Vista - Intermittent Crackle from Speakers

I have reached the despair point, so here I am.

I have a Gateway FX540S, Vista Home Premium with the Realtek High Def Audio
"card". It uses the Logitech Z240(?) speaker set up. It is networked
wirelessly by a Linksys WRT300N which receives the signal on this PC with the
Linksys PCI slot adapter.

Ever since initial installation about 2-3 weeks ago, an annoying sound
"hitch" (you might call it a crackle or possibly interference) occurs in any
sound output through speakers and/or headphones (plugged into the speakers)
approximately every 15 of 20 seconds. However, sometimes it can go as long as
a minute or two before it stats up again. The crackle is not regular but is
persistent. Each occurrence can last from a fraction of a second to perhaps
2-3 seconds. I call it a "hitch" because it almosts sounds as if the audio
playback gets "hung up" or skips BACK.

Here is what I have done to date:

-unplugged ALL wires and electrical cords from entire PC and let 'em sit
about 10 minutes (i.e. the static check). Same problem
-swapped out to a different set of speakers. Same problem
-Played audio CDs on either media drive in the PC and digitial audio files.
Same problem.
-Used different media players to play audio files (Windows Media Player,
Foobar). Same problem
-Downloaded and installed updated driver available from Realtek High Def
Audio website. Same problem.
-Disconnected wireless router connection. (interference from router?). Same
problem.
-Changed back to corded mouse and keyboard from wireless set. Same problem.

I have reached the end of what I know how to do. Is it conceivable that the
audio electonics (I don't think the Realtek is a separate "card") have simply
gone bad?

If the latter is possible, how does one go about installing a new audio
"card" and bypassing the built in one?

RandyJ1431

Did you turn off Enhancements..... ?

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"RandyJ1431" <RandyJ1431@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:C8D1C50A-FAED-41F6-A043-D36157E5DFE2@xxxxxx

Would love to read that you find a solution to this.

I get something similar happening with my Realtek High Def Audio. On the
same computer it behaves the same way in either WinXP or Vista. In the past
I've seen this happen when an audio card was put in a slot that shared an
IRQ with other devices, like LAN or USB. Changing the slot that the sound
card was in always fixed the problem. With this onboard chipset there's no
option to change to a different slot and the IRQs can't be induced to budge
even with a host of unused IRQs. For whatever reason in both XP and Vista
the onboard audio here shares IRQ 16 with at least the PCI express and USB
controllers. Happens to be sharing with my TV capture card as well in Vista.
The amount of noise varies noticeably with disk activity, especially the USB
external harddrive. I've seen it happen before that noise may also accompany
mouse movement.

"RandyJ1431" <RandyJ1431@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:C8D1C50A-FAED-41F6-A043-D36157E5DFE2@xxxxxx

If anyone is interested (and I doubt it), I have taken some further steps to
resolve this problem, but still with no success.

- thinking it was ultimately related to some conflict with the audio "card",
I purchased a Turtle Beach Audio Advantage SRM external audio card. Great
sound but I still have the intermittent "skip" or "stutter" (as I sometime
see it described)

-thinking it might be electrical and radio frequency interference (with the
wireless router?), I purchased a nice surge protector with EMI/RFI filtering.
Nope! Problem is just the same.

-I have tried alternately lowering and max-ing all the volume settings but
the problem re-occurs regardless of the sound settigns.

Boy! I love my music and the sound system on the computer is great but that
little "stutter" or "crackle" just ruins the whole thing for me.

Once again, anybody have any ideas or suggestions.

RandyJ1431

"RandyJ1431" wrote: