Studdering Sound with the Z-5500 and a USB Soundcard

Mike89 · Posted: Thu Jan 20, 2005 12:47 am Post subject:

I would ask you what defragger you use but I'll probably get reprimanded for not staying on topic.

So how you like them Z-5500s?
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P4 2.8C @ 3.5, Abit IC7-Max3 (5/4 250/200), 4x512 Corsair PC3200 (2-2-2-5), ATI X800XT-PE, Audigy 2 ZS, Lite-on DVD/CD & 32X Burner, WD 60 & 120 gig HDDs, Leadtek TV2000XP TV Tuner, Logitech Z-5500 5.1 Speaker System, Antec 430 Watt, Windows XP Pro

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[TN] Nathan · ALMIGHTY PWNER! Joined: 14 Feb 2002 Posts: 7406

LittleMike · TweakNOOB Joined: 04 Jan 2005 Posts: 30

I guess just for clarity's sake, I should post that the USB card is an Audigy 2 NX.

[TN] Nathan · ALMIGHTY PWNER! Joined: 14 Feb 2002 Posts: 7406

I still think you are having a problem with not enough resources.

I recommend you go to www.blackviper.com and see which services you can disable to gain back some performance.
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fussnfeathers · Lord of the Tweak Joined: 14 Dec 2004 Posts: 2763

It's actually typical for the SB NX, lots of complaints about the stuttering from it. To my knowledge, nobody's really come up with a solid solution for it, even Creative.

Do what the other guys said, disable all processes you don't absolutely need, uninstall Norton and use either AVG or TrendMicro instead, they're not as bad on system resources as Norton. If you're using anything like Windowblinds, disable that, and set your standard Windows desktop theme to Windows Classic, not the XP standard theme. That'll free up some memory and smooth out your performance.

In your BIOS, make sure you disable the onboard audio, since it's still using resources. Make sure your USB ports are set to 2.0, if there's an option for that.

None of this may help, but it's worth a try.
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LittleMike · TweakNOOB Joined: 04 Jan 2005 Posts: 30

I've done pretty much all of that with the aid of that website (which has a lot of useful imformation BTW)

I also created a swapfile (I think that was the name) to boost my virtual RAM. Apparently, it was recommended that I should have approx 1130 MB swap file RAM and I only had 330 so I fixed that up.

Please don't tell me that 1.96 GB of free virtual RAM isn't enough...

Still stutters but my computer runs faster.

[TN] Nathan · ALMIGHTY PWNER! Joined: 14 Feb 2002 Posts: 7406

I would take it back and try to get the philips external soundcard i reviewed earlier in the year.

http://www.tweaknews.net/reviews/phil/
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Mike89 · Posted: Thu Jan 20, 2005 11:34 pm Post subject:

LittleMike. I dunno if I missed this but did you post some specs for your system? Like which OS, how much ram, cpu speed, what you have running in the background etc?

I ask this because this is important info before a determination is made about whether your system is using too much resources.

I'll say this again, if you have a strong cpu (say P4 2.8 or better), more than 512 megs of ram, Windows XP, not many programs running, there is not going to be any resource issue that is effecting or causing your problem and certainly NAV is going to have nothing to do with it. Unless your specs are not in the ballpark from what I mentioned above, then your problem is elsewhere. Personally I wouldn't trust a sound card on USB. It's just something I wouldn't do myself. I'll throw a mouse, controller, scanner, printer on USB but I wouldn't put a sound card on it. That's just me. I have NAV on 6 computers and everyone I know has it and no one reports any problems relating to resource/performance issues using it. I have no problems with some who prefer a different antivirus program. I do have problems when some state how much it dogs a system cause it sure has not dogged any of mine. Like I said, I'm more than the casual computer user. I play the heavy hitter games like Farcry, Doom3, HL2, Vampire, Riddick and NAV does not slow my system down one bit. Maybe others have different experiences but I'm just stating mine.
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P4 2.8C @ 3.5, Abit IC7-Max3 (5/4 250/200), 4x512 Corsair PC3200 (2-2-2-5), ATI X800XT-PE, Audigy 2 ZS, Lite-on DVD/CD & 32X Burner, WD 60 & 120 gig HDDs, Leadtek TV2000XP TV Tuner, Logitech Z-5500 5.1 Speaker System, Antec 430 Watt, Windows XP Pro

LittleMike · TweakNOOB Joined: 04 Jan 2005 Posts: 30

Well, I stated this numerous times so I shall try again.....

I am running an IBM R40 laptop.

Laptops don't have PCI slots.

Internal sound cards go into PCI slots.

External sound cards go in USB ports.

Laptops have USB ports.

Therefore, I use an external sound card.

*ahem* Maybe that clears it up.

As far as my specs go, I think I posted it before but it may not be in this thread so I'll repeat.

I'm running Windows XP SP 2.

I have 768 MB physical RAM and 2 GB of virtual RAM.

I minimized the amount of resources that I am using.

I have a Pentium M processor, 1.4 GHz. Now, supposedly, according to the IBM people, that is the equivalent of a 2.x Pentium 4. The M processor is supposedly faster overall somehow.

To me, that should be good enough but apparently there is a problem somewhere. I attempted to get updated sound drivers off of creative's site but it was a no go.

LordPaludis · TweakNOOB Joined: 14 Jan 2005 Posts: 22

Don't laptops have a little slot in the side for cards like that though? Couldn't you get a card that slotted into the side? I would say that would work better than the USB since the slot is designed for add-on cards.

e.g.

http://www.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=1&subcategory=204&product=10769

That's just an example though, don't actually buy a creative card.

Ham_fisT · Posted: Fri Jan 21, 2005 6:49 am Post subject:

fussnfeathers · Lord of the Tweak Joined: 14 Dec 2004 Posts: 2763

There's absolutely nothing wrong with USB sound, if you get the right unit. Firewire is even better, due to the higher bandwidth. The Creative unit is......well, not really all that good, for what you pay. For consumers, I'd go for either the Phillips that Nathan mentioned, or the M-Audio Sonica Theater. Both are much better. While I haven't used the Phillips, I have used the Sonica, and it works like a champ. Sounds better than the Creative, too.
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LittleMike · TweakNOOB Joined: 04 Jan 2005 Posts: 30

LittleMike · TweakNOOB Joined: 04 Jan 2005 Posts: 30

Also, I have a 1394 port and I don't know of any cards that connect to that.

fussnfeathers · Lord of the Tweak Joined: 14 Dec 2004 Posts: 2763

I'm not aware of any consumer FireWire soundcards myself. My Firewire 1814 is (obviously) firewire, but it's probably more than you want to spend, plus mixing software to run 5.1 surround. Figure about $1000 for the 1814 and 5.1 software.........

I didn't ask, but have you tried different software for playing back MP3's? And if you're using Winamp, try turning off any plugins you have, use the stock skin, etc etc. On my old, old machine, the visualizations would make the sound skip once in awhile.
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LordPaludis · TweakNOOB Joined: 14 Jan 2005 Posts: 22

Also you might want to contact Creative technical support if you haven't already. They weren't very helpful for my problem, but then it's worth a try.

Even if the store doesn't replace the card, Creative offers a twelve month warranty

LittleMike · TweakNOOB Joined: 04 Jan 2005 Posts: 30

nickrout · TweakNOOB Joined: 29 Jan 2005 Posts: 8

I am just a newbie on this forum, and I have been following threads related to the z-5500.

I gotta say that if a laptop with 768M RAM, and a Pentium M 1.4G processor and USB 2 working properly cannot play sound out the usb soundcard without stuttering then there is something seriously wrong. Remember the pentium M 1.4 G is equivalent in power to a far greater clock speed p4.

The problem could be:

1. over taxing the laptop's processor or RAM, it should be pretty easy to rule this out with the steps so far (closing open programs etc). However simply running the system monitor supplied by MS and looking at processor and ram usage should be informative.

2. USB 2 not working properly, either because of faulty hardware or faulty drivers or faulty setup. How are you so sure that USB2 is working as it should? what tests have you undertaken? Are the drivers the most up to date you can get for your usb setup? are you using drivers supplied by IBM, or are they part of windows xp? Have you been to the windows update centre lately and made sure everything is up to date.

3. the software you are using to play back sound is having problems with the drivers - theres a lot of crap software out there.

4. the audigy 2nx is simply crap and should be returned with a refund.

5. windows is just not up to playing with the NX. Have you tried any other operating systems - you can get linux on a bootable cd (won't touch your hard drive), try it on a friend's linux or macos box and see what happens.

I just did a google search on "audigy nx stuttering" and the first hit included a reference to a page on a forum that says:

"After installing the new drivers and firmware,
Using Directsound 2D, 3D Software, 3D Hardware and 3D EAX2:
CPU Utilization between 2-12% !!!

Also, I played some Delta Force Black Hawk Down, Amazing !!

There you have it, if you don't have one, GET ONE !!!:banana:"

Now I don't know what problem that guy had, but it suggests to me that there is an updated driver that may improve things a heap. Try it.

LittleMike · TweakNOOB Joined: 04 Jan 2005 Posts: 30

I never updated any drivers because I couldn't find anyplace that had them. I'm not sure if the USB 2.0 is from IBM or Microsoft.

I have looked on Microsoft's and IBM's website and couldn't find anything relating to USB 2.0 drivers. I did manage to find an update to the sound card that supposedly allows it to be compatible with the 2.0 but that didn't work.

I mainly use iTunes but I have tried other media players and I get the same results.

I can look some more for the USB 2.0 junk because that could very well be the problem. I have a USB hub (which I recently learned wasn't 2.0) but for some reason the card doesn't complain whether it's plugged into the hub or directly into a USB slot (if you try to plug a 2.0 device into the hub, I get a popup from XP telling me that it's not plugged into a 2.0 slot but this doesn't happen with the NX).

All very strange stuff to me...

nickrout · TweakNOOB Joined: 29 Jan 2005 Posts: 8

nickrout · TweakNOOB Joined: 29 Jan 2005 Posts: 8

I found this on one of the creative forums too:

LittleMike · TweakNOOB Joined: 04 Jan 2005 Posts: 30

Well I explored all of those and none of them seemed to help substantially.

A few days ago, my HDD started grinding and screeching (literally) at me and as of now, everything is running rather poorly (especially music lol) so I have the feeling that this could be related to a hard disk error. Just an update.