Audigy 2 ZS Platinum & SATA problem

Recently I have been in the process of reinstalling my rig onto a new 150GB Raptor since my current installation has seen better days. Unfortunately, it seems that one of the problems has not gone away with the new install. Maybe the updated drivers are a case of the cure being worse than the disease but whatever the reason, the problem is extremely irritating.

Whenever I try to do any of the following, and any SATA drive is "thinking", I seem to get fizzing or popping noises in sync with the HDD activity light on my case, only when an SATA drive is "thinking" or being accessed.

• Using any EAX Advanced HD effects like Environments
• Using CMSS 2
• Invoking the onboard Dolby Digital or DTS Decoder (i.e. using SPDIF setting in Power DVD so DD or DTS signals get upmixed to 6.1 rather than rely on the software decoder)
• Playing a DVD Audio Disc at full 24/96 setting
• Playing any Fruity Loops mix using the ASIO 24/96 setting with lowest latency

or any combination of the above at a time.

This problem is even more blatant when invoking a virus or spyware scanner like Windows Defender. When I previoulsy had my IDE 160GB Hard disk connected and I am currently using a USB 2.0 WD MyBook ES Edition and whenever these drives are being accessed or written to, no noise is apparent. When I used this sound card on my really old rig with IDE hard disk I had no popping or fizzing noises unless the system was under an incredible amount of strain!

This problem didnt seem to occur so much when using the drivers supplied with the Audigy 2 ZS Platinum. However this problem worsened once I went on Creatives Auto Update and got the latest drivers that they suggested, along with the Audio Console and stuff.

It sounds to me like my SATA controller (some brand called Silicon, its built into the Asus Motherboard) is interferring with my sound card and/or the drivers.

Can anyone shed light on the situation please!!

Onboard sound does not give this problem at all. I have disabled the onboard sound though as I have no use for it whatsoever and with all the other hardware devices I have inside the PC I need as many IRQs as possible.

So why is it that whenever I have used the original drivers with the sound card, despite lacking the extra features, stability and fixes of the new card I never seemed to have such a bad problem with fizzing or popping!

I dont suppose you can recommend me a sound card with support for EAX 4 or above?? I play lots of games with EAX 3 and 4 soundtracks and lack of this technology does make a difference.

you can get an creative x-fi gamer, x-fi audios are garbage and i fell that anything past an x-fi gamer costs to much...