creative SB1090 5.1 USB X-Fi

[Krisoijn]

So I just got this card and installed all the latest drivers and hooked everything up. Music sounds great but whenever I do graphics "intensive" applications (games, movies, youtube, etc) I get a clicking and poppingn oise from the speakers. I had the creative live 24bit 5.1 usb card previously and thought it was a issue with the beta drivers and switched to this because this one had full windows 7 drivers and thought that would fix my problem.

[Amira]

I'm still trying to dig up a shorter usb cable; I don't have that many short usb mini cables, just long ones. I'll let you know if it works though. However, I think that since you said your popping resumed today that it's more bad drivers which is no surprise as Creative has lousy drivers. I want to get an HT Omega card but I'm still saving up. I haven't heard anything about other cards, but then I haven't looked. Maybe it's a windows issue then. Are you using windows?

[Sasuke Uchiha]

Yes, windows (XP). In my opinion it's a big chance that the problem is connected with electric/electromagnetic interference (computer subassemblies and devices, cables etc.) anyway the most part of people claim that's the driver’s problem do you know any alternative drivers for sb 5.1 USB? There are some "kx drivers", but they don't support usb version of the card by the way what music player do you use?

[Amira]

I primarily use media monkey (paid gold version if it makes a difference) I occasionally use VLC but as long as I'm not doing anything that uses my graphics card, IE videos of any kind, I don't get any popping. It seems to be slightly less when I unplug my laptop so that's a thought. Still, I recently upgraded from vista to windows 7 on my laptop and vista, I didn't have these problems. I hated vista and windows 7 is a lot better. I didn't have these problems on xp either. (My laptop originally had xp on it, it's kind of old, but it's a trooper) These clicking problems only happened once I got to windows 7. It could be a combination of everything, electrical interference from the computer + driver support + usb cables + whatever else. What media player do you use?

[Sasuke Uchiha]

i use only one player: foobar2000, but i tried and the problem is existing also at other players. i tried to apply some program effects like up sampling etc. but there was no results, changing version of drivers was aimless neither though i passed to the methods like replacing cables etc. instead of unplugging laptop try to move USB cable away from power cable or plug it to the fairest USB port. Someday maybe one of us will find the solution.