ASUS A7M266 + SB Audigy = audio skipping (WinXP)

[Shin_Magus 0]

Hi. I've been having the famous audio skipping problem (A7M266 uses the VIA 686b chipset on the Southbrigde) for some time now. I'm not sure, but I think when I first installed George's PCI Latency Patch, I got rid of it. Well, there was a much greater problem back then: IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (or something like that). After desperately looking for a solution, I installed VIA's beta patch ( http://www.theddrzone.com/news.asp?id=404 ) and the blue screen was finally gone (I was being driven insane!), but it wasn't long since then that I noticed audio skipping was back and George's PCI Latency wasn't making any difference (I even reinstalled it a few times).

 

Well, all this trouble has been going on for over two weeks now, I think, and I'm not completely sure if George's PCI Latency Patch had really solved the audio skipping problem (but not the blue screen error) back then anymore, even though I did have that impression. I hope anyone knows what I can do to make things right, for audio skipping is very annoying. Thanks for your time.

[Brian Frank 0]

Have you tried switching the slot the Audigy is in? Got the latest drivers from creative?

[Shin_Magus 0]

No and yes. I'll try changing the PCI slot where the SB Audigy is, but I find it hard to believe that'll solve the problem.

[CrazyKillerMan 0]

Actually...I have the same mobo and soundcard as you. I had the soundcard set in pci slot 5 and changing it to 4 increased bandwidth, and stopped the audio skipping. I believe that slots 5 and 6 are shared as far as resources go.

 

Also...if you have a network card in there, is that hogging the PCI bus from the audigy??? Try up[censored] the nic driver or removing it from the system to see if that helps.

 

Have you gotten the 4-in-1's from via?

www.viaarena.com

I think that the 686B needs 2 out of the 4 drivers, after a default XP installation anyways.

 

Hope this helps.

[Shin_Magus 0]

Hmmm... Sorry, but how do I know the "number" each PCI slot? Starting from the PCI slot right next to the AGP slot, is it 1->5 or 5->1? Thanks.

[Klark 0]

The slot next to your AGP is PCI slot 1 ...and this is the same on every motherboard, so don't forget !!

 

Also, move your SB into slot 3, and manually assign IRQ 5 to it in your BIOS. Slot 3 is the only slot on that series of Asus motherboard that does not share and IRQ....which is a huge problem with the SB Audigy/Live series of cards.

 

Slot 1 shares with your AGP slot. Slot 2 shares with the onboard Promise HD controllers. And slot 4 & 5 share with each other, as well as the USB controllers.

 

Hope this helps you...cause it's helped just about everyone else.

 

Good Luck !!

 

Klark

[CrazyKillerMan 0]

heh

 

yes

 

pci #3....subtract 1 from all the numbers in my above post

[Shin_Magus 0]

Hmmmm... I put my SB Audigy on PCI slot 3, set PCI slot 3 to IRQ5 and installed VIA 4-in-1. The situation has improved, but the audio skipping still occurs sometimes. I even installed George's PCI Latency Patch, and I think it made some difference. I really don't know what I can do now to completely get rid of this annoying bug.

[Klark 0]

Are you sure its not your mp3's ?? Cause I had the same problem, but I noticed it did the same thing on other computers...so I knew it was the mp3's I was playing....not the soundcard.

 

Were these 'Kazaa' acquired mp3's ?? ...because Kazaa is well known for tearin' up mp3's during download.

 

Klark...

[Shin_Magus 0]

It happens when I'm playing games or watching video files too... It's not as often as before, but the bug is still there.

[Klark 0]

I have had horrible luck with the new SB drivers. As usual, SB drivers are for sh*t and it only took SB 5 months to release them. Not to mention their about as stable as a drunk on roller-skates. The only decent drivers that worked for me were the stock XP drivers.

 

Also, are you using that horrible SB software ?? The guys that developed that garbage should be hung-up by their testicals and sprayed with a high pressure power-washer loaded with scalding hot water. In 2 years, I have installed the SB software on dozens of machines, and only got it fucntioning properly 3 or 4 times that I can remember. If you're using it now, try removing it and just let XP load the drivers for the Audigy card....You might be surprised.

 

Sorry for being so cynical. I'm just tired of SB releasing a new fancy series of soundcards every 4 months, when their drivers and software from 2 years ago still have major issues. And SB's attitude is "Why fix the drivers??...we'll just put out a new card that every idiot will surely buy !!"

 

I can't say much though, cause I'm one of those idiots...

[Poxnor 0]

Hmm, I know that my situation may not entirely apply, but here goes:

 

I also own an A7M266, and I have an SBLive!5.1.

 

I had a problem very similar to your under Windows 2000. I tried everything from PCI Latency fixes, to different custom-made driver sets by 3rd parties, to moving which slot it was in.

 

In the end, though, the solution I found that worked was much, much simpler. I opened up my volume control, and set the Wave, Midi, CD (etc) playback volumes to 50%. I then set the master volume control to about 20%. Finally, I cranked my speakers

 

This worked beautifully, hehe.

 

It was actually a fellow from a little hole-in-the-wall computer shop that explained to me that many of the Creative soundcards don't have the highest-quality audio decoders on them (regardless of what they advertise), and as such, if they are sent a really high amplitude signal (in other words, a really loud thing to decode), they wind up mucking it up and decoding it into static and empty noise (that results in skips).

 

So, when I moved up to Windows XP, I immediately did the same thing (50% on my Wave, Midi, CD, etc. And with XP, I found I could actually bring my master up to around 50% without problems too). And I haven't had any problems.

 

Now, I realize that I'm using a Live!5.1 and you're using an Audigy, so the problem and solution may not be exactly the same. But I figure, knowing Creative, they'd leave a mucky problem like in their product line from one generation to the next. So perhaps it would be worth a try to just turn down the Windows volume control settings a crank your speakers

 

Tell me how it goes

 

-- Poxnor

[Shin_Magus 0]

The volume trick didn't work.

 

I removed "Creative SB Audigy" on the Device Manager and restarted. Windows XP reinstalled it probably using the latest drivers and the problem persisted. Afterwards, I manually "updated" (the opposite, as a matter of fact) the driver to the oldest one available (from July 2001, I believe). Now I have the feeling the bug occurs a bit less often than before, but it is still there. This is sickening.

[harplayer 0]

I ran XP RC2 and XP PRO on 2 identical systems, and am currently running on 3rd system. No matter what I tried, I still get audio lag under loads 1/2 of the W2K installations on these machines

 

Machine 1 & 2

 

Abit KT7A 1.2 GHZ

512 MB Ram Machine 1

768 MB Ram Machine 2

 

Hercules Game Theatre Both Machines

Geforce 2 GTS cards

Mirrored Western Digital 7200 RPM Storage

Single Western Digital 7200 RPM OS

Pagefile.sys moved to Mirrors

Pagefile.sys erasure disabled

 

Turtle Beach Santa Cruz installed when problems failed to go away, VIA patched accomplished nothing except create BSOD

Abit Bios Upgrade cooked one board (sitting in box waiting for me to attempt to waste time on it.

 

Solution: went back to W2K on the remaining KT7A, rock solid ever since, 20 days nonstop operation under heavy load

 

Third Machine

Asus A7v133 1.2 GHZ NOT overclocked

768 MB RAM

Turtle Beach Santa Cruz Driver 4142

Creative Labs Geforce 2 GTS Microsoft WHQL drivers

2 7200 RPM drives : NO mirrors

Pagefile moved to non OS drive

Drive Defragged with the Diskeeper demo

ALL XP MS patches installed

ASUS bios 1007 and Promise bios 42

ACPI disabled

Running Default VIA

 

Still have the problem

 

So, to make a long story short, I don't think the Audigy is the problem, I've done the IRQ thing, the card slot swap thing , even done the different vendor of card thing, and still no solution.

But just to acknowledge the chipset used by Hercules and Turtle Beach is the same chipset...maybe the problem is there

[meah123 0]

the hercules game theater 7.1 was gettin a laggin sound every few secs . solution disable the on board LAN.worked 4 me there very shitty onboard LAN.

mother board i had was an asus good old ati chipset cheap.....

 

 

meah