Sound Media Question

Ever since the update, my sound (music, effects,etc.) is crackly and sounds distorted.. If I stand in one spot and not move for awhile it clears up, but once I move it sounds like crap again.. I thought it was my sound card, so I played some tunes through Windows Media Player and it sounded perfect.. Does anyone know what I can do to fix this, cause it is really annoying.. Thanks

I used to experience something similar. When I would be inworld for a long time, eventually the wind sound would start to get crackly. A relog would always fix it. I never did track down the cause, but I haven't heard it in a while, so maybe one of the updates fixed it.

You might want to try completely uninstalling both SL, and your soundcard driver. Then restart your computer, reinstall the soundcard with the most recent driver, and then reinstall SL.

You might also want to check that your soundcard is fully and tightly seated in its slot, and that all your speaker cables and jacks are tightly connected, and in good working order.

As a long time musician, I've had lots of experience with bad cables developing a mind of their own. They'll decide to crackle during certain songs, but not others. It almost makes you think it's the song that's the problem, but it's the cable. Computer speaker wires tend to be more stable than instrument cables since they don't get jerked around all over the stage or thrown in the back of the van and lugged all over the place, but I could see it happening where a crackly one acts up while a certain program is running, and then quiets down for another, causing you to think there's something wrong with the program, when in fact it's the wire. It's worth checking out, anyway.

Good luck.

Thanks, I will try to uninstall and reinstall it.. Hopefully it will work..

I've noticed something lately with my sound card and SL, at different points in time the the hard drive light will flash, there will be a loud crackling pop through the speakers and SL will freeze for a split second..

This does not happen with any other programs.

I've re installed my drivers and I re installed SL, any ideas what it could be? Or should post this in Technical? I'm just posting here because the thread reminded me of it.

I guess I should spec things out:

Asus MBO & AMD 3800+ dual core
2 ATI Radeon X1600 pros 512 mb each - crossfire
Creative Labs Audigy 2 Z Plus Platinum
1 gb system ram
terrabyte hard drive
and lots of sound frustrations

Okay i haven't un-installed SL yet, cause I am just wondering, if I uninstall it will it mess with my inventory, etc... I don't think it will, but I want to double check.. If someone could let me know I would appreciate it.. Thank You

Nope. Not at all. All your inventory data is stored on the servers, so a uninstall followed by a reinstall won't goof with your inventory.

Okay so I did the Uninstall/ReInstall and I still have crackly sound... It is only when I have the music play... The sound effects only do it once in awhile, but they are usually clear and crisp sounding... I have no idea what the problem is... It can't be my speaker wires, cause I am on a laptop... Any other suggestions? Or is anyone else experiencing this?

I have had this same problem for 6 months now. It is extremely frustrating. I tried everything to fix it. The only solution I have found so far is to make SL run under Windows NT even though I have Windows 2000. This is done under the properties tab on the icon. The sound is perfect when I make this change.

The only problem with this is that I cannot watch videos at all. Does anyone know a workaround for that? I would love to be able to listen to music and watch videos.

I hope this works for you.

Thanks, I will give that a try

Yeah that worked, I put mine on Windows 2000, works fine now Thank You Thank You Thank You

You're welcome. I put up with the crackly sound for 5 months before I figured out that workaound. It is extremely annoying. I still don't understand why this works, but so glad that it does.