Audio stuttering out-of-the-blue?

[dev]

/poster/ said:

With no apparent reason, all audio files began to stutter a crackle a bit.
Winamp, WMplayer, all applications are affected. I uninstalled and
reinstalled the latest audio drivers (soundmax, from the asus website since
it's an asus mboard). It's a fairly powerful system, P4 2.8, 1gb ram and
never had this problem before. I'm just unable to get rid of this. In the
audio mixer, I've enabled Volume control, wave, cd player and line in. All
the rest (bassboost etc. is disabled). A web site suggested to lower the
volume or even mute the wave tab, but that also mutes the central volume
control.
What else can I do?

Verify that the soundcard (if any) is seated in its slot, and that
connections to it are firm.
Have any cards been installed recently? Are there nearby devices that could
cause static?
Another soundcard (if a card is used) could be tested.

 

[poster]

Hi everyone,

with no apparent reason, all audio files began to stutter a crackle a bit.
Winamp, WMplayer, all applications are affected. I uninstalled and
reinstalled the latest audio drivers (soundmax, from the asus website since
it's an asus mboard). It's a fairly powerful system, P4 2.8, 1gb ram and
never had this problem before. I'm just unable to get rid of this. In the
audio mixer, I've enabled Volume control, wave, cd player and line in. All
the rest (bassboost etc. is disabled). A web site suggested to lower the
volume or even mute the wave tab, but that also mutes the central volume
control.
What else can I do?

Thanks a lot

 

[poster]

No add-on soundcard, it's on-board. And there is no recently installed
hardware. It doesn't sound as a connection problem, the audio gaps are quite
'fixed', every second or so there's a gap or crackle. Sth. to do with
excessive network activity perhaps? A month ago I've upgraded from dial-up
to dsl but there were no such problems up to now. Also, there's a sat-card
which creates it's own network connection. Again no problems, up to now.

 

[Guest]

If it appears to affect all aspects of audio perhaps there is a 3rd party app
running in the background interfering.

Perhaps try the following for a test. (This temporarily disables 3rd party
applications from launching at startup)

Click start/run

Type in msconfig hit ok.
Choose selective startup on the General tab.

Under it untick Process System.ini and untick Process Win.ini
Untick Load Startup items.

Click on the Services tab.
Tick the box that states "Hide all Microsoft services" and then untick all
remaining services. (do not click disable all, untick one at a time)

Click on apply and tehn close.

Restart when prompted.

Now test your sound after the reboot to see if the problem occurs in this
enviroment.
Please post back results.

 

[poster]

Thanks. Before trying this, I disabled the network connection created by the
skystar2 sat card. Problem solved. Not acceptable though, because the card
requires enabled network in order to work, and also disabling it requires a
restart... I'll enable it again and try our suggestion, maybe sth. else
interferes with it, since I had no such problems with this card before.

 

[poster]

Ok Ron, I did what you suggested and the audio is fine, along with the
sat-card. I guess now I have to enable services one by one, to find out
what's causing the trouble, right? I'll post back tomorrow, thanks.

 

[poster]

I don't have the time to figure this out now. There's definitively sth going
on with the sat card since when I disable it, audio is fine. Right now
however, it's ok, with the card enabled, go figure... Most of the time
though, it stutters and crackles...

 

[Yves Leclerc]

Your SAT (SATA card??) could also be using the same IRQ as the sound card.
It is normal when two devices use the same reasource, at the same time, that
one "pauses" while the other is using it. The only way to "fix" this is to
move the SAT (SATA??) card to a different slot.

 

[Plato]

Your SAT (SATA card??) could also be using the same IRQ as the sound card.
It is normal when two devices use the same reasource, at the same time, that
one "pauses" while the other is using it. The only way to "fix" this is to
move the SAT (SATA??) card to a different slot.

Which is where the term, Plug and Pray came from. Before PNP, one would
just put the jumper on the IRQ set of 2 pins on your card and/or use a
firmware writing thing to flash your NIC to the irq you wanted. Thus,
one only had to plug once, and not Pray. One didn't have to play the
Musical PCI Slot Game

Yes of course I understand and have come to like the auto-assignment of
IRQs.

 

[poster]

It's sat as in satellite. It's a pci, dvb-s tv card.