Hey everyone, this is a post out of pure frustration and a loud cry for help. This past May I built my new system (specs in sig). When I first got it, I was very unhappy with the performance and had crackle,popping noises when moving the throttles. I narrowed part of it down to the on-board AC-97 Realtek sound. I then got a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. After disabling the on-board and removing its drivers, I installed the Santa Cruz.It did improve the perfomance, but the crackle,popping noises remained. I compare it to Chinese Water Torture. OK, then I got a Creative X-FI Platnum card for $200.00, now the crackling and such was alot worse no matter what I did. I returned that and got an Audigy 4, better, but now only with the DA Piper Cheyenne and Flight Factory Saab340 for some reason it is horrible with crackling and popping with any throttle changes. This has me stumped.Only these two sound sets???I could not find one single person in the entire world using these products with this problem!!!!! I am not kidding..the Devs had not one post about this on the forums. OK, now I went and got the Creative X-Fi Extreme Gamer, same thing and my performance was alot worse in Game Mode Yet!!! I then put back the Audigy 4 as it has been the best out of all of these cards. I started asking different sales reps about my problem. They are telling me it's my MoBo all along, not the sound card. I am really up to here with my rig because of this. The crackling,poping takes 100% all the enjoyment out of my Flight Sim experience. I am sorry to ramble up to this point, but I wanted to make it real clear what I just went through since May, day and night, so maybe it can save someone else from this nightmare. Is there a MoBo that will give me better performance with my current socket 939cpu and such and get rid of this crackle problem that's going to put me in the looney bin real soon?? The sales rep also mentioned as soon as he switched boards to a A8N-SLI Deluxe??,( not sure which model) that the problem was gone, and better performance too??? I am hoping someone can suggest a better board for me than the crappy A8N5X board I have now which was another bad investment. And lastly, when I do get this new MoBo, can I just install the new drivers for it without having to start reinstalling WinXP from scratch? Thanks so much for reading all of this.(I've had this bottled up inside for sometime now) and most of all, thank you for any help and suggestions for a new Motherboard. A very sincere thank you to anybody that can help.

Interesting.... I am running into that problem as we speak.. It happens intermitantly... and I can't figure it out. Don't tell me its the MB. Mine is the ASUS P5W DH DELUXE/WIFI-API even get the blue screen of death on occasion when ...the screech gets real loud.. and yes..its directly coorelated to the throttle.I am using the onboard sound... so far.I initially wanted to move the Audigy Z 2 sound card from my old Dell machine.. but card doesn't seem to fit into the slot... slots are slightly about 1mm off.. I was thinking of ordering another Sound card. And that would be the end of this toruble. But from what I am hearing from you..there is no point. I may need to change the MB? Hmmmm....Manny

Hey Manny, sorry to hear your troubles also. I recently was getting a blue screen stop error, it only was with the PC-12 runway roll sound that was in my AC's in question. I took it from my Flight1 PC-12 and added it to some others, but changed some of the parameters, so maybe that's why I had the Blue screens. Who knows anymore? As far as the crackling, well I don't know, I have tried everything under the sun and the only thing I did not try yet was a new MB, as suggested by the sales reps in the stores. Maybe others will join in with some suggestions? I am so worn out from this, that all I do is test, test, test, test, and no enjoyment anymore. I will not stop until this is solved, as it is driving my insane as I mentioned already. It's gotten that bad for me. I have a business to run, and find I spend more time with this issue than running my business.

"I will not stop until this is solved, as it is driving my insane as I mentioned already. It's gotten that bad for me.I have a business to run, and find I spend more time with this issue than running my business..I know what you mean.. I am exactly like that. Its just that I am hesitating to go that road now. I went that route.. when I couldn't figure out how to set RAID 0 in my system.. I finally beat it...and got 2 sets of RAID 0 set.Now, I have been installing stuff an all ...and the idea of reinstalling the OEM Wix XP and trying to explain to some bloke begging for mercy..cause I had to reinstall the win XP is not so palatable.. I'll proably die of blood pressure or brain aneurysm.IF its affecting your buiness, then make a business decision and replace that board. Its a write off.I saw another on the ASUS forum today with the same problem... I went there after reading your post.In fact..I cut pasted what you posted here...over there as well.http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=200...SLanguage=en-usMannyThis from another person. Quote:" Hello to all,I have made the following configuration for my computer:- this mainboard with an Pentium CPU ( core2 E6400)- Chieftec 400W Tower- ATI Radeon X700- corsair 1 GByte DDR2 Twin2X pc8500- 2 HDD WD 160GB in RAID 0I have installed Windows XP with SP2 included and all updates from microsoft. All original drives are installed. I even tryed last sound driver - HD Realtek driver.When the windows starts up, this noise (high frecvency sound) is heared for an short period of time, after that the noise disappear. When I open windows media player or Yahoo messenger the noise appear again and don't stop till I close both of them.Please tell me what can I do to resolve this problem.Thank you very much.Bye.

You know.. I was thinking. there was something else.. this may sound wierd.. but hear me out.I had this same problem in my older machine recently.. on my dell XPS gen2. I have never had such issues with it before.The common thread is..I recently installed the nVidea card driver on both of them. What I am going to do is.. remove the driver and replace it with a very old nvidea driver tomorrow to eliminate that out.The only thing is.. I have avery very old nvidea driver. Don;t know how to get like 2 or 3 version older.Manny

Hey Manny, thanks for your reply, and thank you posting over at the other forum. Nvidia has an archive section after you navigate to the drivers you need for your system. www.nvidia.comHowever, if you have a newer card, which I'm sure you do, any drivers older than 74.89 I think will not work as the installer will kick you out. I am turning in for the evening. Gotta do a showcase early tomorrow out of town for my business. I will check back tomorrow afternoon when I get back. I hope the both of us can figure out our issues with the systems. Have a good night. Talk to you tomorrow.

Jeff,kThis is really interesting. IT might not even be our MB.http://www.realtimesoft.com/multimon/forum....asp?Topic=2369I found that here.FAQ http://www.realtimesoft.com/multimon/faq.aspWhat do you think? The symptoms are identical to my problem. I run into this..when I move my windows in multi monitor setup. Except. I don't have the creative Card. I have the ASUS MB Sound.MAnnyAnd here is a review of that card.. I am thinking of get it.http://www.guru3d.com/review/hercules/fortissimo3/"A word of caution, you will almost certainly have to use amplified speakers with the FF3. " Hmmmmm.....

Hey Manny, thanks for the info. The Hercules card does sound like a good choice from the review. I went to try and find a reseller. Out of all the links that say they sell hercules, just about all of them don't sell hercules or not this card, only DJ stuff. Amazon has none in stock either. I would have gotten this tomorrow if it was available locally, that's for sure. Looks like this is going to be a challenge, but if it can solve the issue at hand, it will be worth every minute invested. Let me know if you have any luck, OK? Talk to you soon. Thanks for the info again Manny.

Have you guys tried disabling your PC speaker?I used to get crackles with my onboard realtek ac97Open up the volume control panel and go to options->properties and click the pc speaker, then mute it

Hello Ryan, I hope all is well with you? Anyway, I have the Creative Audigy 4 installed at this time, and there is no PC speaker option in my set up. I think I remember seeing it when I had the Realtek AC-97. Thanks anyway for the tip. I am most likely going to chuck this motherboard, or I might try to get this Hurcules card first. Being I am not 100% content with my performance, A motherboard might be in order either way providing I don't have to reinstall everything.

Thanks for the tip Ryan. I'll give that a shot this weekend when I go home.Manny

Jeff.There were 2 negatives from what I have read with Herc card. 1. It uses the older chip. Not sure..if it matters for FSim. I don't intent to listen to MP3 or watch DVDs and what not. 2. The volume is low. This is a non issue for me. I do plan to take the optical digital out and plug into a receiver if I have to. I think, it has a digital out..right? :)The good thing about this card is... Its almost an audiophile quality sound I heard... or the closest to it that you can squeeze out of a PC.Its only $40 or so.About changing the MB. Would I have to reinstall the Win XP if we plug in the same model and make of MB? I am assuming, I have to got to the Bios right away ...and set it up exactly the way I have it... I assume. Raid 0 and what not... I am nerveious about RAID 0. I have 2 sets of RAID 0. 1 Pair of 10K Raptors and another pair of 7K RPM drives. I am thinking.. that I may have to wait till the Vista X10 upgrade time to replace the MB If I have to. But the screeching sound is bugging me everyday.Manny

Manny, I just found this looking around. I am not sure if I'm going to use them as my Driver Cleaner Pro software does not have this in its uninstall list in case I don't like them. I hope this helps you some how. http://www.cbfsim.org/cbfsimv5/cbfsbb/viewtopic.php?t=7305

Thanks Jeff.They don't seem to have the sound driver for the ASUS Realtek ALC882M High Definition Audio 8-channel.Manny

Hi Guys,I had the same problems for awhile there. What I did was to make sure the onboard sound was disabled in bios and then in the sounds and audio devices within contol panel, reduced the harware acceleration to standard. Havent heard the sound since and I havent noticed any difference in sound quality at all.Hope this could help you as wellGary