Quote Originally Posted by ranker View Post
I think I finally found the solution to the problem after a days worth of agonizing troubleshooting. The problem seems to have been exacerbated by high volume set by software. After lowering the master volume of the card down to 50%, I noticed the distortions decreased by a small amount. However, they were still present.

After removing almost everything from the computer, I realized that the problems became disappeared. After 3-4 hours of painstaking debugging (oh how I love my computer science background), the culprit was my Logitech webcam w/ built in microphone. After unplugging it, 98% of my distortions/scp's disappeared altogether.

Go figure.
Nice going!

Guys I'm using a USB Mouse, USB Keyboard, USB Card reader, USB Joystick, USB Printer, and for a time a USB Scanner. My X-Fi has ALWAYS shared resources with one of my USB Controller Hubs. Some Chipsets and even some Manufactures screw this stuff up.

Now just because these don't share on *some *systems, doesn't mean they don't share or play nicely on all of them. All the way back to the i850 Intel Desktop boards have supported APIC, not to be confused with ACPI. Not only is there 24 IRQ's, but these share better when they have to. The problem with the old Chipsets was that 16 IRQs are not enough and these didn't like sharing.

AthlonXP and Pentium 3 or earlier Processors DON'T support APIC. They can only support it on Dual Processor systems. Since i850, Intel has had more time to refine these kinds of features, nVidia hasn't. That DOESN'T mean nVidia sucks LOL!