Creative Titanium - horrible crackling and squealing

[joeman67]

My front panel audio has awful crackling and squealing noises in the right audio channel. It sounds like a bunch of swine swaddled in bubblewrap having an orgy. This kind of ruins the immersion in Skyrim.

The noises vary in magnitude depending on what the PC is doing at the time (for example, the squealing is worst when the GPU is straining under rthdribl; when I'm connected to wireless, I hear beeping noises instead).

When I unplug my headphones, the speakers connected to the rear panel take over and sound fine.

Anyway I have a Creative X-Fi Titanium, an internal HD Audio cable, and a Thermaltake Element-G case. Moving the internal cable around does nothing to affect the volume of the noises.

Any ideas on how to fix this?

BTW I don't understand how engineers can shoehorn 1 billion transistors into a square inch, but getting Lady Gaga to sound right on headphones is some kind of colossal engineering conundrum.

 

[trapper]

If you plug your headphones into the back do they sound fine then?

If they do then either the HD cable or the actual front panel jack is broken and is what is causing the bad sounds. If the headphones sound the same in the back connector then it is the headphones.

 

[shanky887614]

what case have you got?

i know people have had this problem with antec cases?

and try pluggin it into back to see if this works (if it does you can get extension cables as a temporary fix untill you find out what it causing the problem with case)

or you can buy 5.25"/3.25" drives that slot into slots on pc and plug it in there if you have any free on pc.

personally though i have a headphone slot of keyboard that has a seperate cable that plugs into back of

 

[joeman67]

So I figured out my problem.

I simply removed the Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty card and switched to onboard audio through the same HD Audio cable. The sound is crystal clear now.

 

[Guest]

My front panel audio has awful crackling and squealing noises in the right audio channel. It sounds like a bunch of swine swaddled in bubblewrap having an orgy. This kind of ruins the immersion in Skyrim.

The noises vary in magnitude depending on what the PC is doing at the time (for example, the squealing is worst when the GPU is straining under rthdribl; when I'm connected to wireless, I hear beeping noises instead).

When I unplug my headphones, the speakers connected to the rear panel take over and sound fine.

Anyway I have a Creative X-Fi Titanium, an internal HD Audio cable, and a Thermaltake Element-G case. Moving the internal cable around does nothing to affect the volume of the noises.

Any ideas on how to fix this?

BTW I don't understand how engineers can shoehorn 1 billion transistors into a square inch, but getting Lady Gaga to sound right on headphones is some kind of colossal engineering conundrum.

Lady Gaga seriously?. Maybe your headphones are fine after all.

did you turn off onboard audio in bios after installing the sound card? .

 

[joeman67]

Yeah, I tried it with onboard audio both disabled and enabled.

After many experiments the only way I got the horrible noises to go away was to ditch the Creative card.

Maybe there is some kind of shielding problem or something on the HD Audio cable but it seems to work fine now. I don't really know how to diagnose this kind of problem or solve it other than through sheer luck.

 

[gamerk316]

Its called Snap, Crackle, and Pop. Its a known issue on Creative cards. Hence, why I never recommend their products.