Sound gets distorted on X-Fi Titanium PCIe with more than 4 GB RAM

[Van Ness]

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So I have a very strange problem with my X-Fi Titanium (not Fatality): Sometimes, I don't know when and why, the sound gets distorted. Especially low frequency sounds start to crackle. I can fix this by switching from Gaming-Mode to Entertainment-Mode and back, and then everything is back to normal. Using Vista 64, latest official drivers, clean install of Windows. This is very annoying as I cannot even reproduce this issue. Yesterday everything was ok the whole day, this day it started just a few minutes ago.

[Krisoijn]

I see you found my thread and my problem. I've not found a fix, nor have rma-ing the card, switching pci- slots, or taking out ram solved the issue for me. Try changing the bit rate in windows. This made this issue occur much less than normal, but it still happens on occasion. To do this:
Right click the speaker icon down by the clock and go to PLAYBACK DEVICES now Left click on the speakers and Select properties now select the advanced tab. Change the rate to 16 bit 48000 Hz DVD quality and apply. Hopefully that will lessen the issue for you. You are not alone. I can tell you that much. My friend also experiences the same problem. I really wish we could get a fix.

[Van Ness]

I actually though it may have to do something with the bitrate as static sometimes (but not always) kicked in when starting playback in the foobar2000 audio-player, which was set to 32-bit. How much RAM did you take out? Did you strip it to less than 4GB? What hardware is your friend using?
Here is mine:
Q9450 (also happened with E8600)
Gigabyte EP45-Extreme
EVGA 8800 GTX
2x2GB Gskill RAM
Vista 64-bit SP1
Currently we have the Intel P45 Chipset, the nVidia 8800-Series and Vista 64-bit in common.
Maybe we can narrow down this issue further.

[Mindstorm]

Well here is a quick way to do what I was saying and this may work for you. If it does not you can simply change your settings back to where they were. This program is called EASYBCD and the version of 1.72. There in the advanced options you can choose to burn 64 Megs of ram which will take you below the 4GIG amount of memory. Would you really notice the difference without 64 Megs of ram? It is a known issue that some motherboards have issues when addressing more than 4 gigs of memory and some users use this program to take them right below the limit. Of course many people here say that this is not their problem, etc. But many of those people have different motherboards that are newer or older where there is no problem for Vista to see and utilize their memory. I had an ASROCK 939 dual SATA motherboard that could only see 3.2 gigs of memory in VISTA even though it was there. I used memory remapping, memory holes, etc to alleviate my problem but when I got a new ASROCK 780G chipset motherboard all my problems went away in about two seconds. So if memory addressing and/or motherboard chipsets are your problem like MANY OTHERS have had here. Then this may solve it. USE THIS ONE OPTION of the program, no other option! Please UNCHECK THEM. Then retest with your card and see if you get the crackling noises. Some PCI/PCI Express buses introduce noise that interferes with NVidia SLI video and Creative sound cards when addressing large blocks of memory for which the board is unprepared to handle. Think of this as a traffic jam and the honking of cars is like the static noise in your sound card. This is documented quite well actually. So if my solution does not work, the Easy BCD check box that changed your memory option can be changed right back.

[Van Ness]

Ok, I'll try that workaround. But what's if I upgrade to 8GB RAM or buy an i7 System with 6GB of RAM? Should I "burn" 2GB for nothing? You have to admit, that cannot be a final solution. Furthermore, PCIe should have far less problems with interferences etc. than PCI. I never had problems with my PCI XtremeMusic, even with Vista 64-bit and 4GB RAM. Why does the Titanium have problems? I still think this is an issue caused by buggy drivers (would NOT be the first time speaking of creative's drivers).

[Mindstorm]

Okay I understand what you are asking very well. First, I strongly say Creative needs to create a driver which properly addresses all ranges of memory for Vista 32 and 64, same for Windows 7. This is a fact. Do you remember the old DOS days when everybody created a boot disk, to manage memory etc? This is what a driver should do all the time. Second, most motherboards created in the last three years are awful when going above 4 gigs. Period. I have proved that to myself with 7 brands and now I am happy but it was expensive doing all the testing but an awful lot of fun! New motherboards are handling it beautifully now. Third, I do not want you to spend all kinds of money for things you don’t need, but if you want 8 gigs of memory to work in all instances, please continue to watch out for patches and updates for your programs hardware, and software. Creative is not the only one slow to catch up There are relatively few programs that are native 64 bit. Even though we have had XP 64 bit for years now. So test out this program I gave you earlier, see if this fixes one issue, and then concentrate on large amounts of memory and new equipment as that comes to you. Work out these conflicts ONE by ONE or your problems may be camouflaged by each other.

[Van Ness]

I understand what you are saying, too. I would not miss 64MB of RAM, that's for sure. But I'm the kind of people that hates "dirty" workarounds. That's like if your repair shop says "your car will blow if you go full throttle, so just keep it below that". As said, I'm currently using a board with P45 Chipset. It supports up to 16GB of RAM and as the board brand is Gigabyte, the BIOS should be pretty mature as well. Note that I'm not using a SLI-Setup.

[Operatorr]

My friend has an nforce motherboard. I'll double check which version. I didn't take less than 4 gigs out. I currently have 8 GB again. Changing that bit-rate option really made a difference for me. So far the thing I've noticed mostly is that everyone has Nvidia GFX cards. I read some posts on here pointing to them as the culprit, but either way I think it's creative. I bought the PCI-E card for a reason, but it hasn't gotten rid of this issue and that is disappointing to me. I also shouldn't have to "burn ram" especially when I need 8 GB for the 3D and Photoshop work I do. I shouldn't have to change my work habits to accompany my sound card.