X-Fi mode static/crackling/popping problem

[Minmaster]

no but i'll definitely try it soon and report back. just been lazy about it.

[RanCorX2]

lol ok, get to it soldier!

[Forces(UK)]

I tried them a couple of days ago. They work.

[RanCorX2]

Yea they do! best drivers out there atm

[Minmaster]

sorry, they didn't do jack for me.

i'll try once more and try driver cleaner to see if it helps. i doubt it though. i think there just isn't any fix for this problem on certain setups.

[Minmaster]

bah after driver cleaning all creative drivers, i can't even get these auzentech drivers to install on my pc. are you sure this works with xtremegamer x-fi?

[Minmaster]

i managed to get an older version of auzentech prelude drivers installed and now my rear speakers (5.1) are not working. total disaster... ugh.

back to creative drivers now. everything is fine now except x-fi mode on this game.

[RanCorX2]

should work because they support all these;

- Auzentech X-Fi Forte
- SB0460 / SB0462 / SB0463 / SB0464 /SB0465 /SB0466 / SB0468 / SB0469
- SB046A / SB046B / SB046C
- SB0550 / SB055A
- SB0678 / SB0679
- SB0730 / SB073A
- SB0760
- SB0772 / SB0773 / SB0775 / SB0776 / SB0779

except extreme audio.

I have a x-fi xtrememusic oem, pci. 99% of the sound glitches are gone, only a slight pop happens when orb strikes occur in conquest mode but apart from that it's almost perfect.

if you tried the pci latency tool which version did you try? v3.1 v2 is available here http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=951

x86/x64

The problem is caused by nforce4 chipsets, so creative say....but if drivers fix the problem, I call lala!

[Minmaster]

yea the latest auzentech drivers won't even install. i have to use the one that came out couple months before if i want to install those drivers at all. but i lose my rear speakers on my 5.1 setup if i use those drivers because those drivers are for 7.1 prelude cards which have additional plugs for side speakers. interestingly, if i set it to 7.1, then my rear speakers work as side speakers. that's a downside to using "unofficial" prelude 7.1 drivers.

now for the pci latency tool, it locks up my computer like many other users reported. i might try to grab an older version of that because i've read it works on computers the new version locks up. but i doubt anything will fix this mess.

not a serious problem, since bf2142 is the only game that does this. interestingly, 2142 was the reason why i bought this x-fi card as it was advertised to work with this game.

[RanCorX2]

do you have the pci latency option in your bios?

what chipset do you have?

is your soundcard pci or pci-e?

do you have 4gb of ram?

try the x-fi support pack 2.0;

http://forums.creative.com/t5/Sound-...-LS/m-p/533291

and the standalone driver;

http://forums.creative.com/t5/Sound-...RC4/m-p/535418

[Minmaster]

it ain't gonna work. i've given up. i'm just gonna use creative drivers. those auzen tech preludes make me lose my rear speakers. (the 1st link isn't even for my card, and i already tried the 2nd link earlier today)

unless creative or dice fixes this mess, i'll be just running on hardware mode.

[spiderko_2]

Got same problem now after jumping on Windows 7 64bit, I think problem would be sorted only if we could change x-fi's latency. Is it stored in Windows' registry?

[RanCorX2]

I read somewhere you have to set your set your speaker config again after installing the auzen drivers, although I didn't have to that, no probs with 5.1 here.

Donno why they aren't working for you man.

[Minmaster]

because auzen prelude cards are 7.1 and have additional jacks for side speakers. when you install auzen drivers on x-fi that only has 3 jacks + mic, the drivers make it believe that the rear speakers are the side speakers of a 7.1 setup, even if you set it to 5.1. i couldn't find any way to reassign the sides to rear, even in the THX setup software.

fwiw, pci latency tool doesn't work on most recent model computers. it's an old software that was intended for AGP based systems. i do think it could be possible to fix this whole issue by changing latency but it's impossible because the software locks up the computer.

the funny thing is, this x-fi static/pop issue resolved itself suddenly one day for BF2. whatever was the fix, they need to figure it out and apply it for 2142 as well. creative has said already they've done what they could, so i guess it's up to dice to come through. i am not optimistic at all.

this was the megathread at creative forums.
Follow-up: X-Fi Crackling/Popping Noises thread - Creative Labs
it took just few months for this thread to reach over 120+ pages at which point creative locked the topic and claimed they've done what they could. the last post of the thread is their final explanation.

[Minmaster]

fwiw, i found the latest auzen prelude drivers at the creative forums and managed to install them. and i even figured out how to assign channels to fix my rear speakers. everything worked great.

then i got into 2142, put on x-fi mode and joined a game. STILL getting static/pop during orbital strikes. i give up, for the final time.

thanks for your help everyone. but this is unfixable.

[RanCorX2]

what are you system specs? and you still haven't said if your card is pci or pci-e?

[Minmaster]

pci.... doesn't matter the specs. i've tried everything possible. it's not fixable. it's done and over with lets move on.

[RanCorX2]

fair enough.

[VectorRoll]

A funny thing just happen to me. Earlier in this thread I mentioned that I had one Fatal1ty card die on me twice. Well to day I was messing around with some old hardware that I had lying around. I came across my dead Fatal1ty card and decided to fool around with it. After looking it over I popped it back into one of my small weaker rigs, just to mess around with it. I hit the power button and to my surprise the computer started up. Then I was surprised again by seeing that it recognized the sound card. (The reason behind me being surprised that the computer started up, is that when the X-Fi cards die they do not allow the computers to boot up. that is how you know that your card has really died.)

Now that I am fully surprised I thought to myself. Hmmmm.... My Fatal1ty card seems to have resurrected and got a second wind. I am not fully sure yet if it is working correctly. The computer itself is too weak to test it out fully, like in game. Yet I can play some music to test the entertainment aspects of it. I am in the middle of installing all the drivers and software for it.

Now I could put it back in my main Gaming rig, but I refuse to do that at this time. I gave the Fatal1ty cards more than enough chances on my main Gaming rig to let them have another chance. It is too much of a pain and I do not want to hinder my chances of playing games when I wish to. Plus it is just not as good as my AC-1 anyways. Why downgrade?

So what do I do from here? Do I start my next rig and allow this Fatal1ty card to be installed in it? Or do I move it over to one of my medium rigs to try it on the a game? In particular BF2142. Take in mind that one of my medium rigs already had my other Fatal1ty card that was still working it it. It is the Champion series with the I/O console. I am sort of in a dilemma on choosing what to do with the card in order to see if it fully works right now. Last time I could not get it to boot up with any of my computers. Now this miracle came along and the thing seems to work. But for how long? should I risk testing it out in another rig or just leave it alone?

Decisions, decisions.
Anyways.... I now have 3 @ X-Fi cards that work again. Two are the Fatal1ty cards and one is the regular Extreme Gamer. (Which I currently have installed in my brothers computer.) The Extreme gamer card is the best out of the original series, in my opinion. It has had the less problems in the community as well as sounds just as good as the Fatal1ty cards. It just does not have the X-Ram and a few other benefits that the Fatal1ty cards were supposed to have. Yet they were more stable.
I also have one of the older Sound blaster live cards. It is what I took out of this older weaker rig that I am testing this card in right now.

In the end, I still prefer the Razer AC-1 over the Creative cards.
OH sorry to the OP for hijacking your thread. It is just that I had to share this and it is the most recent thread talking about the X-Fi cards.
If I test these Fatal1ty cards on the BF2142, I will let you know if I get the Snap Crackle Pop issue. Yet I never had that issue before, so I am not sure if I will this time around. But who knows. This is Creative after all.

If I do though and I fix it. I will let you know what I did.

[Minmaster]

one wonders why dice and creative even marketed their products as they were made for each other. one thinks they should've solved all their issues before saying this.

[VectorRoll]

Originally Posted by Minmaster

one wonders why dice and creative even marketed their products as they were made for each other. one thinks they should've solved all their issues before saying this.

Well actually it comes down to how well there products work with peoples hardware. There are so many variable when it comes to the difference in computers. They can not test there products on every setup imaginable. It is a logistical thing.

There have been people that have not had many issues with it, yet others that just can not get it to work for the life of them. It is sort of like the luck of the draw.

Plus most of the issues that we saw were not with the game really, but more with Creative. Either the Faulty hardware used and/or there drivers. OH and you can not discount the OS. Vista is just a pain in the rear for older sound cards that were design mainly for XP, which there original X-Fi series were.

[Forces(UK)]

Originally Posted by RanCorX2

I'm in the process of the uploading the very latest drivers with the latest software. Will post a link here when it's done.

edit, heres the download Free File Hosting Made Simple - MediaFire 118mb

I noticed that this link no longer works.

I've rehosted though:
Download XFI_Auzen_3_0.rar from Sendspace.com - send big files the easy way

[Minmaster]

Originally Posted by VectorRoll

Well actually it comes down to how well there products work with peoples hardware. There are so many variable when it comes to the difference in computers. They can not test there products on every setup imaginable. It is a logistical thing.

There have been people that have not had many issues with it, yet others that just can not get it to work for the life of them. It is sort of like the luck of the draw.

Plus most of the issues that we saw were not with the game really, but more with Creative. Either the Faulty hardware used and/or there drivers. OH and you can not discount the OS. Vista is just a pain in the rear for older sound cards that were design mainly for XP, which there original X-Fi series were.

i dunno, i have played a lot of games with this card, but the ONLY game that has issues with this game so far has been BF2 and BF2142, the only games which have a special "x-fi" mode made to take advantage of these x-fi cards. something tells me it's more than just creative's fault when the only games that exhibit problems are from dice.

if you read the last post on that creative thread i showed you earlier, it all has to do with certain motherboards and PCI bus addressing more memory than it can handle or execute on the spot. the tiny bit of lag in memory is what makes everything go berzerk. well that's at least what i gather.

this was creative's final say on this matter:

Hello everyone, I do have an update as to what we have found, as promised:

Further to the reported cases of crackling issues reported by owners of Sound Blaster X-Fi cards, we have extensively tested both Creative and non-Creative audio cards on motherboards where the issues were reported in an effort to isolate the root cause.

The findings indicate that circumstances causing these audio glitches only arise on Nvidias nForce 4 range of motherboards, with the exception of the newest n590 board which does not exhibit this issue.

The Sound Blaster X-Fi card was designed to meet PCI bus standards and tolerances and this is the only range of motherboards that operate in this manner.

A full technical description is detailed below, but in brief, the PCI bus data requests are not being serviced leading to "gaps" in the audio, resulting in sudden dropouts to no audio and back again which gives rise to what is perceived as crackling.

We appreciate the time taken by several of our forum members in assisting us isolate the root causes to date and appreciate the frustration expressed by several posters, but would like to assure you that we have been following the issue closely in an effort to seek resolution from the early stages. As we have identified the resolution of this issue to be beyond our control, we would advise customers experiencing this issue to escalate their concerns to Nvidia in an effort to seek a possible solution.

TECHNICAL DETAILS

We have observed through direct observation of the PCI bus on the nVidia nForce 4 motherboards that when the crackle symptoms are occuring, the Soundblaster X-Fi card PCI bus master memory requests for audio data are being held off (not serviced) for very long intervals.

We have observed peak holdoffs of up to 2 milliseconds in some cases. This is unusual chipset behavior that is beyond the ability of a hardware audio accelerator to compensate for in its internal buffering. The SoundBlaster X-Fi tolerance for these PCI holdoffs is approximately 120 microseconds peak holdoff, with a 1 microsecond average holdoff.

These design tolerances are based on observation of real PCI bus behavior on leading motherboards over a period of many motherboard hardware generations.

The nForce 4 motherboard is the first motherboard on which these extremely long PCI service holdoffs have been observed by Creative, where another PCI device in the system was not causing the holdoff.

Dale

[RanCorX2]

Originally Posted by Forces(UK)

I noticed that this link no longer works.

I've rehosted though:
Download XFI_Auzen_3_0.rar from Sendspace.com - send big files the easy way

that's because I deleted it, posted a new driver here X-Fi Auzen 2.20.0002.10 RC4.2 dated 5th November ... - Creative Labs

[Forces(UK)]

OMG, does that mean I don't have the latest drivers any more?

This will not do at all!!!