Sound Problems

[Gabrielle]

I've been having problems with my sound lately in my gaming computer. It will make a staticy sound than the sound will cut off entirely from the game. It will return after about ten minutes in the game. It only does it to my 3D games like Bloodlines and Kotor. Older games like Baldur's Gate and Fallout it doesn't have this problem.

 

It's a Soundblaster Audigy 2ZS with the latest drivers. Even before installing the latest drivers it did the same thing, but only to Bloodlines.

 

 

I also disabled envirnmental effects in the game and onj my computer with no luck.

Edited January 11, 2006 by Gabrielle

[Nick_i_am]

I'm no expert, but it sounds like it could be that this is more of a problem with your hardware than software, one thing might be to give the inside of the computer (esspesally the sound card) a good dedusting with a can of compressed air. If you havn't done this for a while it's a good idea anyway, helping to keep your computers temp down, which can improve its lifespan.

[Diamond]

Are you certain that there are problems with games only? What about playing music?

Static noise can be hardware problem, try moving audio connection cables a bit.

[Gorth]

And measure the temperature of your computer. Running too hot inside the casing makes weird things to boards...

 

 

I managed to fry the bios on my old Matrox gfx card once a long time ago (because a case fan was temporarily disabled). Managed to reflash it though, but while out of order, it wouldn't show any resolution lower than 1024x768 >_

[Hurlshort]

I used to get interference from my cell phone as well. If I had it behind my little subwoofer, it caused all sorts of static. Also, speaker placement was an issue. It doesn't sound like that's your problem, but it's an easy check.

[Gabrielle]

I can play music fine, no problems, I can play older games no problems with the sound. My only problems are the three 3D games I have on the computer K1, K2, and Bloodlines. Bloodlines has always had that problem since day one when I installed it. The kotors just started to do it.

 

I have WinXP Media edition on that computer.

 

On my other computer I have the same soundcard but use WinXP Home, have the same games installed and I don't have problems with the sound on this computer.

[Magnum Opus]

Have you tried running your DirectX diagnostics program? (click Start, Run, and type in dxdiag). Click the Sound tab that refers to your sound card and run the diagnostics; that might give you some idea of what's gone wrong, too.

 

Failing that, Windows has it's own Troubleshooting guide... you can find that under the "More Help" tab of the DirectX diagnostics proggy. Any problems I've been unable to resolve myself, it's usually been of no help whatsoever, but you never know... you might get lucky with it.

[Gabrielle]

Thanks I'll look into that.