Garbled Sound

Recently I have noticed my sound to be choppy and garbled. I mean all sound not just streaming audio.
The wind sound is crackling and rumbling. Someone typing is jumping like taaaapp tappp tapp.
The sound of the the map closing is bummmmpppp.
The best way I could describe it is like the audio is lagging, like movment lag.
I did have a short period of normal sound recently but now its back jumping.

I have made sure my windows xp with service pack 2 is updated, download and installed quicktime again and installed secondlife again.
I have tried two ther games and these work fine.
Anyone else have a problem like this?
Thanks

I get something like this after SL has been running for several hours straight. The wind sound starts to break up. It sounds almost like speakers clipping. Relog fixes it.

My problems starts between 1 minute and 4 minute's I'm afraid. A relog only helps for the time leading up to that.

As it was working before and the SL FMOD sound library code has not changed in a long time, I would suspect a failing soundcard. Does this happen under any other sound making applications?

If it works fine under a music player, I'd attempt clearing the SL cache as there may be an environmental sound file that is corrupt and is wedging the sound card driver. Failing that, some more details about the hardware would help.

This is a PITA I've heard of that uhhh affects at least some otherwise fine Creative Labs Sound Blasters, and possibly other sound cards. Some peeps have been able to replicate this by playing sounds on multiple sound sources external to SL (for example, playing a song on Winamp) and then closing and opening SL repeatedly. Then, the crackles begin. I don't know the exact technical source of it but I reckon it has something to do with what's getting control over the audiostream?

And o yeah... lemme guess, Andrew, when you go to rez a cube, it sounds REALLY nasty... like the usual bassy WHOOSH but all chopped up into fragmented syllables. Am I right?

Torley you are correct, the sound is fragmented. My problems started when I installed a new video card an ati radeon 9600 xt. The problem was I had left over some old nvidia drivers by mistake from my old card, this caused a no boot error.
So I had to use the help of my local pc shop to use windows xp cd to boot and do a repair.
As soon as I got my pc and fired it up I noticed a problem with quake 4. The sound stops and starts every second. This was on the default sound blaster cd drivers. I have since been to creatives website and downloaded the three updates there, and installed them.
My sound card is a pci creative sound blaster audigy 2 zs.

I am thinking one of three things;

My psu is not getting the required power to the sound card now I have a new graphics card taking up juice.

Or the sound card was physically damaged in the graphics card install.

Or the windows repair effort went wrong and although my pc boots my sound suffers.

I have no worries on the video side. I can walk and fly around sl and see everything properly, just not hear anything well at all.

I think I have a few options;

I have two different external usb sound systems. One creative audigy 2 nx and a Hercules GameSurround Muse Pocket USB one. Try one or both of these after removing my audigy 2 zs from my pc? Taking the drivers on and off between each install.

Or a complete format of my c: drive and new install of windows.

I do have two external usb hard drives but sl is running on my internal c drive.

Sorry for the long post!
Hope this helps

Ps my install of gta san andreas plays 100% ok. No garbled sound at all. I wonder how this game is different?

Hello, Andrew. I too have experienced this exact same situation, and it is invariably reproduceable on my machine by utilizing ANY sound-generating program external to SL. For example, AIM, or Google Talk, both produce small sounds to inform you that there is an incoming message. Both of these, plus any others, cause my audio to immediately go into "chop mode", where there is buzzing and chittering. On the whole, a most displeasing situation. The only recourse I have ever had to solve this matter is to log out of SL, shut down the currently-running IM's and their ilk (usually the culprit in this audiological farce), and then play something that takes my sound card over, like Winamp or its' ilk. Quitting this and then re-starting SL 95% of the time usually solves the matter.
Simple solution, although not always a preferred one: never ever run SL whilst running any form of sound-producing program.

For those in need of system specs for reproduction of this recurring problem:
Abit KD7A Motherboard, AMD Athlon XP2200 CPU, 1024 KB RAM
ATI 9600 Pro Graphics card with 128 MB on the board
Sound Blaster Live! Value OEM card (now significantly old)
I am certain on this matter hard drives and their capacity do not play a part, thus they are omitted here.

I wish I had more heartening information for you, dear heart.

Yours,
Mika Kyubi (Muromachi)
Kitsune-at-large

easiest think to try first is swap the card to another pci-slot, just incase the agp and pci are sharing an irq

Solved my sound problem.
Formated C drive and reinstalled windows.
All is well once more.
Bad drivers removed.

Thanks for everyones time and effort.
Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best perhaps.
I backed up my data onto external drives before the format.
Thanks again.
See you in world!