actually steal longer time slices if you have other cards (like a Network card) installed. It's sort of a balance. If you BIOS doesn't have this setting (most non-ASUS boards don't), then you can get access to this using a program like TweakBIOS.

[tlx 0]

Thanks mate for your update

[Placebo 30]

I'm about to play around with this setting too, I have a different sound card and mobo but I also get crackling

[tlx 0]

Update: Suffering no crackles now with standard PCI Latency 32. Once i join a Multiplayer game crackling begins. If I cancel the game and select a single player mission ("Ground Attack 2" my rotor tester ) without closing OFP, crackles still remain.

If i cancel OFP and launch it again afterwards no crackling can be heard in singleplayer. It seems there is some hazzle with the DirectPlay Network part to me. Any thoughts on this?

[tlx 0]

Geez, I finally found the answer:

OFP seems to keep different profiles/settings for single player and multiplayer. In Multiplayer HW Acceleration & EAX were turned off. Turned on crackling is gone. Sound settings are activated on next program start.

Is this supposed to work like this?

[Guest]

Thomas, I'm pretty sure it keeps the settings for each profile separate, not sure to what extent tho...

[Placebo 30]

The settings for the user profiles are totally unique, ie if you want the W key to say reload your weapon you would have to set it to "W" for both profiles, solution is to have one profile set up perfectly then copy the cfg file to the other one.

[tlx 0]

Thanks for the info Obi and Placebo Glad i could resolve the crackle at last. Sounds a bit muffled though. Is this caused by the hardware acceleration?