World of Warcraft, ALchemy, Vista64, X-Fi Music - some popping sounds

[Cale]

i can't get this to work flawlessly. I run World of Warcraft in XP SP2 compatibility mode. I have the latest drivers installed (.0006) and the latest ALchemy for X-Fi (.30). I've tried some other buffers and duration values, but nothing helps. With hardware-sound enabled i often get some quiet popping/crackling sounds, usually if there are a lot of people around me. Somebody have perhaps the same configuration and have no problems? ALchemy in HL-Games has no problems, the sound is clear. Only World of Warcraft doesn't work. Hope someone have a nice registry tweak, some better dsound.ini values or a driver recommendation.

[Lilah]

I am having the exact same problem. I came here to post about it, then decided to just tag along with your thread. I am running Vista Premium 64 bit, Q6600 CPU, 4GB RAM, Nvidia 9600GT, and a X-Fi XtremeMusic on a Gigabyte P35 DS3L motherboard. This is a new build I put together mostly to play Warcraft, so I really want the X-Fi to work. From using a Audigy SE on my old XP PC, I know the Creative sound processing is much better than the in game processing so I made sure to upgrade to a new X-Fi card.

[Shaney]

I am also having a similar problem I formatted to Vista Premium SP1, installed all Windows Updates, and then installed the latest X-Fi driver. After that I installed World of Warcraft + Burning Crusade + all the updates, then ran the latest version of Alchemy and it found Warcraft. I set World of Warcraft to run in XP SP2 compability mode from the desktop icon. I was super excited when the game started, logged on, started running around. And snap crackle pop was everywhere. I check the log file and World of Warcraft definitely is running in hardware more. I tried ASIO4All and a few other apps to fix the crackling and I just cannot seem to figure it out. I just want it to work since I upgraded my whole PC for one game, and now it sounds like crap with the software sound renderer.

[RyanInt]

Set alchemy to 32 channels for wow. (World of Warcraft had a buggy soundsystem, i know they have updated it, but maybe, you should allow only 32 or 64 channels at once for the game). Don’t use winxp sp2 compatibility. Not needed for World of Warcraft. Use 8 soundbuffers instead of 4. Try it out, setting works with teamspeak, too. How this help you’ll.

[AZUL]

Don’t waste your time, really don’t. i have spent the last week and a half trying to 'iron' out this problem with Crysis, same deal 64 bit vista/x-fi/4 gig ram it is hopeless, and i am no newbie, i have a degree in computer science, and have been coding for years, give up and save yourself a lot of hassle, go back to 32 bit, and wait a couple of months, or maybe years, knowing creative. There support on this subject is disgusting. i will never spend a penny on a creative product again. Just my 2 cents

[Wyvern]

If you doesn't enable XP-SP2 compatibility mode, you don't get hardware sound. You can check for yourself in your WoW folder/logs/SESound.log.
You can have 4 states:
State 1: SP2 Comp-mode off/ALchemy enabled: You will get software sound, because the driver send 0 hardware channels, which is correct under vista. This is your state current state fffcmad and the reason you have no problems, because software mode is working fine.
State 2: SP2 Comp-mode on/ALchemy disabled: For any bugs in the WoW-Sound engine it will find 32 hardware-channels. The sound the same like in software mode, but only with 32 channels.
State 3: SP2 Comp-mode off/ALchemy disabled: See State 1
State 4: SP2 Comp-mode on/ALchemy enabled: Full hardware sound detected, 118 channels, but the problems i mentioned in my 1st post.
Looks like there will be no solution from Creative.

[ApplePowerPC]

Don't think that this will happen here. Hope, that a new hardware will fix my issues:
X-Fi X-Treme Music UAA: This card should be compatible, have its own drivers so perhaps there is no crackling.
X-Fi 2: If it comes with PCI-e also a good chance that all is working well.
Asus Xonar D2X: The new DS3D GX2.0 offer some good performance (google X-Fi vs. Xonar), and it is only in software mode, you don't need Alchemy.