odd hiss (sudden) on X-Fi

S

silent-circuit

[H]F Junkie
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Sep 18, 2005
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New build as of a little less than a week ago and no real problems thus far until tonight.

Been using this sound card before in an Athlon 64 machine, had some driver issues but nothing like this.

Suddenly (was just browsing the forums here, Firefox and nothing else save rivatuner and antivirus stuff running) my speakers started hissing very loudly like,

"Hiss hiss click hiss hiss click hiss hiss click" over and over. Unplugged the input to check and they stopped, so it was the signal, not the speakers (they screech sometimes near cellphones, so I wasn't sure). Running XP SP2, latest drivers from Creative, everything else up to date as well.

Ideas?
 
The speakers themselves as well as the data transmitted in the cables is in the form of electromagnetic energy. Anything that screws with that (other EM fields) will screw with your speakers, generally producing weird random noises. Crackling is more often the wire being damaged or going by something like a power cable.
 
It's not the wiring, as plugging something else in works fine, and testing with headphones produces the same hissing/crackling. Restarting the machine also stops the hissing, though it will come back eventually, and without any warning whatsoever.
 
Oh, well that's not good. Tried the usual stuff like uninstalling and reinstalling your drivers (not just verifying the version number)?
 
The card stops hissing and behaves normally if I go in to the Creative audio console app and change its "mode".

On a bit of a tangent, who at Creative decided this was a good idea? Or released these cards at all? It's a soundcard for chrissake. It's been more trouble than any other component in my last system /and/ this one -- I have onboard 8.1 HD, might just switch to that and save myself the headache. At least the Realtek stuff works.

Having owned nearly every Soundblaster since the original -- SB, SB Pro, SB AWE32 (my favorite by far), Audigy... -- they totally lost me on the X-fi. I wish I'd paid the extra $30 or so for an M-Audio Revolution.
 
Try reseating the card and make sure it is frimly in the slot. I have seen instances of cards being installed just slightly off, making the same noise. I would check that.
 
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