Chinh Do

Vista 64-bit and SoundBlaster X-Fi Crackling/Popping

23rd December 2008

Vista 64-bit and SoundBlaster X-Fi Crackling/Popping

posted in Software/tools, Technology, Tips |

Against popular wisdom, I decided to upgrade my bedroom home theater PC to Vista 64-bit a couple days ago (just have to make full use of all of my precious 4GB of RAM). Everything is working surprising well so far, with the exception of sound! Whenever I play any audio, my speakers now produce all kinds of pops and crackles along with the normal audio stream. Urgg.

After a couple of days of googling, tweeking various sound settings, uninstalling/reinstalling drivers, etc. without success, I almost gave up on the thing. Then I decided to try just one more thing, changing the default sample rate to “2 channel, 16 bit, 44100 Hz (CD Quality)” from the default “2 channel, 24 bit, 48000Hz” and just like magic, the pops and crackles are gone.

SPDIF Out Properties

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008 at 11:30 pm and is filed under Software/tools, Technology, Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

There are currently 7 responses to “Vista 64-bit and SoundBlaster X-Fi Crackling/Popping”

  1. 1 On February 21st, 2009, Anthony said:

    Wow….I was having the same problem running Vista-64. Before what I would do is keep rebooting until I didn’t hear the crackling sound but your suggestion seems to have fixed the problem. I’ll let you know if I run into any more issues.

    posted on February 21st, 2009 at 12:06 am

  2. 2 On February 23rd, 2009, Chinh Do said:

    Anthony: That’s great to hear. I am glad this tip helped.

    posted on February 23rd, 2009 at 5:43 pm

  3. 3 On March 25th, 2009, Kevin said:

    dude, thank you soooooo much. you are officially my hero. I have been living with this EXACT problem for months, and it has been horrible. it was like rolling the dice everytime i booted, half the time i would boot to no cracking, the other half i would be cracking up a storm. I had since given up but decided to google it one more time and found this. THANK YOU =D

    posted on March 25th, 2009 at 1:35 am

  4. 4 On March 25th, 2009, Chinh Do said:

    Kevin: That’s great. I think I had the same symptoms as yours. I hope this fix works well for you. My crackling problem came back even after this fix. Argg!

    posted on March 25th, 2009 at 8:32 am

  5. 5 On July 2nd, 2010, tommy said:

    omg i search for ages days!!! and this is the fix THANKYOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    posted on July 2nd, 2010 at 6:01 pm

  6. 6 On April 2nd, 2011, Miz said:

    I wish this fixed worked for me! I even did a factory reset of my machine and the cracking is still there. :/

    Vista 64-bit.. Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi as well.

    Any other tips?

    posted on April 2nd, 2011 at 2:12 am

  7. 7 On April 7th, 2011, Chinh Do said:

    Sorry to hear that. My fix turned out to work only sometimes. I finally gave up and used the built-in sound card on the motherboard. Chinh

    posted on April 7th, 2011 at 9:32 am

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