Poor audio perfromnace on playback

[X-Eyed_Bear]

Can I get some advice on where to look for the cause of this problem,
please?

Playback of recorded music (irrespective of format) is frequently poor
on my system. As soon as I do anything (for example open a web-page) the
playback of recorded audio is interrupted. If the application I start
requires more than minimal CPU - for example opening a large image in
Photoshop - the playback either stops completely or is broken up into a
stream of sub-second 'bleeps'.

I have an Asus A8V mobo, with Athlon 3700+ CPU, 2 Gb of dual channel
mmeory, 2 fast SATA disks, a fast Matrox display card and a Creative
Audigy card. I'm sure there is enough compute power here to provide
excellent (for a PC) quality playback. Indeed I record a lot of music
using Audacity at 24 bit resolution, 96 KHz sampling rate, producing
MP3s which are perfectly adequate for listening on the PC or in my car.

But the playback is unacceptable when ever something else is running on
the PC. The hardware set-up looks to be correct. Where do I look for an
explanation?

 

[Sirtokalott]

Check you have the latest drivers for your sound card and also check if there
was onboard sound on the motherboard and ensure this is disabled.

 

[X-Eyed_Bear]

Check you have the latest drivers for your sound card and also check if there
was onboard sound on the motherboard and ensure this is disabled.

Yep, did that some weeks ago - it was the first thing I checked and no
corrective action was necessary.

It actually 'feels' like DMA isn't working - and so the CPU is doing all
the work. How can I check that?

 

[R. McCarty]

Which PCI expansion slot is the Audigy card installed in ? ( Count from
the AGP/PCIe slot ).