Ingame ticking noise

[Flamesfan_21]

Afternoon all.

This is going to sound random and to be fair, a bit whiny, but i have noticed recently an odd "ticking" noise in the background whilst playing certain games.

For example it ticks every so often when flying normally in Il-2 Sturmovik or whilst walking in Oblivion.

Im running on a SoundBlaster X-Fi XtremeMusic card which i bought with my rig a little over a year ago. I have tried multiple things to remedy this small, but frustrating problem, but all to no avail. This includes updating drivers and whatnot.

So yea, sorry about the sob story but would be interested to hear if anyone knows anything about soundcards and has any insights.

Thanks in advance :thumbsup:

[.Gunfire]

Re: Ingame ticking noise

Have you tried uninstalling the drivers?

[Flamesfan_21]

Re: Ingame ticking noise

Well i uninstalled the old drivers and downloaded the latest one from Creatives website but it didnt make any difference.

Its the fact that it just started randomly that has me confused.

[Flt. Sgt. Powderhound]

Re: Ingame ticking noise

What OS are you on?

[Flamesfan_21]

Re: Ingame ticking noise

I'm running on XP mate, and im pretty sure i haven't changed anything that i wouldn't have changed back, so i cant understand where this problem came from all of a sudden

[Flt. Sgt. Powderhound]

Re: Ingame ticking noise

Have a look at this from wikipedia:

Sound Issues with Crackling and Popping

A number of owners of X-Fi cards have come to experience what is known as a constant popping and crackling noise during use of the cards. Creative has attributed the case to be NForce motherboards, however many other users who do not use these motherboards continue to experience the sound issues. Creative has not provided a fix as of yet for this. Nevertheless there are unofficial recommendations how to solve these issues:

• Move audiocard to another PCI slot and reinstall audiocard drivers.
• Replace native disk controllers drivers with generic Windows ones.
• Update motherboard's BIOS to latest version (including "beta" versions).
• Set PCI Latency to 96 or more.
• Use X-Fi card only in "Audio Creation Mode" with "Bit-matched playback" option on.
• Overclock PCI bus to 40 MHz instead of 33 MHz.
• Replace all the capacitors on the card (At the expense of warranty)

The newly revised EMU20K2 chipset used by the Titanium line of cards is said to solve the problem, further confirming the above PCI bus related fixes.

[Flamesfan_21]

Re: Ingame ticking noise

Nice find, thanks for looking for that. I just went and tried the PCI latency and Bit-matched mode fixes but to no avail. I'm not entirely comfortable overclocking so ill avoid that method if i can.

I'm getting new hardware soon so ill swap the soundcard around when they arrive seeing as ill have the side off anyways.

[.Gunfire]

Re: Ingame ticking noise

Oh, have you tried reseating it?

[ALANMAN]

Re: Ingame ticking noise

I have no idea, but I know you wouldn't want to set the PCI latency higher as that would cause more audio problems. By default I believe most of the X-Fi cards are set at either 32 or 64.

[Kreepy Kitteh =^o.O^=]

Re: Ingame ticking noise

Have you checked for bombs?

[Flamesfan_21]

Re: Ingame ticking noise

^^ I'm ashamed to say the thought crossed my mind lol.

@ALANMAN - Yea setting the latency didnt do any good so i since reset back to its default which was 64.

@ Gunfire - Reseating it is the last thing i can think of that might work, so ill do it when my new graphics card and PSU arrive.

Waited so long to get my graphics sorted, it would suck if i have to replace the soundcard now lol :cry:

[KillerStickMan]

Re: Ingame ticking noise

Integrated sound ftw!!!

[Flamesfan_21]

Re: Ingame ticking noise

Ahh see, i did that ^^.

I changed to my integrated soundcard on my Asus motherboard and it worked great, slightly less crisp sounds, but there was no ticking so i was happy.

Since then i have reset to find it has suddenly renamed itself the "Microsoft UAA for high def audio" whereas before there was no Microsoft in the name. Booted up Oblivion again and the ticking was back! And im not even running my soundcard. So im really stumped.

Bloody technology :cry:

[Busby, Paul (Bicci)]

Re: Ingame ticking noise

Very odd, have you checked in device manager to make sure the only drivers there are the ones u want? tried running a driver cleaner?

Tried using headphones to make sure its not the speakers?

Very VERY small chance your sound outputs are picking up a frequency from a nearby high speed fan but i have NEVER encountered that so super super unlikely!

[Flamesfan_21]

Re: Ingame ticking noise

I'm going to try a driver cleaner but at this stage im not holding much hope. I have checked the Driver details in the Hardware tab, but to be completely honest, im not 100% sure what im looking at, or what im supposed to be looking for, its just a bunch of files in the System32 folder to my eyes

And its both the speaker and headphones sadly.

Interesting thoughts about the fan speed, i always put my card up to 100% fan when playing games. Not sure if that would affect it at all.

An odd thing i have noticed, is that in Oblivion say, although the ticking plays randomly, when it does play its always the SAME tick. What i mean is its always one tick, followed by two others in quick succession. And it only happens when im walking on wood

Lol, the more i talk about it, the stupider it sounds.