I have the SBLive! Value card installed in my Windows2000 system, and thought I'd share my experience. When I had Windows98SE, everything was fine. After I installed Windows2000, I would often get a 'crackling' sound while playing audio and doing anything else, even the simple act of scrolling a webpage. Then, I bought a Samsung DVD drive. When I played my first movie, I was thrilled with the sound quality. There was no distortion. However, the video framerate was not what it should be. Therefore, I enabled DMA on the DVD drive (it was PIO mode) and the framerate was Perfect. But, now my audio crackled whenever the drive access light blinked. Very Annoying. So, maybe this whole crackling sound issue has something to do with DMA being enabled (my Win98SE installation did not automatically enable DMA on my harddrives, but Windows2000 did)
