Very very severe distortion and sound stuttering. I have to reformat
my HDs and reinstall WIN XP anyway but am a bit worried about this.
Ive read threads here and there about the alleged sound problems with
the NF2 boards which are denied by others.

Everything else seems fine about the board and I didnt really use the
sound that much when I first got it a month or so ago. Recently
listening to MP3s etc horrible problems.

Im using a MaXtor promise add on card for my hard disks because they
arent SATA and I have to use my ATAPI devices on the first two
channels. So obviously the SATA controller is free doing nothing.

Im also using lots of cards - only one slot is empty. And the sound
card is SBLIVE.

The suspects:

a) SBLIVE - its crappy right? Imoved it around to different slots
since it was sharing an IRQ with all sorts of things like my graphics
card, Promise controller card etc Thought that was the problem. No
mater where I moved it - sure it was better in some slots than others
, but it always had the problem even when not sharing any obvious IRQ.
In fact when itshowed it wasnt it seemed to get worse.

b) I then took it out thinking it was the card itself. Used onboard
sound. Still there. There seems to be such an overload of the bus or
something that in some of cases where I was using the SBLIVE in some
slots - the music and graphics actually slowed down and seemed to
choke.

c) What Im thinking about next - taking all other cards out including
the controller card. Does using alot of cards in this motherboard
bring it to its knees somehow with weird conflicts etc that I dont
know of? I dont know. Im going to try it totally stripped. One thing
I suspect - does using the add on promise card for my hard disks with
the SATA and NF2 controllers on it - is that overkill? Even though I
disable the SATA controller. Thats the mainthing Im going to try and
look at - is the add on controller causing the problem.

d) Other than - is this a defective motherboard?
Others are using sound with no horrendous stuttering and other
problems right?

On Sat, 22 Nov 2003 00:50:08 GMT, "(E-Mail Removed)" <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>Im also using lots of cards - only one slot is empty. And the sound
>card is SBLIVE.
>
Why don't you use the onboard sound?
--
Andrew. To email unscramble (E-Mail Removed) & remove spamtrap.
Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards,
please don't top post. Trim messages to quote only relevent text.
Check groups.google.com before asking a question.

On Sat, 22 Nov 2003 07:50:16 +0000, Andrew <spamtrap@localhost> wrote:

>On Sat, 22 Nov 2003 00:50:08 GMT, "(E-Mail Removed)" <(E-Mail Removed)>
>wrote:
>
>>Im also using lots of cards - only one slot is empty. And the sound
>>card is SBLIVE.
>>
>Why don't you use the onboard sound?

I tried it as I mentioned in my post - the horrendous stuttering is
still there.

Some general advice:

- Disable *everything* you don't use to free up as many system resources as
possible: your SATA controller (jumper on MB near battery), any ports you
don't use (FireWire, serial, parallel - whatever), etc.
- If you only use one Ethernet port, use the nVidia one, not the 3Com one;
again, disable whichever you don't use.
- Use PCI slots 2 & 4 for your most "intensive" cards, like your IDE
controller; these two have their own IRQ / PCI "line," while the others are
shared with other on-board devices
- Set up your system with whatever is the bare minimum you need to be up
and running: leave out your SB Live (and use the onboard sound) and any
"optional" components you don't need
- When using the onboard sound, from Windows disable any ports you don't
use
- If possible, boot from a HD connected to your MB IDE controller, not your
PCI IDE card

If this still doesn't help, give us more details about your system
configuration.

"(E-Mail Removed)" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Very very severe distortion and sound stuttering. I have to reformat
> my HDs and reinstall WIN XP anyway but am a bit worried about this.
> Ive read threads here and there about the alleged sound problems with
> the NF2 boards which are denied by others.
>
> Everything else seems fine about the board and I didnt really use the
> sound that much when I first got it a month or so ago. Recently
> listening to MP3s etc horrible problems.
>
> Im using a MaXtor promise add on card for my hard disks because they
> arent SATA and I have to use my ATAPI devices on the first two
> channels. So obviously the SATA controller is free doing nothing.
>
> Im also using lots of cards - only one slot is empty. And the sound
> card is SBLIVE.
>
> The suspects:
>
> a) SBLIVE - its crappy right? Imoved it around to different slots
> since it was sharing an IRQ with all sorts of things like my graphics
> card, Promise controller card etc Thought that was the problem. No
> mater where I moved it - sure it was better in some slots than others
> , but it always had the problem even when not sharing any obvious IRQ.
> In fact when itshowed it wasnt it seemed to get worse.
>
> b) I then took it out thinking it was the card itself. Used onboard
> sound. Still there. There seems to be such an overload of the bus or
> something that in some of cases where I was using the SBLIVE in some
> slots - the music and graphics actually slowed down and seemed to
> choke.
>
> c) What Im thinking about next - taking all other cards out including
> the controller card. Does using alot of cards in this motherboard
> bring it to its knees somehow with weird conflicts etc that I dont
> know of? I dont know. Im going to try it totally stripped. One thing
> I suspect - does using the add on promise card for my hard disks with
> the SATA and NF2 controllers on it - is that overkill? Even though I
> disable the SATA controller. Thats the mainthing Im going to try and
> look at - is the add on controller causing the problem.
>
> d) Other than - is this a defective motherboard?
> Others are using sound with no horrendous stuttering and other
> problems right?