Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Fulmar on January 17, 2009, 02:21:08 PM
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Within the last week, I've noticed a faint pitch squeal from my sound card. That is, when my volume in Windows is at 100%, it's fairly noticeable. It's coming from the sound card and inreases in volume as system volume is increased. I thought it was my headphoes at first but its audible through my speakers as well. I tried different audio cables and the same result. Normally my sound is at 75% anyways so I can barely even notice it at that level, but its clearly there at 100%. This morning I booted my machine and the high pitch squeal was deafeningly loud. I had to mute the sound in windows, at 100% it would make your dog howl. So I rebooted and it seemed to fix the issue, but its still audible at the 100% level as I stated before.
I've googled it a bit and sound some mentions of a death squeal, but I'm not experiencing lock-ups like others have. Anyone else ever heard of this? No new system drivers or anything have been changed. It appeared out of the blue.
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatality
Driver version: 6.0.1.1361
7-15-08
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I vaguely remember hearing a faint high-pitch - almost like EM interferance. I don't pay it much attention as it is barely noticable to me. When actual audio is being generated, I don't hear the squeal at all.
I'm using:
Creative SB X-Fi Xtreme Gamer
Drivers 6.0.1.1368
Dated 10/7/2008.
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No problems with mine and never heard of this one.
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I'm going to try a driver update.
EDIT:
Appears to have fixed it.
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I think this is related to IRQ sharing and (believe it or not) your graphics card and motherboard. Asus MBs and SLI cards (whether in SLI or not) exhibit interference patterns in audio particularly. In FSX I got rid of the interference by designating half of my video memory (512 MB on 8800s in SLI) to a buffer pool. FSX slows down if SLI is active (slightly) but when using HD monitors and this trick with buffer pools allowed frame rates to increase and the audio level improved.
This gets to be a much bigger problem under Vista because of audio lag building up pver time (I think Skuzzy has mentioned that).
Obviously we cant use this trick in AH. Not sure what its doing anyway but it works.
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I think this is related to IRQ sharing and (believe it or not) your graphics card and motherboard. Asus MBs and SLI cards (whether in SLI or not) exhibit interference patterns in audio particularly. In FSX I got rid of the interference by designating half of my video memory (512 MB on 8800s in SLI) to a buffer pool. FSX slows down if SLI is active (slightly) but when using HD monitors and this trick with buffer pools allowed frame rates to increase and the audio level improved.
This gets to be a much bigger problem under Vista because of audio lag building up pver time (I think Skuzzy has mentioned that).
Obviously we cant use this trick in AH. Not sure what its doing anyway but it works.
Interesting.
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Interesting.
I think this is related to IRQ sharing and (believe it or not) your graphics card and motherboard. Asus MBs and SLI cards (whether in SLI or not) exhibit interference patterns in audio particularly. In FSX I got rid of the interference by designating half of my video memory (512 MB on 8800s in SLI) to a buffer pool. FSX slows down if SLI is active (slightly) but when using HD monitors and this trick with buffer pools allowed frame rates to increase and the audio level improved
If it just started I highly doubt it is IRQ conflict though you can check it through your bios.
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I'm going to try a driver update.
EDIT:
Appears to have fixed it.
It happens sometimes with the X-Fi cards randomly as well as losing sound in games. If this happens again, just open up the Creative sound control and click on 'default'. This will stop the high pitch squeal and restore sound if you lost it.
ack-ack
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It happens sometimes with the X-Fi cards randomly as well as losing sound in games. If this happens again, just open up the Creative sound control and click on 'default'. This will stop the high pitch squeal and restore sound if you lost it.
ack-ack
Thanks for the tip. The driver update probably fixed it since it sets everything back to default upon install.
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Thanks for the tip. The driver update probably fixed it since it sets everything back to default upon install.
It's a random thing, it happens occasionally even after updating the sound card drivers.
ack-ack