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Onboard & Discrete audio, cracking / disk activity

A

AbRASiON

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 28, 2004
Messages
354
Hi All.

Having an incredibly obscure problem which is hard to diagnose, I'm hoping maybe someone else has had similar and knows a solution.
If I run AS-SSD benchmark (or open Firefox with like 40 saved tabs) my audio will pop or crackle. This is with onboard Realtek or my Asus Xonar DX.

I have tried many things to fix it and I can't nail it, my details as follows.
Asus P8Z68-V (one of the first revisions)
i7 2600k
8gb DDR 3
Onboard audio and Xonar DX
ATI 5850 card
OCZ Vertex 3 240gb4
Win7 64 SP1 with patches


Problem occurs through front audio jack on case with headphones (onboard only) or rear jacks for both cards.
It's not the headphones or the amp, I've eliminated those
I've flashed the SSD to latest bios and the board.
I've cloned the SSD to a regular HDD and booted, same problem.
I've tried the Intel SATA3gb port on the board or the 6gb, no change
Occurs with CPU overclocked or not

Popping seems worse on the Xonar, popping also seems worse in youtbe videos than winamp. AS SSD benchmark will generally end up producing a few within a few seconds though.
Sidenote: Audio through front jack sucks on the onboard, audio through rear jack on the Asus seems better - incase anyone ever finds their onboard audio too noisy.



I'm lost at this point, maybe it's the SATA cable or some kind of interrupt thing? could be a faulty board but I'd expect bluescreens and crashes - my only fault is this, it's otherwise very stable.

Any ideas? I really can't think of much. (don't think I have any free PCI-e slots but I'm going to try moving the card if I can next, after that,... whut? :/ )
 
Moving to the other PCI-e slot has done nothing for the Xonar :/
Disabled a heap of BIOS options.
Hyperthreading, C1E, C6, AHCI, other disk controllers (Jmicron, Marvell)
Problem persists.
 
Last edited:
Moving to the other PCI-e slot has done nothing for the Xonar

i would have thought that might have helped
 
UPDATE:

Still not working.
I have re-installed Windows 7 SP1 fresh on the PC.
I removed my regular PCI, Promise SATA300 card.
I found Asus have released new drivers for the Xonar DX (I thought they gave up) from June 2011.


Tried disabling all Disk controllers except the Intel one.
I've disabled the onboard audio entirely (BIOS)

I've set the C1E / C6 / Intel VM / Hyperthreading to disabled.
I've ran the SATA port in IDE mode, not AHCI.

The problem STILL occurs and it's still very very intermittant - I can't be 100% absoloutely sure that the disk controller is the problem, it might be video (?) I don't know.

I can play hours of BF3 and not notice a single pop mind you, I almost feel as if I want to disable 2D hardware acceleration of my Windows Desktop - but that slider is long since blocked under Win 7 with newer ATI cards (maybe nvidia too)


The machine is 99.9% stable, memtests are fine, and to re-state, overclocking on or off does nothing, ram not overclocked either.
For lack of a better description I'd say the soundcard is low quality, with pops and clicks at incredibly random times. They aren't even that loud, but when you have an expensive machine like mine, with decent speakers and an amp - you don't want that kind of stuff! :/

I guess I could replace the motherboard but . that is extremely low on my list of options at this point :/ I just wish I could consistently recreate it easily.

P.S I re-installed Windows twice, once using these drivers for the Xonar
http://brainbit.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/asus-xonar-unified-drivers/
Once using the proper Asus ones
 
Out of curiosity, are both audio drivers enabled? Perhaps there's a conflict issue.

Other things to rule out, try using different speakers/headphones. If the problem still persists then you know it's not those.

Another thing, make sure that the outlet that you're plugged in to is properly grounded. Not having a proper ground can cause static and popping.

Worst case scenario is the motherboard. I had an Asus board a while back that you could hear static through headphones when moving the mouse.
 
Guys the answer has been found, what a real bugger of a problem. I appreciate the input from everyone, some great suggestions but such a unique annoying problem. Hopefully Asus or ASMedia can address this.
Information here.
http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?p=13794608&posted=1#post13794608

Keywords for google, asus and other internet people who are stuck, hope this helps
ASmedia USB3 USB pop click DPC latency z68 P8Z68 V Pro disk disable driver BSOD
 
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