Solution to SBLive! Crackling

[Poxnor 0]

Okay, this has to be the weirdest solution I've ever heard for the SBLive! crackling -- it was a suggestion I received from a little hole-in-the-wall-computer-shop's tech support...and it worked!

 

One thing you have to understand about the SBLive! is that it doesn't like outputting high-volume line out signals. If it tries to output something at too high of a volume, it'll start crackling and popping. So go into your master volume control on the Windows 2000 taskbar.

 

Set the Master Volume to less than half.

And set all the other volumes (MIDI, Wave, CDAudio, etc) to half.

 

Then just crank your speakers to get the extra volume back.

 

This solved all my crackling problems (that I've tested so far). I was just so excited that I wanted to share this with all of you. I hope this helps some of you as well

[DosFreak 2]

Yep. But I'd like to point out that the problem isn't fixed.

[Poxnor 0]

Yeah, technically it isn't fixed...

 

But out-of-sight (hearing?), out-of-mind. So long as I can't hear any crackling (with the exception of a pop when Windows 2000 first starts), I'm happy enough

[billwinkle 0]

I to have that same problem with soundblaster live and so does my wifes box. But just for the heck of it I put hardware acceleration down to none tried a midi file and it sounded great. Then I put it back to full acceleration and to my suprise no more crappy sound. Then we tried my wifes puter and low and behold sounds great. No more popping. Did I find the magic solution???? Only time and testing will tell. I will test more as time permits, but if anyone else wants to try let me know and we can compare notes. Good luck.

[euankirkhope 0]

Best Fix is to remove the POS.

[Busby 0]

I've never experienced these said pops. What SB Live cards are you people running? I'm running a 2 year old SB Live! Value card and as I said no crackling or pops.

[ThePredator85 0]

This was posted August of 2001. It is now November of 2005. My Sound Card (Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic) is about 50 times more powerful than the SB Live and yet I had the same problem. Spent months trying to figure this out. I did a google search and boom, it led me here. And what do you know, it fixed my Sound Card issue. Who woulda ever of thought. Creative does need to fix this issue.

 

A 4 year old topic saved my problem, lol.

[jmmijo 1]

Originally posted by ThePredator85:

Quote:

 

A 4 year old topic saved my problem, lol.

 

Yeah I agree, it's nice to have a tool like Google to find archived threads like this one is it not

 

I myself had only exprienced this issue on an older VIA chipset board and then it got fixed when I updated one of the INF/Chipset drivers.

 

It has not come back with any of the motherboards I've used since, be it Intel, nVidia or even a VIA chipset board.

 

Of course most users do tend to use the onboard sound codec instead of a third party expansion card.