Speaker Crackle

[LeHah]

I had for a while assumed my speaker bar was going. It would pop a little when you adjusted the volume on it and sometimes you'd get crackle for a minute.

Well, this crackle and static is now constant. I plugged in my headphones and sure enough, I'm hearing it from the card - not the speakers. I checked the port and the speaker jack.

It could be drivers, but I can't imagine *why*. An audio conflict doesn't create interference. I am to assume the audio card is on its way out? A DPC Latency Checker came up with

So suggestions are ... wanted? Is there anything out there that can replace and update old audio codecs automagically? It may help.

I'm pretty sure it has to do with my treble settings but I have no idea how to fix that, outside of adjusting them on my Creative Volume Control , which only affects the pitch of the crackle.

 

[ChrisReid]

Sounds like the card is going bad to me.

 

[KrisV]

I once had a motherboard that didn't get along with my sound blaster; I would hear crackling whenever there was hard drive activity. It can be tough to track down the exact cause. In this case it does sound like the card is on its way out. Have you tried moving it to a different expansion slot?

 

[LeHah]

Have you tried moving it to a different expansion slot?

I took a can of compressed air, cleaned it all out, and then changed the PCI slot it was in. Haven't had a problem since, which makes me think it was a latency problem.

 

[Tigerhawk]

A few months back, I ended up replacing my sound card from similar issues. It would crackle to hell and back when playing encoded audio, but pure CD and DVD audio were fine. I did the same thing you did, plugged in headphones to the card and was relieved the speakers weren't cracking on me. After talking it over with a guy at Best Buy, he thought that the compressed audio decoder onboard the card itself went bad. Got myself a new card, and haven't had a problem since. Didn't go to the length you did, to be sure, but that might be something for future reference.