Creative X-Fi Titanium Intermittent but Recurring Static Issue

[Instynx]

I have a Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty edition sound card, my first non-onboard audio card. I've been having an issue for quite some time now and after searching all over and not seeing anyone else with a similar issue, thought I'd bring it up here. My problem is after having the card in either of the main modes that I use, Entertainment or Game for a few hours, I will on occasion get severe static/crackling noise and the only way to get it to stop is to stop whatever sound I'm listening to at the time (usually occurs with iTunes, but that is because that is the program I use the most, but it has happened with other programs as well) and switch sound modes, then switch back. I don't have to be playing music the whole time, just as long as Windows has been running for a few hours or more. For example I use an mp3 alarm clock widget and I've had several mornings where the song will start playing and within 30 seconds the static and crackling starts up.

I'm running the latest Creative Drivers in Widows Vista Home Premium 64 bit on an XFX 680i SLi board, with twin 8800GT's in SLi, and a Core 2 Duo E6550 Overclocked to 3.19 GHz.

P.S. I also have the Realtek soundcard disabled in the BIOS, so that shouldn't be an issue.... right?

Like I said, switching sound modes within the Creative Software seems to temporarily fix the issue, so it's almost certainly some kind of software bug. Has anyone else experienced anything like this?

 

[yossarian]

I don't know if I'd classify it as static, but my Titanium made my speakers sound like they were blown. Didn't matter if it was using optical out or analog out. It's connected to a Denon receiver and Paradigm 5.1 speakers. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the software as directed by Creative Tech support, but it still was there. I finally gave up and switched back to my X-Fi Platinum with the new drivers and everything's sweet again. I'll try the Titanium in my older backup computer to see if it will work there, or whether it's some conflict in my system. I'm using an Intel X38 chipset and Vista Business x64.