Audio In Windows Vista

[opqdan]

Odd that I am asking this question here, I know, but I have a problem and you guys are always really good with answering things (I don't know who to ask at work, and all the other forums I frequent are Linux forums and they would tear me apart for using Vista).

Just this weekend I decided to put Vista on my home desktop replacing a dual booting Gentoo Linux/Windows XP machine that is 4 years old (2.4GHz, 2GB PC2700 RAM).

I noticed now that in Vista, sound is really screwed up. I don't know enough about audio to describe this well, but it is almost as if the volume is turned up really high on a low signal (like when you plug speakers into the headphone jack, the speakers amplify the tiny signal into something with a lot of noise). From what I can tell, this only happens with some of my music (it may only be occuring on mp3s with WMA files working fine, I will need to check), and it occurs in both iTunes and Windows media player, but it gets better if I turn the PC volume to very low and turn the speakers up.

The culprit seems to be my cheap/old Creative SoundBlaster Live! Value soundcard, which has flaky drivers. Originally, it told me that there were no drivers, but then it found some, so now I am unsure.

Overall, I just want to know that if I buy a new (cheap, but supported) soundcard, that everything will work fine. I don't want to waste the $20 bucks if it won't fix anything :)

[richardm]

Hm. Often the XP drivers will work on Vista, so it might be worth reinstalling them using your original CD (install the drivers manually, don't go through Creative's setup). At least then you'll have a known good driver rather than whatever funky thing has been found.

Second, I suppose you haven't accidentally plugged your speakers into the wrong socket? ;) It's easily done, I can never remember what the little pictograms mean.

Finally, does your motherboard have built-in sound? If it does then try disabling the Soundblaster and trying the onboard sound chip to see if that's okay.

if all else fails Vista does work with sound cards, so a new supported one ought to resolve the problem. <crosses fingers>

[Farslayer9]

Congratulations, you are the proud owner of a terrible OS :) I upgraded to Vista as part of my MSDN subscription; Creative Labs offers no drivers for that sound card and is likely the cause of your problem. I also have a workstation with a SBLive 5.1 and it will no longer function. I'd go out and find a replacement if you can afford it.