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RESOLVED: SB16 and AWE32 popping/stutter noise in Windows 98 SE music playback and games

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First post, by audiocrush

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Hi,

I have a strange issue with my Sound Blaster cards.
Both cards worked fine in a 486 system running DOS 6.22 and also the Blue Lightning running Windows 3.11 but in my AMD K7 running Windows 98 SE I get a random crackle/pop/stutter noise every few seconds. Between these noises the playback is clean as a whistle.
Also there is no noise at all when using the midi synth.
I know the hardware is quite a bit newer than those soundcards, but I was hoping that this should work fine anyways?

I used the drivers from the sbw9xup.exe package of philscomputerlab.com.
But also this happens with the drivers that come with windows 98, so maybe it is not a driver issue?

I thought maybe the soundblasters are bus speed sensistive so I played around a bit with the ISA bus clock, but that also didn't change anything.

Any ideas on that?

Cheers

audiocrush

Last edited by audiocrush on 2022-12-04, 01:53. Edited 1 time in total.

https://www.nerdsh.org/ - my blog, a bit neglected though
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChsU6woi3lhLhtT_ILbSCCw - Some videos of mine

Reply 1 of 2, by Joseph_Joestar

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audiocrush wrote on 2022-12-03, 13:46:

I thought maybe the soundblasters are bus speed sensistive so I played around a bit with the ISA bus clock, but that also didn't change anything.

Any ideas on that?

Check if your BIOS has an option called 16-bit I/O Recovery Time. Setting this to a different value may occasionally help with sound card crackling/popping. Similarly, the 8-bit I/O recovery setting might be worth tinkering with as well.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 2 of 2, by audiocrush

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Unfortunately my bios does not have that option.
I also tried enabling and disabling the clock gen spread spectrum feature but that also didn't change anything.
I also noticed, that if I for instance play back a wave file and at the same time install an application the audio stutters really a lot, like it stops and then tries to catch up and stuff like that.
I don't think that a 700MHz athlon would be too slow to handle both at the same time.

*edit*
I also have tried 3 different driver versions by now, the outcome is always the same. Only in DOS it does not seem to happen.

*edit2*
I solved it!
I just disabled the high DMA and now it is working like a charm 😀

https://www.nerdsh.org/ - my blog, a bit neglected though
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChsU6woi3lhLhtT_ILbSCCw - Some videos of mine

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