New rig, new sound card, horrible audio

What OS? Try taking out the card, reboot/uninstall all the drivers and firmware, applications for the X-Fi. Reboot a couple of times without the card, then reinstall and start all over.
Or..............just use the onboard. It is probably nearly as good or maybe even better than that Creative card, ( I will refrain from stating my true feeling about Creative sound cards, especially under Vista or 64 bit OS's) if you are running Vista or Windows 7, the Creative driver support is flakey at best. I finally just pulled my X-Fi and started using the on-board sound. Way, way less issues and on my new Gigabyte board, the sound is every bit just as good, and actually a little better. (I think)

I openly state that no Creative card is worth purchasing at this point, and until they get their drivers under control and (finally) eliminate SCP, I will continue to recommend the ASUS Xonar line of cards over them.

thats funny my old Audigy 2 is working flawlessly under vista 64. like it or not creative is still the top non-integrated sound card on the market.

Like it or not, people can still criticize Creative if they want to. I wouldn't buy them because they are over priced and only got their market share by suing competitors out of business, that's the truth whether Creative fans like it or not.

My question would be, if you have a newer motherboard, why would even want to use the old Audigy card?
Unless of course you have a board without on-board sound (do they even make them anymore?)
The onboard sound on any newer, mid priced board would be vastly superior.

Im not going to get into the Creative debate... all i will say is that i own an X-fi Fatal1ty on the older PCI cards and runs great on Vista 32bit.

OP:
1. Download most recent drivers off Creative website (including Alchemy if you have Vista) Completely uninstall the current drivers and install the new ones.
2. Have you tried a different set of speakers or headphones? Or different ports (think that model has front bay as well as connection for front ports on case)
3. Have you tried a different app to play the music (i know i had some problems with winamp initially)
4. If still no go try uninstalling again removing card and reseating in another PCI-e slot if your able to.
5. Possibly try a different OS to see if its a driver issue.

Thanks for all of the replies. I hear your guys' frustration with Creative and can understand. Although I have never had any issues in the past, this deal with Vista is making up for all that lost time.

So to begin, I'm using Vista 64 and yes, I went to Creative and downloaded the latest driver before I posted. The only thing I hadn't really tried was physically removing the drive and reinstalling it. The night after I started this thread, I did some searching on google and read some good stuff about the HT Omega cards so I decided to go with this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Newegg is overnighting it and should have it tomorrow. My testament to how much I hate Best Buy as I could have done if faster and maybe cheaper there.

In any case, I'm looking forward to trying this card. It will be the first time I have used something other than Creative and I'm looking forward to reporting back on how it works out.

Check to see if your speakers accept a digital or analog signal.

Once that is determined, verify that the Sound Blaster software is configured accordingly.

If speakers are analog and sound card is configured to output digital.... garbled sound is the effect.

Try it, it may be what's wrong.


enigma

my new mobo does have a realtek HD sound chip but my audigy 2 still sounds better than than that crappy onboard sound

Actaully, Realtek's onboard is very good for the most part. Wouldn't use it for high-def movies, but even for light gaming, it performs really well.

This sounds like a case of Creatives "Snap, Crackel, Pop" issue they've been plauged with for what, 6 years now? No one has a clue what causes it (although an nforce chipset had a greater likelyhood of haveing a Creative card go bonkers), as it can happen across all setups. I personally thought it was a bandwith issue, but even the titanium can have the same symtoms.


And as for Creative cards being the best, Azuntech (which does not have a SCP issue (as far as I know) using the same X-fi chipset) and ASUS (no X-fi, better overall quality) are better buys at this point. Creative is simply riding X-fi, which isn't even being used as much anymore now that the sound market has opened up again.

Sound is largely personal preference, what 1 person says is excellant another thinks is horrible.
I have used several Creative cards, all the way back to the Soundblaster 16 and Pro ISA cards. But in last few years, and after my last purchase of the X-Fi, I have become completely un-impressed. I have an old $30 Turtle Beach card that I think is better than the X-Fi.

how much did you pay for the speakers?

By quality, I was refering to signal loss, distortion of stereo sound, etc.

Yep, still have my Soundblaster 16. Creative has fallen a long way...

ahhh i second that,booooo creative for lack of support =(