Sound Blaster Live 24 bit

[Metr01973]

Sound Blaster Live 24 bit Problem

Hi, I've had my sound card for a few months now but I'm still getting the same problem. Sometimes when I'm playing games especially with EAX turned on the sound gets "distorted" and sounds awful, so bad that sometimes I have to revert to bog standard stereo. This only happens in games and everything else like music/dvd's are fine. I have the effects turned OFF in the creative EAX console and I have also turned OFF CMSS and for a while it seemed to be working. But after playing COD2 the other night the problem came back and I noticed that it's when there is alot going on. i.e lots of explosions, gunfire, shouting etc etc. when the firefight dies down it seems to get better but I downloaded the Tomb Raider:Legend demo and this is distorted no matter what I do. I have updated all the drivers and disabled the onboard sound and even contacted Creative but no avail. I thought it might be a memory issue i.e not enough going to the sound card but I could be totally wrong I don't really know alot about sound cards. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

 

[Crysalis]

you should keep CMSS off all the time. Unless you are really geeky and like the way it ruins sound, then keep it on. EAX should not make it distorted. CMSS will make it distort because it adds un-necessary effects which sound terrible anyway. CMSS is the same as the WoW effect in WMP.

Try it with just EAX on. If it still does this, try buying a cheapo card (not even $20... just find something as cheap as you can find that is PCI). Try using the cheapo card instead and see if it still distorts. If not, then the distortion is being caused by the SB Live for some reason. If it is still there, then there are either conflicts somewhere, or some setting somewhere isn't mixing well with another setting.

EricB??

 

[Metr01973]

Thanks for the reply. In the creative options all the options like CMSS and effects are all turned off. When I start a game now it starts off straight away now but it's still fine with music and dvd's etc. I can have EAX turned on ingame and the sounds distorts and then I change it to stereo and it's still the same. I'm completly baffled, I have now unplugged the SB live card but now I can't get the onboard sound to work, lol thread here -
http://www.techist.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=100323

 

[Crysalis]

when you enabled the onboard sound, did you use the drivers from the mobo's CD? You NEED to use those. There are SO many AC97 drivers that is really really hard to find the one that actually works other than the one you get on the CD.

 

[Metr01973]

I've got the onboard sound to work....................I forgot to install the drivers on the mobo cd. LMAO The speakers are all working fine with no distortion, so I'm going to plug the SB Live card back in to see what happens. I'll post later with my results.

 

[Metr01973]

Right I plugged the SB card back in after uninstalling all onboard sound drivers using driver cleaner but still no luck. The sound was still distorted in FEAR until I took off hardware mixing and just left EAX2 on but the Tomb Raider:Legend demo is still the same. Personally I think I might have a faulty sound card. I bought it off a company trading through Amazon.uk and the description said "Brand New but Unboxed" and it only cost me abouot £25 GBP ($15 approx). When it arrived it was inside a little cardboard box and the sound card came inside an anti-static bag but this had been opened. I think whats happened is, it's either been dropped or it's had a static electricity shock. If anyone else has any ideas I'd be greatful or do you think it's faulty? Thx.

 

[Crysalis]

Yea.. I have a strong feeling its faulty. Especially if your onboard sound sounds better!

 

[EricB]

what do you mean by distorted? does it distort at high volume or at all levels? what does the distortion sound like?

what speaker are you using? you know that sb put out more output voltage than a regular sound card, so cheesy speaker that don't the amp biased right on them, they will sound distorted

 

[Metr01973]

I'm using a 5.1 packard bell set up . On the front of the base speaker it say's "for AC-3 DTS". There isn't a model number or anything. I bought them in sale at Curry's about a year ago and they were only £40 GBP ($20-25). I haven't tried them with another sound card apart from my onboard sound but I did have them rigged up for a surround sound system for my DVD player and they were fine with that. But that's not with a sound card. I now think it might be one of two things a)the card is faulty or b)the voltage thing that EricB was on about. Regarding the sound, when I play games for example FEAR, I can hear the proper sound track, music, gunshots, voices etc but then over the top of that, it's sounds almost like static but not constant, it dips in and out, it's like an "electronic" sound if that makes any sense. Sorry I can't give you a more detailed explanation but it's really difficult to explain. Thanks for the replies guys but if you have anymore I would love to hear them.

 

[EricB]

we are getting somewhere. static usually mean a dirty volume control. play with it by twisting it back and forth and see if the static changes. if it isn't a dirty pot (volume) it is the sound card

you can clean a dirty pot with a can of compressed air or contact cleaner