Recently my X-FI SoundBlaster Fatality XtremeGamer Professional started doing these strange crackling and bad sound output, or at least i think its the card. It seems to happen when i run games, for example i cant even play certain games because the crackling starts from the very beginning. This never happened before, but i tried updating the drivers and its still there.

Also, could the power cables be causing an interference with my sound? My speaker cables are all mixed up with the power cables for the pc, i will sort them out if that could be the problem.

Thanks for reading.

It could be some form of interference. Does your case have a front audio connector?..If so, hook it up to the sound card and test through that. There is a chance the sound card is dying on you though. But try to move the computer away from where it is right now and give it a try, if it still does happen...it means it's crapping out.

I only bought it 2 months ago, is there a chance this is a driver problem?

First thing to check move your speaker cables away the monitor especially if using CRT monitor and away from any power cable. and make sure everything is grounded. Ground loop will cause the same issue.

Second discharge any if there's any EMI/RFI charge trap on your cable by turning " ALL " the power off and short the " SPEAKER TERMINALS " together using aluminum foil. Sorry if I have to emphasize " ALL " and " SPEAKER TERMINALS ". I just don't want you to get hurt.

Third do not coil any excess wire, use tie wrap to hold them together and separated from high voltage wire and network wire. make sure your cable signal for TV is grounded.

Now you just eliminated you second guess. and if you still have the same problem then it's a driver conflicts.

Try to uninstall the drivers first the use a registry mechanics or registry fix to fix any broken registry then restart. run registry fix again before installing the drivers back.

I had that happened to me, drivers issue.

Had to uninstall all the audio Drivers, Codecs and the Game because tried to uninstalling just the driver didn't help. I even went into the registry to manually delete all the creative components. and use registry cleaner after.

Most occurrences to me is when loading beta or trials software on my computer. sometimes even just updating it. What works for me is to update Microsoft to the latest.

Nice reply mate, i`m going to format my computer and reinstall all the drivers, see if the problem is gone, as i think its a driver problem. I mean, this only happens in certain games, for example running Call of Duty 4 doesn't make a single sound flaw, but upon starting World in Conflict all i hear is crackling and stuff.

"First thing to check move your speaker cables away the monitor especially if using CRT monitor and away from any power cable. and make sure everything is grounded. Ground loop will cause the same issue. "

MY speaker wires where actually coiled around the electrical plug for the computer lol, i had no idea it causes interference. I mean, they always where like that and it never did any problems before. But it this did cause the problem, wouldn't it be more random and not application specific? I will remove them anyway thou, don't want to blow up the speakers lol.

Thanks for the reply mate, appreciate it.

I have to correct my self here. Ground loop will make a humming sound. Improper grounding is what I meant. That cover pretty much all. including ground loop.

This is a common X-fi issue
http://xfi.blogspot.com/2006/08/x- [...] inues.html

Read taht..


The fixes are this

Run 2bg of ram(100% fix but annoying to drop ram)


with 3 or 4 it crackles


Sometimes driver updates fix it sometimes not. (most not)

It is a common issue with Overclocked GPU.
Try underclocking (this also did not work for me)

Creative deny it , and dont help.

sorry for bad news

u will find games like
wc3 wow and Guildwars are the worst offenders with this. COD4 ect.. should be ok.

anything using over 16 multisamples i belive.

u will notice it dosent do it with MP3's and stuff.

I cleared the wires and have my pc a format, most of the distortion is gone and i can only hear very few popping (it seems to be caused by the application, like when a map loads in a game it pops once or twice, but thats pretty much it). It would be great if it would work at 100%, but reading a bit about these sound cards it seems its a common problem, i wonder why they are so famous if most of them come with this problem .

Sounds better than before. Have you tried updating your audio drivers yet? and have you check creative if they have patches for your games?
Have you try updating the games as well? Hope they'll be able to fix those problems sooner than later.

One more thing have you try moving your audio card to a different PCI slot? It may not make any difference but at least you can eliminate one more posibility.

Anyway goodluck finding more solution.

I updated my soud drviers to the latest, but i didnt install this one:

" Creative - Sound - Creative X-Fi Audio Processor (WDM)
Date last published: 7/10/2007
Download size: 10.9 MB
Creative Sound sofware update released in June, 2007
System Requirements
Recommended CPU: Not specified.
Recommended memory: Not specified.
Recommended hard disk space: Not specified.
Get help and support
http://support.microsoft.com/select/?target=hub
More information

http://winqual.microsoft.com/suppo [...] d=20060955 "

It showed up by windows update and i have no idea what it is.

I actually cant move the card to a different slot because of the bad conditions of my "case" lol, il give it a try when i get a new one eventually.

Note to self: do not create air vents with a screwdriver....

I have each game to the latest version (always did, always will)

I couldn't find any patches at the creative site, the only thing i found relevant was this:

http://mt.europe.creative.com/prod [...] duct=15854

Thank you for your replies