Poor Sound Quality

Just wondering if anyone else is having new issues with degraded sound quality. I have a static and pop with SL now and it gets worse the longer I am connected, to a point I have to relog. It is actually pretty bad from the start and (unfortunately) I have just been learning to accept it. Any sounds are accompanied with this static and pop, wind, music streams, and the systen UI sounds are the worst. The rumble of rezzing a new object is the worst, bad static and pop when doing that.

I have noticed the trouble with games that I play, Far Cry, Half Life 2, and a few demos I have got recently. But it is slight with them and far worse with SL. It is sort of like network noise, for lack of a better description. It does not do it when I play music with winamp or a video player. It only appears to happen when playing a game or SL.

I have Dell's version of Creative Technology Sound Blaster Live! and I have updated the drivers for it. I have run all the hardware testing with that and all is fine. I have the most recent version of DirectX and used the control panel with that to tweak the sound and it shows no change regardless of the amount of acceleration, from none to full.

When I use the sound troubleshooter on my system and follow the symptoms the only result as a fix that they offer is that I need better speakers. I have decent speakers that have had no other symptoms of going bad, but I guess it could be the case.

Am I missing anything I need to check before buying new speakers? Are others having issues? Thanks for reading and any advice you have to offer.

I have heard one report of a player with a Dell 8250 with the same OEM SB Live! card reporting sound dropouts in SL but all other sound using applications seem fine.

The symptoms you describe sound more like how an output D-to-A on a sound card behaves as it is failing. If your speakers were failing, winamp would likely be horrible. With street price for a new SB Live! under US$30, I'd swap the card. Do note that unless you are doing something more than gaming and listening to music/video, a Creative X-Fi Platinum gives you $160 of extra marketing hype and buzzwords for no real benefit.

added: On second thought it may be the EAX digital signal processor that is used for positional audio in games that is failing. As winamp doesn't use that, it better explains why music is okay. The recommendation is the same: replace it.

Thanks for taking the time to post, Introvert. I bought a new sound card and it appears my troubles are history. Thanks again, I appreciate your post.