» Tweak Your Remote » Prey Contest Reminder » X-Fi Elite Pro Driver » Hear The Difference » X-Fi Vista Beta Drivers » OpenAL Supported » X-Fi Prey Contest » Unreal Tournament 2004 X-Fi Patch » X-Fi Elite PRO Driver Information » New SoundBlaster X-Fi Driver
» January 2006 » February 2006 » March 2006 » April 2006 » May 2006 » June 2006 » July 2006 » August 2006 » September 2006 » October 2006 » November 2006 » December 2006 » January 2007 » March 2007 » June 2007 » July 2007 » June 2008 » February 2009 » March 2012
X-Fi XtremeMusic, Platinum, Fatal1ty, Elite PRO (30.10.2006)
v2.09.0007
Discover the SoundBlaster X-Fi models. What are the differences, what do the models have in common.
What does X-RAM really do? Read about the extra 64MB onboard RAM on the SoundBlaster X-Fi.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
X-Fi Crackling Continues
A new update from Creative on the crackling and popping issues some people are experiencing with their SoundBlaster X-Fi cards. According to Creative the sound glitches only arise on nForce 4 motherboards and only nVidia is able to fix them. You can read about their findings below:
Further to the reported cases of crackling issues reported by owners of Sound Blaster X-Fi cards, we have extensively tested both Creative and non-Creative audio cards on motherboards where the issues were reported in an effort to isolate the root cause.
The findings indicate that circumstances causing these audio glitches only arise on Nvidias nForce 4 range of motherboards, with the exception of the newest n590 board which does not exhibit this issue.
The Sound Blaster X-Fi card was designed to meet PCI bus standards and tolerances and this is the only range of motherboards that operate in this manner.
A full technical description is detailed below, but in brief, the PCI bus data requests are not being serviced leading to "gaps" in the audio, resulting in sudden dropouts to no audio and back again which gives rise to what is perceived as crackling.
We appreciate the time taken by several of our forum members in assisting us isolate the root causes to date and appreciate the frustration expressed by several posters, but would like to assure you that we have been following the issue closely in an effort to seek resolution from the early stages. As we have identified the resolution of this issue to be beyond our control, we would advise customers experiencing this issue to escalate their concerns to Nvidia in an effort to seek a possible solution.
TECHNICAL DETAILS
We have observed through direct observation of the PCI bus on the nVidia nForce 4 motherboards that when the crackle symptoms are occuring, the Soundblaster X-Fi card PCI bus master memory requests for audio data are being held off (not serviced) for very long intervals.
We have observed peak holdoffs of up to 2 milliseconds in some cases. This is unusual chipset behavior that is beyond the ability of a hardware audio accelerator to compensate for in its internal buffering. The SoundBlaster X-Fi tolerance for these PCI holdoffs is approximately 120 microseconds peak holdoff, with a 1 microsecond average holdoff.
These design tolerances are based on observation of real PCI bus behavior on leading motherboards over a period of many motherboard hardware generations.
The nForce 4 motherboard is the first motherboard on which these extremely long PCI service holdoffs have been observed by Creative, where another PCI device in the system was not causing the holdoff.
One thing should be mentioned here for owners of a nForce 4 motherboard wanting to get a X-Fi card: There are a lot of people on nForce 4 motherboards not experiencing the crackling and popping issues. It is not said that you will experience the problem for sure.
Mine is a nForce 3 (Gigabyte k8ns 939 Ultra) and I have the noises specially on Eve-online.
Right...explain that to all the owners of X-Fi cards who are having issues using non-nForce4 boards eh Creative?
X-Fi XtremeMusic + Intel i865 chipset
Guess what? I have had hardware detection problems in addition to the snapcracklepop issues leading to system crashes.
But I should blame NVIDIA right?
I just built a new top-end machine and having the same issues with an nForce680i motherboard and the fatal1ty card. Tried a whole bunch of things, but all the details of my problem are posted here:
http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&message.id=83491&jump=true#M83491
I have a Extreme Audio and it crashes playing every game I've tested. New ones and old ones... even with Panzer General 2.
The last Creative product I buy
Right well...
I have had the card for about 8 months and the problems only started about a week ago.
I think i have managed to find the cause for me at least.
It was a mic/line in issue!
I recently bought a headphone/mike combo and have it plugged into the facia at the front. Even though the mike was turned off it would start to crackle. I merely unplugged the mike and hey presto... crystal clarity!
Now this could be static or... god knows what else but it is a start. i will update on any further problems should they occur.
ive had a xfi xtrememusic card in my system for quite some time now on a DFI NF4 board. i never had the crackling and popping issue until one day my friend gave me some of his old ram (which is the exact same kind i have in my system) for a total of 4gb. ever since i popped the ram in my system i got the crackling issue. so i took the ram out thinking this would remedy it. NO! WRONG! this is bs. maybe if creative would update their mfing driver which was release over a year ago but no. why would they do that!? that would make too much sense. eff you creative.
I don't have any Nvidia products and it still crackles. This is the first, and last Creative soundcard I'm buying. Good job guys, and with good job, I mean "you dumbasses."
I have an Asus Commando motherboard and my XFi crackles. It's just Creative trying to pass the buck onto nVidia.
yeah this whole n-force thing is simply not true. i had an audigy 2 zs that made really loud crackles and pops on a 939 board and now i build a brand new machine with a p35 board and an xtremegamer and there's still crackling and hissing. it's much fainter than my last computer, but for the money there shouldn't be any noise coming out of the card when windows in not sending any sounds to it. it just sits there and crackles. anybody know if changing the PCI frequency would help anything? anyways this is the last card I'm buying from creative even if they completely fix everything and start making perfect cards out of principle.
Asus P4P800 Deluxe here, and same problems, especially with the line-in stuff... New drivers fixed the bluescreens and crashes mostly thou, but the crackling and noise is still there.
Yea after reading this blog I am pretty upset with CREATIVE. I have 3 custom builds in my house and 2 of them have nothing but sound issue. X-FI Xtreme Gamer / Xtreme Music. My games crash, My sons games crash it has been a night mare never again will I buy from CREATIVE.
i spend 180euro for my x-fi titanium fatality champion series and after installation my pc freezes up and works only with reset.my motherboard is gigabyte ga-73pvm-s2h.i just read that this is a problem at most of the nforce chipsets.i am very dissapointed and i install my adigy 2 zs again.
advice?
CREATIVE AND NVDIA you suck!!!you can't solve this.Great Lords of Creative you seem so petite at this moment!!!no compatability warnings at your f...ing box!!!why?your "battle cruiser" X-FI is nothing but a fishing boat!!
gigabyte motherboard here, I have the crackling/popping sounds with my x-fi...
seems to be PCI iRQ/latency related.
Everytime I watch any streaming videos and especially when I expand them I get this damn crackling!
I bought a new X-fi thinking this was the problem, a new PSU 1000 Watt, have a good GPU 470 GTX and man it ticks me off that streaming video crackles and pops and when I expand it forget it!
Post a Comment
« Back to X-Fi Zone Home