Vista - Audio laggy, stuttering, and slow

Hey Everyone,

First time posting here so be gentle. I am having difficulties with audio which has stemmed back for some time almost a year before i started buying new hardware to "correct" the problem. I have read over many posts about stuttering/laggy/jittery audio, but none seem to give me an answer. When i play Bioshock, Command and Conquer Generals Zero Hour, or even Half Life have a static-clangy echoey sound to them. It is quite the disturbing sound to hear and i cant help but think of Michael Keaton in the movie White Noise, but worse sounding static... Anywho I cant simply exit out of the program (Bioshock for example) and restart the program because the sound remains the same. I recently upgraded my system, and my sound card choice from Creative X-FI (which also had the problem) to an ASUS XONAR DX. I had thought this was strictly a sound card issue at the time when I purchased the Xonar last week. I was wrong.

This cant just be a sound card issue can it? Could it be that my 500Watt PSU isnt enough for all my nice new equipment AND my sound card?

I dont have hardware acceleration available to me through my speaker setup btw.


I appreciate any/ALL support from you all.

Cheers,

Fixxor

Hi

Have you removed the creative Audio Panel from add/remove programes? Even if you have a creative product installed I still find that sometimes it interferes with the sound quality.

Regards
UKMedia

In Response to UKMedia,

I do believe I have fully uninstalled all creative products except my Creative headset HS-1000 USB drivers... Should i Uninstall those also?

Also, I noticed that there are other people who couldn't fully uninstall their audio drivers, so they had to do it in safe mode. What are the odds that I would have to do that?

-Fix

Hi Fix

You don't need to uninstall the headset drivers, just the audio control software (Just check add/remove programes and make sure that no Creative programs are installed). As for removing the drivers in safe mode; yes this may work but if you have already uninstalled them, you may need reinstall and then enter safe mode to carry out a complete uninstall.

Let me know if this helps.

ps

I assume that you don't have a MB built in sound card enabled in your BIOS?

I will try to reinstall the X-FI software later when i get out of work, and then uninstall in safe mode.

As far as disabling the onboard audio- I did disable it. I think it was the first thing I did when I booted up the machine for the first time.

I am not the most computer literate guy there is, could you explain why uninstalling in safe mode would delete better than if i deleted in standard post?

Uninstalling in safe mode didnt work. I am just going to wipe the HD and start fresh.. AGAIN! ARG!

First check your IRQ's. I had a similar problem. The sound was sharing an IRQ with my wireless usb. I changed devices and it fixed the problem. - Steve

Hey Steve,

How did you go about checking your IRQ?

Go to Device Manager.Click on My Computer to highlight it. Click on View in the Taskbar.Go down to the Interrupt request (IRQ). Expand the tree.Locate your device near the bottom in PCI. See what other Device it is sharing an IRQ with that might be causing a problem.Your problem might become obvious as did mine. My sound was slowing down crackling ,etc.Not any more!- Also can be found in msinfo. Just type msinfo in search.Steve

PROBLEM SOLVED.

My Wireless N USB Adapter driver was out of date, and it conflicted with my onboard NIC card.

See here in my screenshot