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Help Building Ert Compatable System!

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Help Building Ert Compatable System!

#14
See my theory is that all computers have thier own personalities. A perfectly good sound card may work beautifully in one machine and then in a different system it might suck. The number of variables available make hardware conflicts common place. If you are not compltely confident in your own ability to order individual components and basically self design your PC then I would advise against it. It is a lot of hassle and if you screw up your selection there is normally no guarantee from the manufacturer. I bought this PC from 'Time Computers' in the UK. Great job, no screw ups, nice system. You just want to get something with the biggest processor graphics card and RAM you can afford. Unless space is a premium, don't get a TFT monitor, you're best off with a CRT or a good old box monitor.

As for XP pro if you are just gaming, forget it, it's like $150 more and the difference is negligable unless you are an advanced user. I'm planning on purchasing this system for ?699 in the UK thats about 1,245.55 USD

Specification:

Processor : AMD Athlon XP2700+ Processor

Memory : 512MB DDR RAM

Hard Disk : 120GB Hard Disk

CD Writer : 52x CD-Rw/CD-Copier Drive

DVD : 16x DVD-ROM Drive

Graphics : 128Mb GeForce 4 Shared Graphics

Front Panel : ConnectPro card reader

Sound : 6 channel Stereo Sound

Ethernet : 10/100 ethernet port (ADSL router ready)

Operating System : Microsoft? Windows? XP Home Edition

USB : 5x USB Ports

Ports : Standard serial and parallel ports

Modem : Dedicated high speed Supanet optimised 56K modem

Keyboard : Time Multimedia Keyboard

Mouse : Time wheel mouse

Floppy : 1.44Mb 3.5" Floppy Drive

Included Items

17" White Flat CRT Monitor

UPGRADE KM7803 BALL SPEAKER

GT Pack XP1

Lexmark X1150 All In One printer, photocopier, scanner

Jenoptik JD-C160 3-In-1 Digital Camera

I'm sure you could find something better in the States since computers are cheaper over there anyway and you wouldn't need all the other hubub since yours is only a gaming machine. By the By I am a bigger fan of AMD Athlon Processors over Intel. But Intel still work :)

Good luck :)

Help Building Ert Compatable System!

#15
Eh? I use a SBLive 5.1 Player and i dont have any 'hiccups' as you call them, can you name a few games?
Lots of games. Check out this Google search for "sb live" and "crackling".

And SB Lives are realy messed up if your PC comes with a VIA chipset on the MB.

Consider yourself lucky! notify:
OMG, lay off the beers allready LOL

I got VIA chips on my motherboard, where did you read that SBL and VIA isnt compatible/messes up the system...the "blessed" Audigy card has/had exactly the same issue.

EDIT: Click your google link and look at the dates of the various posts, all of them is from 2002 and back, wouldnt you think that CT fixed this issue in a driver update?

Code: Select all

Anti-Crackling Patch for Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live! and Audigy-series drivers can be obtained at the following web site courtesy of third party developer George Breese
--Happy New Year.

Help Building Ert Compatable System!

#18
I got VIA chips on my motherboard, where the hell did you read that SBL and VIA isnt compatible/messes up the system...
http://alive.singnet.com.sg/tech/via.htm
Again you pull out stuff that is 2-3 years old :::December 19, 2001:::
Yes, the SB Live cards have been around longer than that. The problem is old and is still unresolved for many, unless they go through hoops of fire to fix it and usually disable audio card features to bypass it.

For reference, here's Creative's own Knowledge Base entry for the problem.

Indeed, the Alive article I linked to yesterday states "It also seems to imply that the flaw exists in 1st and 2nd generation Live! cards but not the 3rd generation" but they're not certain about that.

Who wants to toy with a last generation card that has a history of bad development and troublemaking? IMO, ordering a cheaper 16 bit sound card from Philips or Turtle Beach is a better alternative than an SB Live today.

As for Audigies, I don't know about the first Audigy but Audigy 2s along with the latest drivers appear to get no more flak from owners than any other piece of stable PC hardware. In contrast, more than the average number of moans and groans were documented by SB Live owners throughout the years.

Help Building Ert Compatable System!

#19
OK OK OK I just used CT KB and your link doesnt work right :( but I managed to find it I think, correct me if its the wrong one:

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Solution ID # 5265 ? ?

Optimizing your system for better sound performance

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Keywords PCI, errors, bus, noise, crackle, quality, IDE, CD-ROM, DMA, device, distortion, hissing, sound, drop-outs, repeating, popping
Applies to Creative Sound Products

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Our Advice
During audio play back, you may receive random drop outs, repeating sounds or constant distortion (hissing/crackling sound). All these symptoms (and any other degradation of sound quality for that matter) can mostly be traced back to system / BIOS settings that prevent your audio sub-system from functioning properly. In other words, if your system is optimised ("tweaked") for a specific task, the result might be that the extra bit of 3D power or data transfer speed to the drives uses up so much of the systems resources, that there is simply not enough left for your sound card to do its job as it should. Sometimes even the factory settings of certain PCs / Motherboards can cause symptoms as described above.
Notice the applies to: Applies to Creative Sound Products

I found a few others while I was there...

1: VIA Chipsets:

This problem can happen when you are using a VIA based motherboard with the Apollo VP3(VT82C597) or Apollo MVP3(VT82C598) system controller chipset.

The problem is caused by a repeated buffer during a wave playback on Windows 98(Version 4.10.1998).

Ok so 1 motherboard with VIA isnt good, but:

To resolve this problem: Run the VIA PCI IRQ Miniport driver version 1.3a setup program.

Ok here is another,

Crackles or sound distortion when playing a song using a Jukebox Zen or Zen 2.0

Well dont use Jukebox 2.0 :P

1 more

You may encounter sound distortion or sound break-up if you have a SCSI harddisk or SCSI CD-ROM drive installed in your system. To resolve this problem, disable the Creative PC-DVD Auto Launcher.

More:

Audio distortion when running voice hardware test

Applies to Sound Blaster Audigy series, Sound Blaster Live! Series, Sound Blaster PCI 64, Ensoniq audio pci

It's an expected sound quality due to the limitation of the API (from Windows XP), which is designed for supporting very low data rate voice communications during a networked game session. The software purposely compresses and decompresses the voice recorded before playing back to simulate a network environment.

Audigy Series:

Sound Blaster Audigy, Poor sound quality including crackling, pops and clicking sounds

OK I dont know what you searched for but I used a broard various of words, and just spent 1hr30min on CTKB. without finding anything directly SBL related.
Who wants to toy with a last generation card that has a history of bad development
Yeah right and you wouldnt buy a ASUS card in 2004 cause the 2001 had an issue.

Or a TransAM in 2004 cause the 1966 model had a flaw in the engine?

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