Cracking and Popping from Delta 1010lt

N

NewbMediaGuy

New member
This doesn't seem to make any sense to me. I've had this setup for a while and it just started giving me these random popping and cracking noises, but so far I only notice them in Frooty Loops, and it gets worse as the song gets more complex.

A couple weeks ago I was hooking up a VCR to record something from the internet onto a VHS. I don't think this would be the cause, but it's the last time I changed around the connections. Seems to be more like a performance issue than anything, but the PC has power so I don't understand why performance would be an issue.

Here are the basic specs:
P4 3.0ghz
1 gig corsair ram
Delta 1010lt
Asus 9600xt video card (if that even matters)
Then it's connected to an older home stereo with stereo speakers.....I know i know, monitors would be better but that'll have to wait!

I have already turned off any unnecessary programs from starting up with windows with MSCONFIG, so it should be performing at top notch speed.

One last thing, I get these same pops and clicks while playing Half Life 2. I just assumed it was because the Delta 1010lt isn't made for gaming, but now I'm getting this from Frooty Loops so maybe I just have a setting messed up.

Any ideas?
 
Has anything changed in the software for the card in terms of latency or cpu usage? Do you have spyware?
 
I don't usually even connect the computer to the internet, I have a 2nd computer I use for internet for that reason alone. I did connect briefly to the internet though to install Half Life 2 because it forces you to connect to Steam, as well as download WMP10, but total time online couldn't have been more than a half hour.

I will run Spybot and Ad-Aware, but because I rarely use it for internet use I just don't think that is the root cause of the problem. Because I haven't updated those in forever, I'll have to download their updates, any other updates I should be looking for? I haven't updated anything for the Delta 1010lt card so maybe I'll do that as well.

I read on another thread of someone having somewhat similar problems as me and someone told him/her to turn on DMA on their hard drive, would that really make a big difference?
 
I think I figured out the problem....err sort of. I noticed I can avoid these pops and cracks if I set the buffer to a higher number of samples. The thing is, I have to set it to a really high setting (3500 samples/78ms), and some demo songs still have a hard time with that. On the Reason demo I have I can set the buffer much lower at about 23ms and I don't have any audio problems with those demo songs. The CPU meter rarely ever goes higher than 25, most often it stays at around 10-15.

Is there a reason Fruity Loops needs such a higher buffer rate than the other programs I have? Again, I wouldn't expect my PC to be too slow, but if you have any ideas of where a hardware upgrade could help me please let me know!

And I did go ahead and run spybot and adaware, and defragged my drive. And because I don't use that computer to go online, I don't have any firewalls, (ZoneAlarm), or Anti-Virus programs, (McAfee), starting up so they don't waste performance.
 
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