I've read a few other posts on here about this, but i've got a couple different things.. mainly this is just to confirm what i already suspect..

I've got an Audigy 4 card hooked up to my Harmon Kardon reciever (Optical Connection) and all my music is stored on a Raid 0+1 set. I also have a Raid 0 set for my O/S. Before i had a Raid 0 set for my music, which was a bad idea as one hard drive crashed,, but ever since i've changed this i'm getting crackling in my speakers. Is this a power issue? Or is not able to handle having to write to 4 drives simulataniously?

If this helps, i use Windows Media Player 6.4 to play my music.

Try reinstalling your audio card drivers. There's no reason a RAID 0+1 set shouldn't be able to act properly.

I'm really curious though, why in the world are you using WMP6.4? Get something modern like Winamp, or even the newest version of WMP and see if that helps.

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Welcome to PimpRig Deibs very good place to find all your needs for modding and answer to many problems you might have

Make sure all cables are clean and in all the way that would be the biggest thing with audio. Another thing is, could the speakers be blown? Or do they work fine on other systems? As for a program why use anything but iTunes?

Quote: Originally Posted by Deibs I've read a few other posts on here about this, but i've got a couple different things.. mainly this is just to confirm what i already suspect.. I've got an Audigy 4 card hooked up to my Harmon Kardon reciever (Optical Connection) and all my music is stored on a Raid 0+1 set. I also have a Raid 0 set for my O/S. Before i had a Raid 0 set for my music, which was a bad idea as one hard drive crashed,, but ever since i've changed this i'm getting crackling in my speakers. Is this a power issue? Or is not able to handle having to write to 4 drives simulataniously? If this helps, i use Windows Media Player 6.4 to play my music.

If the issue isn't coming from something that can be solved in software, odds are that it's an electrical interference issue. Try reorganizing wires, switching to shielded cables, etc. Are you using an acrylic case or a case with any unshielded windows?

The audigy line of cards (a lot of optical output chipsets for that mater) never did handle the optical output very well. When you use a raid array unfortunately your using a chipset that is linked direclty to the PCI bus of a motherboard, accessing 2-4 drives simultaniously for a single song puts a stress on the PCI bus that does infact retrieve the information quicker, but uses more processing and PCI bus clocks. Most importantly the Audigy chip, which has changed little from the first audigy all the way to the audigy 4, has a problem if data is delayed to the digital outputs... poping will occur, and if your playing a DVD for instance using the optical output in order to passthrough the dobly digital signal you'll notice a complete cut. When you play music though it doesn't upsamle in the way you might think. Instead the audigy external unit takes the information digitally from the card and transfers it to the reciever via the optical and coaxial outputs. So if there is any lag on the PCI bus then even the digital output will experience "pops" because they are a side affect produced by the chipset..not a real lag in the optical data a lag in the information from the computer to the sound card. My suggestion is to increase the readahead in your media player (for instance you can increase the ammount in milliseconds that winamp reads ahead on the hard disk) or organize your music across multiple partitions and see if that helps.

BTW I realize how crazy that sounds...to take a RAID 0 + 1 array (4 drives) and repartition it? stupid eh? well you can trouble shoot it on a smaller scale by loading the music into a temporary RAM partition on your memory to test if it is the hard drives or by hooking up a USB drive to your computer.

But to me, given my experience with the audigy line of cards, and because i have the same card, it doens't seem like it's the driver but more or less becaue your using a RAID array.

Hey Welcome aboard. Thrasher has already given you the lowdown I see, so be sure to check out the links when you can.

As above try runing through the basics of cables connected properly, and any peripherals connectted to the audigy card are connected properly. Look in the settings (there should be software for changing speaker settings in windows? ) if you cant find anyhting wrong with them set back to default and work up from there.

RAID as stated may also be an issue...I cant remember off hand whether RAID 0+1 allows for speed or security, but it may well be good time to get a USB hard drive /caddy and a spare hard drive and dump a section of the files onto there...and test to see if they play any better.

Well as for cables/speakers and such i doubt that very much. I'm using my home audio system, all Infinity speakers and they are hooked into my Harmon/Kardon Amp.

WMP 6.4 is the best man.. why do you need all that extra, ****aka. I have winamp but don't care to use it,, it's mainly there to make playlists. I'd never use WMP 10,, it takes 10 min to load!!!! 6.4 is instant,, faster then winamp,, and i wont even start with Itunes.

Case is good, Lian Li PC-70,, i used to have an acrylic, but before i had these speakers.


There are two individual raid controllers as i mentioned, Silicon Image3512 and ITE8212. But i was using both before setup almost identical to what i have now and there were no real problems.

All i've done is put 4 drives instead of 2, which i had to do,, the 2 were in a Raid 0 set that failed on me... so never again. As for Raid 0+1 it's speed and redundancy. A touch slower then just a Raid 0 set but still fast enough for the average consumer.

I have the same thing with a pair of extremeley sh1ty, 1995ish speakers. They receive a lot of electro-magnetic interference from other devices. For example, when I turn on my fluorescent hobby lamp, it causes the speakers to crackle every time.

Well have you tried any of the suggestions? You've got quite a response on this thread for just crackling on the optical connection. I'll put my money on it not being a EMI shielding problem and if you "want" to fix the problem try the other suggestions and get back to us.

If it's not a matter of anything else mentioned, I'd place my bets on the following:

shielding, shielding, shielding (making certain the shielding is working as shielding--a.k.a. grounded)

Well the only real shielding problem i have is that my Reciever is sitting beside my monitor and causes the monitor to do some funky things.

I've put my money on the PCI bus, as i have two raid cards controlling my system. One for windows and one for Data. Unfortunatly i'm unable to put it all on one raid card due to one being SATA and the other IDE.