Sound Card or not?

[Krazy]

I've got the latest drivers, and i've had the card for about two months now, and not a trouble in the world. The card is the SB Audigy Platinum Ex.
Recently i've started to record all my tapes as WAV files, throught the AUX IN 2 in WaveLab Lite (bundled software with the Audigy), and put them onto my computer, later to convert them to MP3.
And i've realised after the tape has been recorded, there are gaps through out, of complete silence, though the tape was always playing and there was sound coming and being fed through, but for that second or two, nothing is registered or recorded, nothing, this happening about every five to ten or so minutes.
Now this gets quite fustrating as every five/ten minutes or so, there is a word or two missing and silence.

I also have started to notice a similar problem, as i listen to MP3, CD's, or any other type of media. whilst i play music, right in the middle of it, the music would stop and there would be silence from my PC for about a second and then the music would pick up again a word or two later. strange, and starting to get annoying.

Now i do not want people coming and bagging out Creative and another one of their "crap" products, because other than this, i am entirly happy with the product. Instead i would like some help as to what the problem might be, for all i know it's not even the sound card, could be something else.

Details of my PC:

Pentium 2GHz
512MB DDR RAM
ASUS 845E chipset P4B533-E
ASUS GeForce 4 Ti4600 Ultra Deluxe
Creative Sound Blaster Audgiy Platinum Ex
Pinnicle DC10-plus Video Capture Card
DVD Drive
CD Burner
Creative Inspire 5.1 Digital 5700 Speakers
Fairly cheap 350watt Power Supply (note: the Audigy Ex does have a Floppy Drive Power Cable connected to it)
2x 60GB Hard Drives

So if anyone knows anything to do with pauses in sound during playback, and gaps of silence whilst recording (not every recording does it, and not every song played pauses, it's about 1 in 10) I'd very much appreciate your help or suggestions.

Note: For me to return this product, and have it replaced with a brand new one is very easy for me, so if you think that is the solution, then please say so

Thanks


<font color=blue> When is a pile of sand a pile of sand? one grain . . . two grains?</font color=blue>

 

[HammerBot]

The silence that occur in you recordings, is that repeatable? I mean does it occur at the same point each time you playback; meaning has the silence been recorded, or do you only hear it because you in general get this error during playback?

Can this just be a bad connection to your speakers? If you have some kind of VU-meter on your PC you can see if there actually is music at that point or 'real' silence.

Is your CD connected to the audio card using a separate analog/digital audio cable? If you have this cable and you dont use digital extraction to playback CDs, the error is almost certainly isolated to sound card or speakers, since the sound from the CD just goes via the cable to the sound card and out to the speakers. There is no software actively involved in this.


<i><b>When all else fails, follow instructions</b></i>

 

[Krazy]

the silence is not repeatable, it occurs every now and then, I record a tape, it has the gapes through out, so i rerecord the tape and then it is fine, and i've also listened to the tapes and there are no gaps in them

What gives it away that it is not the speakers, or connection, is that there is abslute, complete silence in the wave editor, no 'background noise', hiss or anything. (plus even if the speakers were faulty, that should make the recording stop, because the sound goes into the sound card then out again to the speakers)

And with the music listening, i am playing the song's off my Hard Drive, not CD (note: i'm not recoding of CD's Either, just listening to music off them)and i know it's not the CD drive or anything.

And with the VU Meter (i'm not sure what you mean by that) but i do know for a fact that there is sound and data going into the PC when the second of silence occurs. Same with the music and gaming, there is data being sent, but for some reason, it seems that every now and then, the processing of that data stops for a second.

thanks for the reply though )

<font color=blue> When is a pile of sand a pile of sand? one grain . . . two grains?</font color=blue>

 

[HammerBot]

Well then it may still be a software/driver problem. Have you tried reinstalling the drivers? Do you have any progs running in the background?
Is it possible for you to test the sound card in another PC?

<i><b>Artificial intelligence will never be a match for natural stupidity</b></i>

 

[Krazy]

I just completely uninstallled the card, and drivers, and reinstalled them again, and it seems to be working fine again, no problems ) (though i'm still holding my breathe)

Though if the problem does occur again, i will take you up on your second suggestion, and try it in another PC (i never thought of that, and i have 7 PC's too!)

thankyou once again

<font color=blue> When is a pile of sand a pile of sand? one grain . . . two grains?</font color=blue>

 

[jheine]

I noticed you have two hard drives. Are they in a RAID? Also, what model(s) are they. It sounds like the drives may be causing the problem. Wav file can get pretty large, and older hard drives may not be able to handle them as well. They have a tendency to go into T-cal whenever they feel like it. This is not good for recording audio, or playing back large .wav file for that matter, because it interrupts the data stream. I would definately look at the drives. If nothing else, make sure you defrag regularly, especially before recording. This way the audio is not getting split up onto different sectors of the disk, which will also affect performance.

Jarrett