Annoying sound problem

The first time I ran SL, aside from being VERY impressed at how much there was to customize and create, I was annoyed to constantly hear a soft static sound, that would fade in and out like a breeze, but with annoying clicks every now and then, some of which would cause my speakers to pop badly, which is both painful and annoying.

I played with all the various sound settings but nothing seems to fix it -- short of turning off sound altogether, which I don't really want to do...

The static is typically a constant while moving through new areas, and sometimes vanishes completely once I've been in an area for awhile, which makes me believe that the problem only occurs when the game tries to play sounds I haven't downloaded yet.

Today's patch didn't fix the problem -- it made it WORSE. Now once the static starts up, it doesn't stop, and any sounds (even interface sounds) which were previously working fine are now accompanied with boosted static and cause my speakers to pop. It's so bad now that I had to leave the game before I got a pounding headache. If I play again, I'm planning on completely disabling the sound.

Does anyone else have this problem or know how to fix it, or is this some bug that is being worked on? SL would be SO much more enjoyable if this problem went away.

The exact same thing here. I have a sound blaster live card and have to turn the sound off. At home I have an audigy and it works great... Anyone know of why this is happening?

At least you have sound...hehe I have not had any since my first day playing!

You don't by chance happen to have a recently-purchased Dell computer, do you? In the last six months or so, Dell has switched to a cheapo sound card for the base configuration, one that (although they call it a Sound Blaster) is incompatible with Creative drivers and doesn't work with SL. See the following thread:

/111/75/2120/1.html