Sound Blaster

[autoerratic]

Does anyone know of a fix for the snap/crackle/pop issue other than shooting myself in the foot and killing 1GB of system RAM?  I have an nForce 4 mobo with Windows 7 64-bit.  Windows 7 sees all of my memory but I get horrid rice crispies sounds ouf of my SB0730.  This is an X-Fi Xtreme Gamer.  If i disable memory remapping in the system bios is works fine.  This puts me back at 3GB in the OS.  This isn't really acceptable.  I was able to have perfect sound and 4GB in Vista 32-bit. 

I did notice in Windows 7 64-bit the Creative processes all run at 32-bit.  You can see this in the task manager with *32 after the processes. 

Ideas?

[Inglo]

I have the same problem plus my sound completely cuts out from time to time.

[Buio]

Use this Auzentech Prelude driver and software pack that Daniel K has modded to work with Creative cards.

http://forums.creative.com/t5/Sound-Blaster/SB-X-Fi-Series-AuzenUAA-Pack-1-0-09-30-2009/td-p/538552

It works perfectly for me with nForce 4, 4GB and 64-bit OS.

If you don't want certain applications, you can cancel a few of them during the install (like f.e. Alchemy). Other you can just uninstall afterwards. Or if you absolutely just want the driver, you can install that from the Driver folder manually. Also be sure to uninstall any previous drivers completely before installing this one.

[Inglo]

Do you have an SLI set up?  I haven't even tried running any games yet.  The sound is awful in Windows.

[Buio]

No, single ATI card.

With Creative official X-Fi drivers I get constant cracking broken sound in Windows 7 with 4GB RAM on my Asus A8N-SLI motherboard unless I gimped it to 3GB. The Auzentech Prelude beta driver apparently has different memory management system and it works fine (at least for my setup).

This driver works very well for the specific problem that people with older nForce motherboard has. If you have a new or Intel/AMD-based motherboard, they you probably should look for a solution some other place.

[NeoMatrix1217]

I tried all the solutions and downloads I could the only way to make it work was to scale back my memory to 3072 now I have good sound as I wait for drivers that work.

[Inglo]

I tried the other driver, didn't help.  I should point out this isn't just crackle pop for me.  It's screeching, raging distored crap.  If I try to go through the surround speaker check I do not hear words, only loud screeching wailing to the point I'm worried that my speakers might be damaged, sounds.

[Buio]

Yeah, the SLI-screech is another problem.

The driver I linked works and fixed the problems for us with nForce 4 motherboards. It should work for other setups too but not fix any specific problems for those.

[autoerratic]

Thanks for the tips.  I am going to try those alternate drivers.  Has creative made any comments in this regards?

Erin

[Buio]

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autoerratic wrote:

Thanks for the tips.  I am going to try those alternate drivers.  Has creative made any comments in this regards?

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No.

The drivers are modded Auzentech Prelude Beta1, which are available on Auzentechs site. I presume its Creative who are doing those drivers too, but they are not available for Creative cards.