Creative Audigy 5.1 help

[TinmanX]

I just took ownership of a Creative Audigy 5.1 Soundcard. I plugged it in this mornign and everything was dandy. Come this evening though, when I go offline to check out the high res texture pack I just got done downloading, instead of nice vrooooom sounds, I get electronic noise, like a real crappy modem or those old computers that used to load games by cassette.
 
Any ideas?

[Stone]

Did you connect the audio cable from cd-rom to the card?

Try to mute aux / cd input volume.

That helped on my old pc.

[Krusty]

I got the same thing while playing Freelancer a while back.

Couple things. Find a diagram of the back of the card, MAKE SURE you have your speakers in the right socket!!! I had mine in the "surround" channel and was getting this staticy stuff (you could sort of hear sounds but lots of static).

SECOND: Make sure the card is set properly to analog or digital, depending on your speaker setup.

Double click your sound icon in the system tray. Go to "Option" and make sure "Advanced controls" is checked off. Then under "Play Control" there's an advanced button, in there is a check box option that says "Digital output only" if you're using digital speakers make sure this is checked. If not, keep it blank.

Take a look at this:
http://www.gamepc.com/images/labs/rev-audigymp3-profileLG.jpg
That's the basic audigy layout. Now there are 5 sockets. The middle is the microphone (obviously, it has that icon) but the one I use for my speakers is the one closest to the screw notch. That's the digital out. I have digital speakers. The one between it and the mic socket is the analog out. The ones marked -1 and -2 are the surround channels. I don't know the specifics for them as I've never used more than 2.1 sound for my personal computer.

Good luck!

[TinmanX]

I got rid of the computer noise by unhooking the drive to card cabel entirely (thanks Stone). Now though I get all AH sounds played through my speakers at triple speed, like it's got the "chipmunk" sound setting on, but it doesn't. Plus, there's a scratchy sound when I hook my headphones up (I have 2 kids under 2, headphones are a necessity in my house).

I'm using 2.1 speakers (analogue) and also (analouge) headphones. Do I now need to invest in digital equipment?

[Krusty]

No you don't. Analog works just fine. In fact I ran mine on analog until I found my digital speakers (back when I unpacked it).

If you're getting funky sound then I can only think of 1-2 problems.

First might be a problem with how it's hooked up. Maybe. I don't know. Maybe you've got a cable in the wrong place.

Second (more likely) is a software problem. What drivers did you install? What software? Did you get an install CD?

If you put the card in, boot up, and windows recognizes it, you can cancel the driver install and then go to http://www.creativelabs.com and under the support menu select autoupdate and it will download and install everything you need.

Once or twice when I installed the pre-packaged software, I'd get funky "hall" echos and deep base on stuff. It was something in the software where it was adding effects to everything. I disabled it but I cannot remember how (as I have long since stopped using the pre-packaged software).

[TinmanX]

Every other sound my computer makes comes out fine (dvd's, cd's, mp3's etc.) it's just AH2 that has the funks sound-wise.

[Krusty]

Have you tried turning hardware down from full in the DX sound card panel?

[eagl]

AH uses 4 speaker surround if I recall correctly, so if the sound card setup thinks you have 4 speakers or is setup to output digital, then you'll get that screetching from the digital being piped into the speakers.