# Crackling/Distorted Sound in some games



## thejman483 (Mar 18, 2008)

Hi everyone, I've been having some strange problems with my computer's sound in games like Call of Duty 4, The Witcher, and sometimes Crysis. I get distorted sound crackling at times where theres a lot of things on screen, especially things like plants, foliage, etc. It can be subtle or sometimes even altering the pitch of the sound, which really makes it horrible. It started when i got a new motherboard, cpu, and some ram a few months ago. My computer uses onboard sound, and when I tried installing an x-fi sound card the sound got worse. This has gone on for quite a while now and I'm sick of it, so help would be very much appreciated and I thank you all in advance. My system's specs are:
Intel Core 2 Duo e4500 @ 2.20gz
Asus pv5d2-vm se
2 gigs of ram, 2 sticks
evga 8800gts 320mb
500 watt power supply


----------



## ebackhus (Apr 21, 2005)

Generally the issue is heat. I know that when I play WoW on my laptop the sound will crackle a bit once it gets cooking.

What make and model PSU do you have? if it's not strong enough it may be underpowering the chipset and thus the audio hardware, resulting in the distortions.


----------



## thejman483 (Mar 18, 2008)

I don't think heat is an issue because my case has 4 fans, but my psu is this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817189005

any other ideas?


----------



## thejman483 (Mar 18, 2008)

bump**



thejman483 said:


> bump**


----------



## koala (Mar 27, 2005)

thejman483 said:


> I don't think heat is an issue because my case has 4 fans, but my psu is this Newegg.com - XCLIO GOODPOWER 500W 500W ATX SLI Certified CrossFire Ready Active PFC Power Supply


Instead of just guessing about the heat, let's get some readings.

Boot into the BIOS and note all the temperatures and PSU voltages.

Then boot back into Windows, run *SpeedFan* and play a fullscreen game for a few minutes. Alt-tab out of the game back to SpeedFan when the problems start and take a screenshot of the temps/volts.

Also, monitor your graphics card's in-game temperature using nTune in the nvidia control panel.

Post back with the BIOS, SpeedFan and nTune readings so we can see how your system copes under pressure.

500W is quite low to be powering an 8800. If it's over a year old, you might want to look at replacing it with a good quality 650W.


----------



## King4241 (Oct 13, 2008)

does it sound like static?


----------



## thejman483 (Mar 18, 2008)

It's not really a static sound, its much less consistent and sounds more like crumpling a paper bag (rough comparison). I'll look into the readings and post them asap.


----------



## thejman483 (Mar 18, 2008)

Oh there is also one other problem i stupidly forgot to add after all this time.. in Call of Duty 4 only so far, my usb keyboard and mouse sometimes stop functioning at random times, but together. Sometimes they will come back after about 20 seconds, with windows playing that "you just plugged in a new device" ding sound. This is probably from the same problem because it never occurred before the upgrades either.


----------



## thejman483 (Mar 18, 2008)

Okay here's the info:
Bios - CPU 42C, Vcore Voltage - 1.312V, 3.3V Voltage - 3.216V, 5V Voltage - 5.040, 12V Voltage 11.985V
nTune and SpeedFan, Speedfan is giving strange readings... don't really know what that means.
This is just idle:


This is about 20 minutes in CoD4:


----------



## koala (Mar 27, 2005)

Your PSU voltages look ok, but the CPU temperature is too high when under stress.

Remove the heatsink from your CPU, clean off the old thermal paste or pad, then re-apply some *Arctic Silver* and re-attach the heatsink, making sure it's firmly locked onto the motherboard. (*Instructions*)

If the CPU fan is old and noisy, you might want to replace this to keep the temperature down.

Where are your 4 case fans positioned and which way are they blowing?


----------



## thejman483 (Mar 18, 2008)

The cpu and fan are relatively new, I got them around February this year. Theres one fan on the bottom of the front of my tower that takes in air, one on the left side of the tower that blows directly on my gpu, one above the gpu fan that blows air out, and a large fan at the top of the back that blows out. Can those cpu temps really be accurate though? They seem all over the place.


----------



## koala (Mar 27, 2005)

Your case fans are well positioned :smile:

I see what you mean about the CPU temperatures, but they're the only readings in SpeedFan that look high under stress (81C). Check again with *Core Temp* for confirmation, then apply the thermal paste and check again to see how much the temperature drops.


----------



## thejman483 (Mar 18, 2008)

Alright i used coretemp and got these numbers-
Idle 

During CoD4


----------



## koala (Mar 27, 2005)

If you took the readings after applying some thermal paste, is your problem solved?

If you haven't applied any new thermal paste yet, you don't need to worry about it for now. Those temperatures look ok.

Do you only get this problem during fullscreen games, not when playing music?

Have you tested your speakers on another computer?

Do you get the crackling sound through headphones as well?


----------



## thejman483 (Mar 18, 2008)

I didn't put paste on it yet. It only does this in games, never in music or videos. It does it on both speakers and headphones.


----------



## thejman483 (Mar 18, 2008)

any other thoughts?


----------



## lazareth1 (Jan 10, 2005)

If its only games then i suspect it something to do with Direct X. Try updating direct X along with your display and sound drivers. Updating mobo drivers may also help!


----------



## semcharmed (Feb 15, 2012)

it's a VIRUS. I just signed up to this forum to let everybody on the internet know (who are searching for a solution to this problem) that it's got nothing to do with your soundcard, directx or whatever else. Just run whatever anti-virus program you have and eleminate the infected files. I don't remember the name of the virus it's something like win32.blablabla.

I've had this problem twice, it's really frustating and it annoyed the hell out of me. I checked all the google results relating to this problem, read many posts suggesting to update soundcard and other drivers, soundcard hardware issues, flash issues , uncompitabilty issues (programs like logmein ) etc. I tried everything, and because i tried everything all together at the first time it happened to me i couldn't figure out what solved it. Now that it happened the second time, i tried solving it step by step and eliminating possibilities. AVG did it for me, found the infected files, removed them, then bam. no more crackling on full screen streaming movies, no more crackling and laging on games on fullscreen. 

Please spread the word! it's a VIRUS. And it's freaking annoying!!!


----------



## koala (Mar 27, 2005)

Thanks for posting your suggestion, semcharmed, and welcome to the forum. :smile:

As this is an old 2008 thread, I'll close it. Anyone else looking for help with the same problem, please start a new thread.


----------

