[Artimecion]

Hi all

I've had an audigy 4 for at least a year now, and its always worked perfectly. However, recently nothing is coming out of my rear or centre speakers and everything is playing in 2.1. I am on windows xp x64, and have been the entire time Ive had this card.

the really stupid thing is though is that things play on the back speakers when set to quadraphonic or the surround stereo option and also when I go to do the speaker calibration, everything plays fine out of all 5 speakers.

Under speaker settings though, the channel test is also in 2.1 - both left and rear left come out of the front left speaker and the same vice versa for right. Centre is split across the two. Games now seem to be confused too, sound is coming out all the speakers but the sound is most definitely not 5.1 - I used half life 2 ep 2 to verify this, as it's very good for testing surround when you talk to a character and move about.

I have literally exhausted all solutions that I can think of - I've uninstalled/reinstalled the drivers, re-wired all the speakers again and fiddled for hours with the settings and even went to have a look in the registry (but Im not too great with registry so could have missed something) Nothing is muted, and all settings are the same. I even did a BIOS update , with no avail.

Does anyone have a clue what the problem could be? Is there something in the bios that could possibly help? Is there a registry key that forces 5.1 settings?

It's really baffled me! Any help will be very much appreciated!!

(Failing this, what is a good soundcard now? I was looking at the X-fi gamer one)

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Hi Artimecion,

looks like you've covered everything else in troubleshooting your sound issue,
except windows update & downloading & install the latest sound driver from
your sound card's manufacturer's website.

please ensure you have the latest sound driver (x64).


krs1

[krs1]

Hi Artimecion,

looks like you've covered everything else in troubleshooting your sound issue,
except windows update & downloading & install the latest sound driver from
your sound card's manufacturer's website.

please ensure you have the latest sound driver (x64).


krs1

[Artimecion]

Hi there

Unfortunately, I'm completely up to-date on both of those =(

Do sound cards die of old age like graphics cards can?

[krs1]

yes,sound chips do fail & other sound card components within its
PCB board.

with regards to your problem,there are still some ways to check.

like:

moving your sound card to another PCI slots.
before doing that,un-install first the sound driver.
shut down your machine,before opening your tower,
(just a reminder) please adhere to proper grounding/earth
yourself before touching anything inside the case.

take off the sound card & move it to another PCI slot.
power up & install the driver manually.

i know this is sometimes hard & one of the most
complicated things dealing with sound issues (not getting the real 5.1).
but you can always opt to stereo to surround feature like what you did.


krs1

[Artimecion]

argh, something is very wrong somewhere. Changing PCI slot didnt work =(

I've got 5.1 speakers you see, and it's surprisingly distracting to not have 5.1!

I may take a closer look to see it I can anything that may have burned out on the card itself...

[krs1]

you can test the sound card to another machine,or borrow a 5.1 sound card
from a friend nearby perhaps.

if the issue still exist,then that should explain it all.if that solved the problem,
then you know where to dwell with.you should rule it out first before buying
another sound card.hardwares can conflict with another hardware too.

if you bought a new sound card & that didnt fixed the problem,then there's
something wrong with your machine (conflict with another hardware or software).

[Artimecion]

hmm after further poking, I've noticed two things.

the Audigy AND my geforce graphics both share IRQ 19. Is this ok? It says that there are no probs, but could it still say this and still cause problems?

also, everest says that there is a problem with mmdriver.inf in system32.. the file is there, but is anyone familiar with what the mmdriver is and how it can affect sound? t

[krs1]

Having an IRQ channel conflict in your system can result in your computer not functioning properly.

usually,you can refer to your motherboard's manual on how to resolve conflicts with PCI / ISA / AGP
cards. try manually setting them in your motherboard's BIOS or try a different slot for the newly/old installed device,
you will usually find that by changing the slot you will change the IRQ channel as well.(which you already did).

mmdriver.inf is about Audio Codecs.you might have the file installed or not missing & the error you get may
have been caused by the IRQ conflict.which have been a problem with winXP x64.

try going to your BIOS settings first & see if you can resolve things from there (IRQ channel).
& please refer to your motherboard's manual as well.

krs1

[Artimecion]

Right, I've managed to fix it.

Apparently the Audigy series of cards has massive issues with 4gb ram and windows x64. God knows how I've had it working all this time... What I had to do is modify my boot.ini to have a maximum memory limit and it works. Although, annoyingly, I'm capped at 3.5gb ram and not 4gb.....

[krs1]

congrats! that's a great news.

you're still lucky though to get that 3.5gb of ram,i have seen some
issues with XP limiting only to 3gb.

you might have solved your sound issues for now,but please dont
disregard the IRQ conflict in your system.this can cause another
issue when time comes that you have to re-install your sound
driver again.

krs1

[Artimecion]

thanks ^_^

I'm looking into how to change my IRQs - my bios doesn't have the option to do it (apart from anything that's on board) and I don't fancy disabling the ACPI on the pc..


Thanks for your help!

[krs1]

you're welcome & goodluck!