After hitting "S" to move from the Flight Deck to an outside view of the aircraft the normal noise vanishes and is replaced with a horrible crackling sound. Continuing to hit "S" gets me back onto the Flight Deck but the crackling continues.Please........what's the solution?Cliff

Hello Cliff,Computers are pretty complex. The problem could have among a number of different solutions. But first I think it would be helpful if you started by listing your system specs. Especially what Sound Card you have. Do you know if it's a PCI slot based card or an 'onboard' sound card? As in integrated onto the motherboard. Do you have all the latest drivers installed for you system? Especially chipset and sound card drivers.Regards,Jimmy Richards

Just to add what has been said, there was an issue for a few of us beta testers and at least for 2 of us it was our SOUNDBLASTER drivers. If you indeed own a soundblaster series card you can head over to www.soundblaster.com and grab the newest drivers for your card which hopefully will solve the issue you are having.Best Wishes,[h4]Randy J. Smith[/h4][h3]P M D G's 747-400[/h3][h4]coming to a runway near you[/h4][/font color]Caution! Not a real pilot, but do play one on TV ;-)AMD 64 3200+ | ASUS KV8 DELUXE | GFORCE 5700 ULTRA @535/1000 | Maxtor 6Y080M0 SATA 80 GIG | 512 DDR 400 | Windows Xp Pro | Windows Xp Pro 64 |

Another thing to try is changing the "SOUND" settings in your FS9.cfg file. I have the SoundBlaster Live! Value.....very very old card and I run the latest drivers with it, however I still had the crackling sounds. But after following this thread:http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...d=25&mesg_id=25....and editing my SOUND settings, all crackling disappeared completely (knock on wood). Lucky for me too, because I had decided to buy a new sound card. Now, I don't need to anymore.Scroll down to the third or fourth post where the poster has another post about the sound part of the FS9.cfg file. Just a heads up.....the new settings basically changes the sound settings so that FS9 samples at 44KHZ which is what's used by most addons, instead of 33KHz default. Also, it sets the number of channels that you actually have.....2 for two speakers, 4 for surround sound, etc.The thread also has quite a lot of other useful information.Good luck.EDIT: Mr. Jimmy "One Tin Soldier" Richards is the one who did that thread in the first place...the same guy who first answered your post. :) Thanks a bunch for that thread Jimmy.

Hello Anthony,You're welcome for the thread. :) It seems to be a pretty popular one and I think it has helped a lot of people. :D But I really didn't know that those sound settings would cure a Soundblaster 5.1 soundcard problem. Hmmm, wonder if my Audigy 2 sound card would have a problem if I removed them? :-lol I have never run FS2004 without them and I have been using those sound settings since about midway through my usage of FS2002. Those sound settings are actually courtesy of FFX/SGA. All I did was pass them along. And I thought they were a godsend because they enabled four of the speakers on my 5.1 speaker set(as opposed to just the two front speakers). Even though it's not actually true "Surround Sound" it's worlds better(FS2002/FS2004 doesn't have surround sound support). I have seen someone else post another method to enabling sound on four speakers, but I never tried it as the FS9.cfg settings provided by FFX work just grand for me and I figured is the best method for the reasons you mention in your post above... 44 kHz sample rate, customized fader volume levels, ect.At any rate, I'm very glad it helped you out and who'd have thought those sound settings would have solved a 'problem' like yours? Of mice and men, or should I say, of computers and config files. Lol.Cheers,Jim

I have the "Creative SB Live! 5.1" sound card but haven't yet been able to find the newest driver for use with Windows XP.I've also noted that this 5.1 card seems to produce this problem.I'll keep looking for that upgraded driverIn the meantime thanks everyone for trying to helpCliff