Sound skips snaps crackle and pop

Problem - Sound skips, crackles and pops on
Creative
On board sound
USB headphones

Any ideas?

Asus P5n-D
4 gig ram
Vista 64 Ultimate
Nvidia 8800gt
Quad core
Creatice XFi
2 SATA drives as mirror raid
third SATA drive as OS drive

Hello Rosthorn and welcome to the site,


Vista has had this issue for some selected devices since the first alpha releases over 3 years ago, while they have fixed the issue for nearly everyone sometimes some users will still get the same problem...

Unfortunately for you at this time there are only three ways to solve the glitch either try another sound device and see if its just your on-board sound or find the manufacturers certified vista driver, otherwise your only last option is a clean re-install of Vista.

dmex

I have tried another device, ie both the creative sound card and the on board sound - noth are identical (indenticaly bad)

Im sorry to hear that rosthorn, If two sound cards are having the same problem your going to have todo a clean reinstall of Vista to fix the problem now...

That bug has been there a long time and is almost impossible to fix, unfortunately you where one in a million who gets the error and a clean reinstall is the only way I know will permanently fix the problem.

dmex

Go into Vista's Control Panel and open the Sound applet
Select your output device in the list that appears
NOTE: the default output device is commonly labeled Speakers
Right click on the device and from the context menu click Properties.
Click on the Enhancements TAB.
Then CHECK the box [x] for Disable all enhancements.

Remove 2GB of RAM and see if you still have a problem. This is a well known problem with the Creative X-Fi, nvidia chipsets and Vista or XP (x64 versions) with 4GB of RAM. I would have hoped this was fixed since it has existed since the nForce 4 chipsets 3 years ago. Just pull 2GB and check it out.

I had the exact same problem and tried every possible solution for my x-fi extreme, it worked fine under xp32 with 4gigs of ram but as soon as i moved to vista 64 the problem occured. I was not willing to loose 2 gigs of ram so decided to put my old audigy2 zs in which works but i cant get surround sound it all comes through the front speakers, in the creative software for selecting speaker set up it is blank . So i am now looking for an alternative to creative. Any ideas?

here is my set up
Dell 710 xps
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6600 @ 2.40GHz (2 CPUs), ~2.4GHz
4 Gigs DDR2-SDRAM PC2-5300
NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS x2 Dual
AGEIA PhysX 100 Series PCI Card
Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS (X-FI removed after vista install)
NVIDIA RAID Stripe 500 Gig (Dual HDD config)
Creative Inspire T7900 7:1 Speaker system.
Logitech G15 (Blue) Gamers keyboard.
Logitech MX518 Gamers Mouse.
Saitek Cyborg Evo.
Vista Home Premium SP1 x64

Auzen X-Fi Prelude 7.1. Works perfectly with my setup (although I only have 5.1).

Q6600 / XFX 780i - BIOS P04
8GB OCZ SLI PC2-6400
2x XFX 8800GTX
Auzen X-Fi Prelude / Klipsch ProMedia 5.1

Ok will need to safe up for that its £120 over here and i am gonna replace my graphic cards first.
Thanks for help.

You're welcome.