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General discussion

sound card is under water

Sep 30, 2004 11:33AM PDT

hello,

i just did a clean reinstall, abit kd7a mobo, soundblaster live! 5.1 win 2000,

but now my audio sounds like its underwater-- I think it's out of phase somehow.

I recall having this problem before but can't remember the fix!

creative labs site says my driver is up to date. any ideas on how to fix? thanks! fj

Discussion is locked

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Re: sound card is under water
Oct 1, 2004 11:41PM PDT

make sure you have all your chipset drivers that w2k may not have had. Via? Intel?

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Re: sound card is under water
Oct 2, 2004 1:17PM PDT

I agree with refurbb about reinstalling all the various motherboard chipset drivers. I think that most people forget to reinstall the motherboard drivers when they reformat a drive to reinstall the Operating System.

I my case, I know that one of the motherboard drivers is for sound, though possibly for the integrated sound on the motherboard.

Anyway, check to see if when you installed the drivers for your Soundblaster card, it installed any 'utilities' for the card. I'm thinking of utilities that allow you to 'shape' the sound for the room you are listening in. These different 'evironments' make the output from your speakers sound different for each environment (concert hall, living room, large room, etc).

I had a similar problem with my card, and I had a heck of a time getting the setting back to where I thought it should be, or where I thought it sounded best. You may have the same problem. Check START\Programs\ and look to see if there are programs related for your card. One might be a configuration utility program. Otherwise check in C:\program files\ to find a soundblaster folder, and check inside for anything that looks like a configuration utility program. Or third, check the driver CD that came with the sound card.

Hope it helps.
Good luck

Larry

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Re: sound card is under water
Oct 2, 2004 3:58PM PDT

Frankzxcv: Check in Device Manager to see if the version of the driver that is installed is the most current. Assuming that you have the latest drivers, you may want to try uninstalling from Device Manager, then reboot, letting XP reinstall the hardware. I've had to do this with other hardware in the past. Somehow drivers sometimes don't install properly.

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fixed
Oct 5, 2004 3:32PM PDT

thanks for the advice all,

I was using the driver that came with the card and the creative site has a software checker that told me my driver was up to date-- but it was wrong. I downloaded and installed the most recent driver and voila everything was fixed - fj

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Re: fixed
Oct 6, 2004 7:05AM PDT

Frank: Glad to hear you solved the problem. It seems that all to often on a new install, that Windows will install some outdated version of the driver. When you check in Device Manager it says that the device is working properly, when in reality it may not. I've been in that circle before, myself.
Not a lot of fun, but a good learning experience.