Vista - Sound skips snaps crackle and pop

Has anyone tried going up to 8bg as a cure? As I have 2 banks of 2GB, thus 2 banks free I would rather spend the money on more ram then yet another graphics card. Just a thought.

I believe the problem exists when the device buffers are place in an address higher than 4GB. I know there have been a few problems with Creative and their X-Fi drivers. There is an accusation out there that they are not doing all they can to get the X-Fi fully working with Vista and x64 OS's. But I don't really know and it's all internet speculation.

Anyway, I moved the Creative X-Fi Platinum to my kid's machine and installed an Auzen X-Fi Prelude on mine. For some reason, Auzen's X-Fi implementation works perfectly. I moved to 8GB AFTER I ditched the Creative X-Fi, so I haven't tested that config.

I had this problem, when I had a P5N32-E SLI motherboard, and a year before that one of the hybrid AMD Crossfire boards. What ultimately fixed it was to dump Live OneCare which I used when I listened to WVXU, in Ohio over the net, not bother with Trend Micro Internet Security 2008, which causes this bug, starting with the 2006 version.

The bug I mentioned with Trend Micro Internet Security, still exists to this day and Trend Micro will not fix it, and all they do is blame everything else, just like Microsoft with their Live OneCare, and it's associated bugs and performance problems that I've ran in to lately. I've personally seen programs do weird things and end up affecting hardware.

I'm not saying this is the case every time, but it is something to think about, that if you have either of the two programs I mention installed get rid of it, and move on.

I tried a fresh install with the system stripped to the bone.

Onboard sound card = sound fantastic.

Brought all main board drivers up to date

=Sound fantastic

added Promise raid controler

= Sound fantastic

Installeed Nvidia 64bit drivers for the 8800GT
> sound went to c**p

Looks like a culptit.

So windows VGA drivers for the 8800GT and great sound.
or
high perfomance graphics and terrible sound?

What a choice

The new CL drivers were supposed to fix the snapping with >4GB of RAM. It did for some but not all. Try uninstalling the drivers and running a driver cleaner, rebooting and reinstalling the latest drivers.

Its not the CL drivers - its the Nvidia graphics drivers doing it.

Today I did 2 furthur virgin istalls, it all heads south when I install Nvidia 8800 drivers. If I then roll back to Vista VGA driver in device manager it cures it, (but I loose the functions of Nvidia drivers.

4gb ram
Vista 64

Uh huh. THAT is why Creative admitted to sabotaging their sound cards by NOT creating VISTA compatible drivers and then threatening DanielK with legal action if he continued to make drivers that made Creative sound cards work with Vista. This is a well documented and world wide issue covered by many media outlets. It was admitted on Creatives' website on their forums by one of their SR. VP's. They told DanielK that if they CHOOSE to not make their current sound cards work with Vista so folks have to buy their new ones, that is a business decision that THEY will make. This is not hearsay, it's words out of the horses ass.

You MAY be able to get rid of the snap crackle pop from a creative sound card, but you will NOT be able to get it to perform like it did with XP or any other version of Windows, especially not in 5.1. Creative doesn't WANT it to perform, they want you to buy a new card when they decide to release one. There is a reason why a card that cost $150 a month ago is down to $90 as of Monday. Not everyone has gotten the word, but most have. Creative is screwing it's customers. It's sad, I have never bought a Sound card that wasn't from Creative, I'm 46 years old and have bought many. I won't buy another. Auzen looks like a good candidate to unseat the lost king Creative.

The issue I described was the on board sound on Nvidia P5N-D Mainboard.

I have already abandoned the creative card.

The Nvidia 8800 drivers conflict with all sound (and USB head phones / mikes (making voice recognition impossible)).

It only starts when 8800 drivers are loaded

LOL sorry about my diatribe then. I thought you were still trying to get the Creative card to work. i can't help you, I can't stand the weak sound I get from MY onboard nVidia card. Forgive me for asking again but I DID read that you have already updated your drivers, correct? But have you flashed your BIOS as well? I lack the knowledge to know if that would make a difference to your sound, but I can't see that it would hurt............

EDIT: Are you using nTune?

Yep
I am up to the latest Main board bios. That did not help.
Are there any bios updates for the 8800?