Guide to making ur x-fi not crackle

[pH(x)]

All seems a bit random, I have an X-Fi Fatality on an Asus P5W DH and before this I had an Audigy 2 ZS and have never had crackling problems. Also have quite a few friends that have the Fatality and other sound blaster cards and have never had issues.

Maybe they do have crackling issues, and just don't want to admit it after spending four-hundred dollars on a sound card!

[Modzilla]

Most Creative soundcard issues are the result of how they work on the PCI bus. Generally speaking, Creative cards are bus hogs. They make good sound but rely heavily on a clean PCI bus.

Yes. The fix: adjust pci latency. Default pci latency for all devices is usually set in the motherboard bios, typically 32. When you install video card drivers, the install program often sets pci latency for the video card at 248. Reduce the latency of the video card so that it is not more than twice the sound card (in multiples of 8). My latency values are 64 for sound and 128 for video.

This has worked for me on the setup in my sig (socket 478/agp). I didn’t think that the video card had any interaction with the pci bus, but apparently it does. I was hearing the crackling when playing games, and changing the pci latency values for the sound card and video card ended the crackling with no other noticeable change in audio/video quality or performance.

Sound card latency can be changed by changing the latency value in the motherboard bios, which will affect all other devices on the bus. Video card latency can be changed by various video card apps. For my x850, I used AtiTool, which has an option to set pci latency for the video card to a specified value at startup. Another method is to use the latest version of powerstrip. Powerstrip lets you set the pci latency for all system devices separately, and can load them at startup.

Edit: shouldn't this thread be in the general hardware/sound cards section rather than the xtreme mods section?

[Borgod]

Has anyone tried this fix?

[rpg711]

Edit: shouldn't this thread be in the general hardware/sound cards section rather than the xtreme mods section?

no because the original topic was a mod, just got expanded to alot more

[markopoleo]

PCI Latency timing is the cure. Its just finding the right timing that is hard.
The other issue is RAM settings. On my Asus P4PE with DDR333 ram i always ran in turbo mode, the fix was just putting it to normal (not a big difference is memory speed so not sure why i had it on turbo to begin with). It happens with different chip sets, Nvidia seem to be the worse though.

One reason Creative does not want to put out PCI-E cards cause of increased latency problems.

[Borgod]

Standard latency for my xfi is 64, so I experimented with 32 a little.
Its improved it a lot, but it hasnt dissapeared.

Next I'll be changing the latency of my vid card.

[SilverHaze]

THIS COULD BE A SIMPLE FIX.
After having the same damn problems... figured it was the ty driver support from creative.
I became a member just to share with you what fixed it for me. Turns out there is a guy named Daniel K who makes his own Creative drivers.

Link to newest DanielK drivers: http://forums.creative.com/showthread.php?t=587995
Link to news article about his work: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/04/daniel_k-who-fi/
Link to Daniel K's Blog: http://danielkawakami.blogspot.nl/

I hope i was able to help any of you guys... also; nice to be part of Xtreme Systems.

[kromosto]

you are a little late