*** Temporarely fix for X-Fi soundblaster crackling sounds ***

[Skybuck Flying]

Hello,

I came across this fix in the past I think but I didn't try it... maybe
because I didn't believe it would work... or maybe because I didn't wanna
loose any memory/gigabytes. But now that I have played a game called FEAR
it's important to fix the sound crackling because this game loads a lot more
so you ll have a lot more sound crackling.

The fix is this:

Start->Run->MsConfig

Then go to boot.ini

Then click advanced options

Then set maxmem to 4096.

Then reboot.

This fixed the sound problem for me. No more crackling.

However I just checked system info... and now I only have 2 gigabytes of
memory instead of 4 gigabytes... so that kinda sucks.

So I consider this a temporarely fix.

I just checked msconfig again and apperently windows is recommending the
following value:

3856... at least for my system.

So maybe that will give some extra memory and still solve the sound problem.

I found the solution on this link:

http://www.planetamd64.com/lofiversion/index.php/t22010.html

"
For everyone in this thread...
Ok, after much searching for an answer, I now know why some people are not
able to 5.1 sound and have stereo only on XP64 or they have crackling and
pops with Xfi's and XP64.
It has to do with the amound of memory you have in your system. Windows XP
can only address 2.8G of physical ram. Memory addresses above this from 2.8
to 4 is used for I/O. In XP64,
this " hole" is remapped in software to occur after the physical Ram. If you
have an E4 Opteron this mapping is done in hardware.
Apparently, the programmers at creative did not take this into account (or
it is a hardware issue) and thus the driver does not function correctly if
you have 4 g or more of memory. You can fix this, by setting /maxmem=4096 in
your boot.ini. What this will do is instruct XP64 to allocate a maximum
address of 4096,
it will subtract from this address the amount of I/O space if needs and it
will leave you with around 2.8-3.2 G of ram. All other ram will go to waste.
However,
the Audigy and Xfi will now work correctly.
Hopefully a driver update will fix this.
The thing is though, some people said they have it working. I am not so
sure. I thought my audigy was working until I added a center channel and
realized the only reason I had sound form the rear channels is because I had
CMSS3D on. Turn if off and sound only from the left and right channel.
If you do have it working, and you have CMSS3D off, AND you have 4G of ram
or more, please say so on this thread so that maybe there is another
possilbe solution.
Tom
"

Some more information on this problem would be interesting.

I also signed this petition asking creative labs and anybody else to fix the
problem !

http://www.petitiononline.com/poipoi1/petition.html

I'll report back if any other values give more memory while still
eliminating the sound crackling

Bye,
Skybuck.

 

[Skybuck Flying]

Well the crackling sound is gone.

However when I start civilization 3 conquest and then play freecell and make
a wrong move I still hear this bad beeeep.

So there are still are sound problems/issues/driver or hardware bugs

Maybe this specific bug is only related to civ 3 direct x freecell etc.. who
knows

Bye,
Skybuck.

 

[SteveH]

Hello,

I came across this fix in the past I think but I didn't try it... maybe
because I didn't believe it would work... or maybe because I didn't wanna
loose any memory/gigabytes. But now that I have played a game called FEAR
it's important to fix the sound crackling because this game loads a lot
more so you ll have a lot more sound crackling.

The fix is this:

Start->Run->MsConfig

Then go to boot.ini

Then click advanced options

Then set maxmem to 4096.

Then reboot.

This fixed the sound problem for me. No more crackling.

However I just checked system info... and now I only have 2 gigabytes of
memory instead of 4 gigabytes... so that kinda sucks.

So I consider this a temporarely fix.

I just checked msconfig again and apperently windows is recommending the
following value:

3856... at least for my system.

So maybe that will give some extra memory and still solve the sound
problem.

I found the solution on this link:

http://www.planetamd64.com/lofiversion/index.php/t22010.html

"
For everyone in this thread...
Ok, after much searching for an answer, I now know why some people are not
able to 5.1 sound and have stereo only on XP64 or they have crackling and
pops with Xfi's and XP64.
It has to do with the amound of memory you have in your system. Windows XP
can only address 2.8G of physical ram. Memory addresses above this from
2.8 to 4 is used for I/O. In XP64,
this " hole" is remapped in software to occur after the physical Ram. If
you have an E4 Opteron this mapping is done in hardware.
Apparently, the programmers at creative did not take this into account (or
it is a hardware issue) and thus the driver does not function correctly if
you have 4 g or more of memory. You can fix this, by setting /maxmem=4096
in your boot.ini. What this will do is instruct XP64 to allocate a maximum
address of 4096,
it will subtract from this address the amount of I/O space if needs and it
will leave you with around 2.8-3.2 G of ram. All other ram will go to
waste. However,
the Audigy and Xfi will now work correctly.
Hopefully a driver update will fix this.
The thing is though, some people said they have it working. I am not so
sure. I thought my audigy was working until I added a center channel and
realized the only reason I had sound form the rear channels is because I
had CMSS3D on. Turn if off and sound only from the left and right channel.
If you do have it working, and you have CMSS3D off, AND you have 4G of ram
or more, please say so on this thread so that maybe there is another
possilbe solution.
Tom
"

Some more information on this problem would be interesting.

I also signed this petition asking creative labs and anybody else to fix
the problem !

http://www.petitiononline.com/poipoi1/petition.html

I'll report back if any other values give more memory while still
eliminating the sound crackling

Bye,
Skybuck.

Must be your super PC then. I've not long finished F.E.A.R and I too have an
XFi card, and no crackling of any sort, in fact the game plaed better for
having the card.
The answer in you PC would seem to be to pull 2 gig of memory out of it. Do
you actually 'need' your claimed 4gig?
I've got a gig in my A64 box and theres not a game I want to play that I
can't play in high quality, photoshop works fine and cd/dvd rpping work
fine.

SteveH

 

[DRS]

[...]

Windows XP can only address 2.8G of physical ram. Memory addresses
above this from 2.8 to 4 is used for I/O.

What a crock of shit. The reserved memory area is rarely more than .25MB
which is why XP typically reports only seeing around 3.75GB when there is
4GB of physical RAM. Do some homework next time.

 

[Skybuck Flying]

[...]

Windows XP can only address 2.8G of physical ram. Memory addresses
above this from 2.8 to 4 is used for I/O.

What a crock of shit. The reserved memory area is rarely more than .25MB
which is why XP typically reports only seeing around 3.75GB when there is
4GB of physical RAM. Do some homework next time.

Yeah it sounds weird but it works =D

Bye,
Skybuck.

 

[DRS]

[...]

Windows XP can only address 2.8G of physical ram. Memory addresses
above this from 2.8 to 4 is used for I/O.

What a crock of shit. The reserved memory area is rarely more than
.25MB which is why XP typically reports only seeing around 3.75GB
when there is 4GB of physical RAM. Do some homework next time.

Yeah it sounds weird but it works =D

Q: Why does the system only show 3.5 GB of memory when I have 4.0 GB of
memory installed?

A: Under the current PC memory addressing, there is a memory area just below
4.0 GB which is reserved permanently. The reserved area is for system BIOS
to put APIC, ACPI Table, PCI Devices', Resources and AGP aperture
information. When your system DRAM is 3.5 GB or lower, the system will show
that the same amount of memory has been implemented. However, if the system
DRAM is above 3.5 GB of memory, the actual amount of memory that the system
shows will be less due to the reserved area. Regardless of memory size, the
reserved memory addressing is always present, but only when the DRAM rises
above the 3.5 GB amount will that area become visible.

http://tyan.com/support/html/f_s2668.html

 

[Conor]

I'll report back if any other values give more memory while still
eliminating the sound crackling

You'd do much better tweaking the PCI latency settings...

 

[Maxim S. Shatskih]

Then go to boot.ini

Then click advanced options

Then set maxmem to 4096.

Then reboot.

This fixed the sound problem for me. No more crackling.

Congratulations to Creative/Ensoniq who have the DMA-related bugs in their
drivers.

 

[Skybuck Flying]

You'd do much better tweaking the PCI latency settings...

Nope, I tried that, it has little to no effect

Bye,
Skybuck.

 

[JAD]

Congratulations to Creative/Ensoniq who have the DMA-related bugs in their
drivers.

Which was out first the, drivers or the game?

 

[Conor]

Nope, I tried that, it has little to no effect

Did you also lower the PCI latency on the graphics card? Sometimes that
is set to some ridiculously high level.

Another option which cropped up in Battlefield 2 was that the game use
its own generic openal32.dll library and changing it with the one
installed by Creative from the Windows/System folder cured that in that
particular game.

 

[Skybuck Flying]

Did you also lower the PCI latency on the graphics card? Sometimes that
is set to some ridiculously high level.

Another option which cropped up in Battlefield 2 was that the game use
its own generic openal32.dll library and changing it with the one
installed by Creative from the Windows/System folder cured that in that
particular game.

Pci-E latency is fixed occording to tool.

All games had the crackling which is now gone thx to the temp fix.

Bye,
Skybuck.

 

[Maxim S. Shatskih]

Congratulations to Creative/Ensoniq who have the DMA-related bugs in their

Which was out first the, drivers or the game?

Drivers.

Their DMA code seems to have issues with > 4GB RAM.

 

[Skybuck Flying]

Must be your super PC then. I've not long finished F.E.A.R and I too have
an XFi card, and no crackling of any sort, in fact the game plaed better
for having the card.
The answer in you PC would seem to be to pull 2 gig of memory out of it.
Do you actually 'need' your claimed 4gig?
I've got a gig in my A64 box and theres not a game I want to play that I
can't play in high quality, photoshop works fine and cd/dvd rpping work

Ask me that question in a couple of years when you cant find any matching
pairs for your current gig.

Bye,
Skybuck.