[Sound Blaster Live 24 bit]

[Sound Blaster Live 24 bit] - Computers

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Sound Blaster Live 24 bit
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Posted by: Metr01973

Hi, I've had my sound card for a few months now but I'm still getting the same problem. Sometimes when I'm playing games especially with EAX turned on the sound gets "distorted" and sounds awful, so bad that sometimes I have to revert to bog standard stereo. This only happens in games and everything else like music/dvd's are fine. I have the effects turned OFF in the creative EAX console and I have also turned OFF CMSS and for a while it seemed to be working. But after playing COD2 the other night the problem came back and I noticed that it's when there is alot going on. i.e lots of explosions, gunfire, shouting etc etc. when the firefight dies down it seems to get better but I downloaded the Tomb Raider:Legend demo and this is distorted no matter what I do. I have updated all the drivers and disabled the onboard sound and even contacted Creative but no avail. I thought it might be a memory issue i.e not enough going to the sound card but I could be totally wrong I don't really know alot about sound cards. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

Posted by: Crysalis

you should keep CMSS off all the time. Unless you are really geeky and like the way it ruins sound, then keep it on. EAX should not make it distorted. CMSS will make it distort because it adds un-necessary effects which sound terrible anyway. CMSS is the same as the WoW effect in WMP.

Try it with just EAX on. If it still does this, try buying a cheapo card (not even $20... just find something as cheap as you can find that is PCI). Try using the cheapo card instead and see if it still distorts. If not, then the distortion is being caused by the SB Live for some reason. If it is still there, then there are either conflicts somewhere, or some setting somewhere isn't mixing well with another setting.

EricB??

Posted by: Metr01973

Thanks for the reply. In the creative options all the options like CMSS and effects are all turned off. When I start a game now it starts off straight away now but it's still fine with music and dvd's etc. I can have EAX turned on ingame and the sounds distorts and then I change it to stereo and it's still the same. I'm completly baffled, I have now unplugged the SB live card but now I can't get the onboard sound to work, lol thread here -
[url]http://www.tech-forums.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=100323[/url]

Posted by: Crysalis

when you enabled the onboard sound, did you use the drivers from the mobo's CD? You NEED to use those. There are SO many AC97 drivers that is really really hard to find the one that actually works other than the one you get on the CD.

Posted by: Metr01973

I've got the onboard sound to work....................I forgot to install the drivers on the mobo cd. LMAO The speakers are all working fine with no distortion, so I'm going to plug the SB Live card back in to see what happens. I'll post later with my results.

Posted by: Metr01973

Right I plugged the SB card back in after uninstalling all onboard sound drivers using driver cleaner but still no luck. The sound was still distorted in FEAR until I took off hardware mixing and just left EAX2 on but the Tomb Raider:Legend demo is still the same. Personally I think I might have a faulty sound card. I bought it off a company trading through Amazon.uk and the description said "Brand New but Unboxed" and it only cost me abouot Ł25 GBP ($15 approx). When it arrived it was inside a little cardboard box and the sound card came inside an anti-static bag but this had been opened. I think whats happened is, it's either been dropped or it's had a static electricity shock. If anyone else has any ideas I'd be greatful or do you think it's faulty? Thx.

Posted by: Crysalis

Yea.. I have a strong feeling its faulty. Especially if your onboard sound sounds better!

Posted by: EricB

what do you mean by distorted? does it distort at high volume or at all levels? what does the distortion sound like?

what speaker are you using? you know that sb put out more output voltage than a regular sound card, so cheesy speaker that don't the amp biased right on them, they will sound distorted

Posted by: Metr01973

I'm using a 5.1 packard bell set up . On the front of the base speaker it say's "for AC-3 DTS". There isn't a model number or anything. I bought them in sale at Curry's about a year ago and they were only Ł40 GBP ($20-25). I haven't tried them with another sound card apart from my onboard sound but I did have them rigged up for a surround sound system for my DVD player and they were fine with that. But that's not with a sound card. I now think it might be one of two things a)the card is faulty or b)the voltage thing that EricB was on about. Regarding the sound, when I play games for example FEAR, I can hear the proper sound track, music, gunshots, voices etc but then over the top of that, it's sounds almost like static but not constant, it dips in and out, it's like an "electronic" sound if that makes any sense. Sorry I can't give you a more detailed explanation but it's really difficult to explain. Thanks for the replies guys but if you have anymore I would love to hear them.

Posted by: EricB

we are getting somewhere. static usually mean a dirty volume control. play with it by twisting it back and forth and see if the static changes. if it isn't a dirty pot (volume) it is the sound card

you can clean a dirty pot with a can of compressed air or contact cleaner

Posted by: alexsabree

where can u get compressed air at????

Posted by: EricB

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by alexsabree [/i]
[B]where can u get compressed air at???? [/B][/QUOTE]

I don't know what they actually call air. I just know it when I see it. Radio Shack has it.

so does microcenter. here's contact cleaner

[url]http://www.microcenter.com/search_results_e.phtml?dropdown_method=keyword&dropdown_keyword=contact&submit.x=0&submit.y=0[/url]

Posted by: Metr01973

Nice one, I'll give that a go. I've just bought Oblivion and I'm having real troubles with it. The actual gameplay is fine, but it's the cut scenes. They stop and start like someone pressing pause on on a dvd player (video and sound). After about 8 hours of uninstalling drivers/programs, reinstalling them etc etc. I found that if I disconnected the sound card via the device manager Oblivion worked fine but obviously without sound. So I unplugged the SB card and swapped back to onboard sound and the same thing happened. I disconnected it via the device manger and Oblivion worked but no sound. I contacted the tech support line and they gave me a link to a new driver for the onboard sound card but it got about half way through installing it and crashed my machine. Now every time I turn on my machine it loads to the desktop and crashes. So I've had to disable it in the bios and I can now get to the desktop but with no sound. I'm just about to do a full system format and start again. I'm hoping this will sort out the problem with Oblivion and fingers crossed it might make a difference with the sound card. I will still try the volume cleaning and hopefully in a few hours I should have everything working. Windows is playing up aswell, I had a virus a few weeks ago and Windows hasn't been the same since. So all in all I think a reformat is probably the best thing right now. I'll post again once I ve formatted and let you know how things are. Once again many thanks to everybody who posted, see you on the otherside. LOL

Posted by: Mr. Switch

The distortion thing has nothing to do with CMSS, its bad EAX support with the Live's. I had the exact same thing happen with my live as far as the sound distortion is concerned, espeically with sounds that were behind me. it just became quiet and muffled. UT2004, COD2, FEAR, BF2, all of them. Software sound sounded better, and crisper than EAX enabled with my Live. UT2004 was the worst, god did it sound horrendus in EAX. Once i got my X-Fi, all my problems were solved and sound becuase crisp and clear in all channels.

Its because Live's suck -period.

Posted by: Metr01973

I'm Back.........................................LOL After reformatting nothing has changed. I have now uninstalled the SB card and have had to stick with 5.1 onboard at the moment until I can afford a decent card. I installed all the graphic, sound drivers etc etc. after the format and just put on Oblivion, just to check. I fired up Oblivion and everything is still the same, it's still like someone pressing pause and then play on a dvd player. As soon as I disable the sound card, it's fine!!. I bought the new Tomb Raider on Friday (btw it's excellent, a real treat!) and the sound was playing up on that aswell so I disabled the SB card and used the onboard sound and it plays fine. So I'm going to cut my loses and take the SB card outside, shoot it and set it on fire. It's a Piece of s**t!!! So I think the moral of this is, don't be a cheap skate like me and buy a decent sound card! LOL Many thanks to everybody who posted, all of your idea/suggestions were excellent.