Sound Card: Pops, Crackles, and Other Noise

[GoodNews101]

I have a M-Audio Revolution 5.1 sound card in my 939 build (EPoX 9NPA+Ultra mobo). When I built I disabled the onboard sound in the BIOS and replaced it with said sound card at the outstart; it has the latest and last driver M-Audio offers. This was sounding fine in the beginning with no background noise at all.

However, in the last 2 months I am now getting pops, crackles, and scratching sounds whenever I turn my speaker system on. All connections and jacks are solid and the sound card sets fine.

I am wondering if this might have been due to when I flashed both by BIOS and nForce 4 chipsets to the newest offerings. Any ideas or advice would be much appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Crysalis]

Mute CD Music in the volume control panel. If that doesn't work, it may be interference in cables, or IRQ conflicts (which you fix by changing PCI slots)

 

[EricB]

flashing the bios and adding that chipset driver may have enabled your onboard sound

 

[GoodNews101]

I did go back into my BIOS and the latest flash did auto enable my onboard sound but disabling it didn't help.

It was my CD/AUX control from the M-Audio control panel as Crysalis pointed out. It was unmuted for some reason because I had it muted before.

Once I re-muted the CD/AUX the noise went away. Weird because I can't figure out how it un-muted unless in some weird way my last Fash did it.

And Crysalis I think you helped me out before with this way back when I first built this rig. The thing is I forgot but i didn't think that the problem would be the control panel again! You knew it exactly what it was and you gave me a fine explanation of as to why. I think you need to write a sticky somewhere on the ins and outs of soundcards. There is tons on video cards but far less on sound cards.

Thanks to both of you for the help.

 

[Crysalis]

No problem. I have attempted to write a sticky at one time and Trotter told me he would sticky it, but to be honest, no one actually reads them (well, very few at most). It probably wouldn't be worth my time.