In fact, I'm not using WMP at all. The version that is 
installed, however, for sake of reference is 
8.00.00.4487. Yes, I have already updated to Windows 
XP SP1. And as you will see if you re-read the 
previous communication, I've already uninstalled the 
card completely and reinstalled it more than a half 
dozen times. The frequency with which the stuttering 
occurs changes somewhat depending upon into which PCI 
slot the card is installed, but it is present in all 
slots.

Interestingly enough, I've made an additional 
discovery since last Friday, 11/15/02. If I drop back 
to the much older version of the Creative Labs drivers 
released for XP, then the stuttering goes away. To be 
more specific, that's driver version 5.12.01.3509, 
dated 08/14/01. So it seems y'all broke something in 
the updated drivers that was working just fine in the 
older drivers.

Using the older drivers isn't much of a fix insofar as 
they have their own bugs. For example, I have to reset 
my speaker selection (4 speakers) constantly, 
occasional clicks and pops occur with the audio, and 
the audio in several games--most notably Unreal 
Tournament, Undying, and other UT-engine based games--
can be very distorted at times. Still, the older 
drivers do not stutter, and they do let me use 
AudioHQ, so that's something.

---

So take it from the fact that this has been marked
"Closed (Not Answered)", you're essentially just
ignoring the problem at hand and hoping it will go
away? I'll remember that when next I'm buying a sound card.

}MODEL and SERIAL # of your Creative Labs product:

Model CT4760, S/N M4760940213286

}Driver version and, if a video card product, 
}the BIOS version:

Driver version is the latest available on the Creative 
Labs web site, dated 07/17/02.

}Resources the product is using:

I/O Range: B000-B01F
IRQ: 16

}Operating system (Please be as specific as possible):

Windows XP Professional w/service pack #1

}Motherboard manufacturer:

Gigabyte

}Motherboard Make:

Socket A

}Motherboard Model:

GA-7VAXP

}CPU (Primary Processor):

Athlon 1700+ XP

}CPU manufacturer:

AMD

}Bus Type:

PCI

}BIOS manufacturer:

AMI

}BIOS version:

Award BIOS rev F7, dated 10/24/02

}Motherboard chipset:

VIA KT400+8235 chipset 

}Memory (RAM):

DDR 512 MB Mushkin 2700 333 MHz. w/cooling shield

}Hard drive manufacturer:

Maxtor

}Hard drive model:

Drive 0: DiamondMax Plus model 6Y060L0 
Drive 1: DiamondMax model 98196H8

}Hard drive size:

Drive 0: 60 GB
Drive 1: 80 GB

}Hard drive interface type (IDE, SCSI, RAID, etc.):

Both drives are on the primary IDE channel. Drive 0 is 
using UDMA6, while drive 1 is using UDMA5.

}Please include a list of all other hardware 
}peripherals installed on your system. Please include 
}as much information about your hardware as you can 
}provide. Try to offer such information as the type of 
}card (PCI/ISA) or the interface the hardware 
}uses (IDE/SCSI/RAID).

There are no other PCI cards in my system. A complete 
inventory of my system is as follows:

Antec Plus 1080 AMG case with 430W power supply
Gigabyte GA-7VAXP motherboard
Athlon 1700+ XP CPU
DDR 512 MB Mushkin 2700 333 MHz. RAM w/cooling shield
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro 128 MB video card
Creative Labs SB Live! X-Gamer sound card (model 
CT4760, S/N M4760940213286)
80.1 GB Maxtor 7200 RPM EIDE ATA-100 HD (model 98196H8)
60.1 GB Maxtor 7200 RPM EIDE ATA-133 HD (model 6Y060L0)
Panasonic DVD-115 DVD/CD-ROM drive
Plextor Plexwriter 24/10/40A CDRW
3.5" 1.44 MB floppy drive
Cambridge Soundworks DTT2500 amplifier/speakers
21" Dell D1626HT (Sony Trinitron OEM) monitor
Razer Boomslang 2000 mouse
Microsoft Internet Keyboard Pro
Windows XP Professional (w/all latest patches)

}When this information is received, it will 
}be submitted to our Technical Support Research 
}Department. They will review your information 
}and may provide insights and suggestions into 
}your difficulties.

Again, it seems pretty simple: the Microsoft driver 
fixes the problem completely under all circumstances, 
while the Creative Labs driver stutters. Microsoft 
clearly issued that update for a reason. I suggest 
asking them what it fixes.

}In the meantime, I will review our previous 
}correspondence for details that may have been 
}overlooked.

Thanks.

}If you do not wish to wait for this indepth research, 
}and you are still within your point of purchase's 
}return policy, it may be beneficial to return the 
}product for a refund while we attempt to uncover a 
}solution to this problem. After we have determined 
}the best course of technical action, you could simply 
}repurchase the product with our solution and 
}suggestions in hand.

I'll wait, but this has obviously dragged on for a 
long time now. I would really appreciate it if 
Creative Labs could pursue the matter with all due 
diligence. Thanks!

Ok, it doesn't matter whether I install the drivers 
manually, or whether I let the auto-extractor do its 
thing. The same symptoms persist. The drivers seem to 
be getting installed correctly through either method, 
though, for whatever that's worth.

Uh, am I missing something? I went to that driver 
release schedule page, and it shows that, in fact, 
drivers for my sound card (an SB Live! X-Gamer 
edition) are already available. As such, I can think 
of but a couple of possibilities that would explain 
your last reply.

First, you might not have known that I have an SB 
Live! X-Gamer edition sound card. If that piece of 
information changes anything, please let me know. 
Alternately, I suppose you might not be aware that I'm 
already using the very drivers that scheduling page 
provides. If that's the case, then please take that 
under advisement. Third, I suppose the schedule page 
could mean only that drivers are available but remain 
untested/verified. Is that the case?

In short, I'm quite confused by that last response. 
Can you please clarify?

There is no PCI Latency option in the system BIOS, so 
I can't do anything with that. As regards the sound 
buffer size, the default value was 4 seconds. The 
highest I can set it is 9 seconds. It makes no 
difference to what it's set. The stuttering remains. 
Incidentally, I've figured out how to get the 
Microsoft drivers back in place. Even if I turn the 
sound buffer down to its lowest value (e.g., 2 
seconds), there is no stuttering with the Microsoft 
drivers. There is something wrong with the Creative 
Labs drivers, folks, and it's something Microsoft knew 
to fix.

No difference. It doesn't matter what IRQ the card is 
on. The problem still occurs. By the way, do you have 
any idea why I can no longer get the Microsoft media 
driver from the Windows Update site? This stuttering 
is getting really annoying :/

}Has anybody had you get the latest VIA 
}updates for the chipset on your motherboard?

Yeah, me :) Yes, my system has the latest 4-in-1 pack 
installed, which is VIA_4in1_443v.zip as of this 
writing. Regarding the sound card, the POST screen 
shows the "Multimedia Device" on IRQ 11, whereas 
MSINFO32 shows it on IRQ 16.

As I stated in my previous reply, yes, I did try it in 
another machine, which is also running Windows XP, but 
has a different motherboard (an ASUS A7V133). As for 
the model number, please forgive my ignorance, for I 
do not know it. Is it marked somewhere on the card? I 
know the card is a SoundBlaster Live! X-Gamer edition 
if that helps, but I don't seem to have the model 
number anywhere handy.

This is going to be a long response, so bear with me. 
I've accumulated a lot of data over the last day. 
Regarding the three suggestions you made, I'll address 
the second and third before moving on to the first. 
Regarding (2), there are no other PCI devices in my 
system, so that's a no-brainer. Regarding (3), yes, 
the same problem occurs in another machine with 
another motherboard (viz., an ASUS A7V133) with the 
latest available drivers from Creative Labs for 
Windows XP.

Regarding (1), weird things have happened. For the 
record, my SB Live! card was originally in PCI slot 
number three. I put it there when re-building the 
system (roughly two weeks ago now) simply because it 
was a convenient slot. It also turns out to be one of 
the worst possible slots--naturally, that's just my 
luck--in the entire PC. My motherboard has a total of 
five PCI slots. The card cannot fit in PCI slot one 
because of the video card, so I didn't try that. I did 
try slots two through five, however, and of those 
slots, PCI slot number four is the clear winner. That 
is, the "stuttering" still happened with the card 
plugged into PCI slot four, but it happened about 20% 
as often as it used to happen. That's quite a 
noticable improvement. 

The reason I say weird things have happened is because 
during the course of my testing, what was previously 
repeatable has stopped being repeatable. In the past, 
if I installed the latest drivers from Creative Labs, 
then the oft-mentioned "Creative Labs Media Driver 
Version 5.1.2602.0" would be listed in the available 
driver updates on the Windows Update site. That's how 
I've been "toggling" back and forth in my testing. I 
install the Creative Labs drivers, test with those, 
then go to Windows Update and let it install the media 
driver update, then test with that in place (and all 
my Creative Labs utilities non-functional).

As of today, however, the media driver update is no 
longer displayed on the Windows Update site for me. I 
haven't a clue why. I've tried installing older 
versions of the Creative Labs audio drivers, I've 
tried installing the latest version of the Creative 
Labs audio drivers, I've even uninstalled and 
reinstalled the SB Live! card completely from my 
system. None of these things make any difference. I 
can no longer acquire that media driver update for my 
system.

As things stand today, if I set the BIOS to its fail 
safe defaults, load all the slowest timings, and set 
the "PCI Delay Transaction" setting to "Disabled", 
then I can use the latest drivers from Creative Labs. 
The stuttering is reduced to an irritating popping 
sound in this configuration, and it occurs with much 
less frequency than it did. The problem still clearly 
exists, and it certainly should be fixed, but this is 
an arguably useful workaround, I suppose.

Do you have any further thoughts?

Well, I had originally responded by saying that the 
problem was solved, but I spoke too soon. To give you 
the recap, my BIOS had only two of the settings you 
mentioned, namely, the "AGP Aperture" and the "PCI 
Delay Transaction". Changing the values of both failed 
to solve the problem. Setting PCI Delay Transaction to 
disabled diminished the frequency with which the 
problem occurred, but it didn't solve it.

In digging around, I discovered that Gigabyte has 
issued a BIOS update for my motherboard, namely, a GA-
7VAXP. I updated my BIOS to the latest version, and it 
seemed to solve the problem. That is, the same 
QuickTime *.mov files that were stuttering badly 
before were now playing fine. It was only when I tried 
playing some *.avi files with Windows Media Player
(WMP) that I noticed the stuttering was still present.

At that point, I started fussing with individual BIOS 
settings. I eventually discovered that if I loaded 
the "Fail-Safe Defaults" for the BIOS, the stuttering 
stopped with WMP. I thought then that I had solved the 
problem, but I was still wrong. As soon as I tried to 
play back some MP3 files (either with MusicMatch 
JukeBox, Winamp, or WMP), I got the same awful 
stuttering as before.

To make a long story short, I've spent hours and hours 
on this problem today. There isn't a single BIOS 
setting that solves the problem. Even with all 
the "Fail-Safe Defaults" in place, and with all the 
timings to their slowest, the stuttering still takes 
place. As an experiment, I used the Windows Update 
service to reinstall the latest "Creative Media 
Driver" from Microsoft. With that driver in place, I 
can load the "Optimized Defaults" for my BIOS, crank 
all the timings to their fastest, and it doesn't 
stutter even once. Right now, I'm listening to MP3 
audio as I download files from the Internet and defrag 
my drive in the background. It's not stuttering. It 
plays back *.mov, *.mp3, *.avi, and every other media 
file I have without stuttering.

From this, I can conclude only one thing: the Creative 
Labs drivers are broken in some respect compared to 
the driver from Microsoft. My BIOS settings have 
nothing to do with the problem. Needless to say, I'm 
sorry to see the Creative Labs utilities go, but 
they're worthless to me if my sound is stuttering all 
the time. Please escalate this incident (or whatever 
is appropriate) so that Creative Labs will seek to 
implement whatever fixes Microsoft has implemented.

Hmm... First, that response is literally self-
contradictory. To explain, you said two important 
things:

(1) The problem is due to the sound card being CPU 
starved.

(2) There's simply nothing that can be done about that.

Well, given that Microsoft's driver update clearly 
fixes the problem, either (1) or (2) is therefore 
false. That is, either the problem is not what you 
claim it is, or it is possible, in fact, to do 
something about it.

Second, though I agree that your drivers have much, 
much more functionality, the stuttering is simply an 
unacceptable sacrifice for said functionality. I'll 
try fussing with the PCI latency, but I doubt that's 
going to help.

Is there no way you can contact Microsoft for 
information on what changed in their latest media 
driver? Or is there some reason you cannot simply 
duplicate their efforts? Obviously, their media driver 
works better at the most basic playback functions, and 
I can't imagine it wouldn't be A Good Thing™ for your 
customers to have that in addition to the suite of 
utilities Creative provides.

No, my system has a single CPU. For sake of reference, 
my system includes the following components:

Antec Plus 1080 AMG case with 430W power supply
Gigabyte GA-7VAXP motherboard
Athlon 1700+ CPU
DDR 512 MB Mushkin 2700 333 MHz. RAM
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro 128 MB video card
Creative Labs SB Live! X-Gamer sound card
60 GB Maxtor 7200 RPM EIDE ATA-100 HD
40 GB Maxtor 7200 RPM EIDE ATA-100 HD
Panasonic DVD-115 DVD/CD-ROM drive
Plextor Plexwriter 24/10/40A CDRW
3.5" 1.44 MB floppy drive
Cambridge Soundworks DTT2500 amplifier/speakers
21" Dell D1626HT (Sony Trinitron OEM) monitor
Razer Boomslang 2000 mouse
Microsoft Internet Keyboard Pro
Windows XP Professional (w/all latest patches)

The sound card is on IRQ 19 according to MSINFO32.EXE 
and the device manager. Since Microsoft's drivers 
obviously fix a problem, how about y'all contact them 
to find out what the fix is, so that you can bundle it 
into your own drivers? That would be a much better 
solution by far.

I got tired of all the problems I was having with 
my installation of Windows XP, so I decided to 
start again from scratch. Things have gone much 
better this time around, but I've run into a 
problem that y'all probably need to address.
 
To be more specific, while playing back Quicktime 
movies, MP3 files, or Windows Media Player *.avi 
files, the audio on my system would "stutter". 
That is, a small snippet of sound (I'd estimate 
about 0.1 ms worth) would loop continuously 
for a brief period (I'd estimate between 0.5 - 
1.5 s). While this audio was looping, the entire 
system would be otherwise frozen. It was a very 
annoying problem, and nothing I did seemed to fix 
it.

The next time I used Windows Update, however, I 
noticed it listed a driver update available for 
my system. To be more specific, it listed 
the "Creative Labs Media Driver Version 
5.1.2602.0" as something I should acquire. Since 
I had already updated to the latest drivers for 
my SB Live! card (the driver package available on 
your web site as of 07/17/02), I thought this 
odd. Nevertheless, I let Windows Update do its 
thing, and I tested my system immediately 
prior to and after the update. Immediately prior 
to the update, the problem was still there; 
immediately after the update, the problem wasn't 
there anymore. "Eureka!" I thought, as I got back 
to work.

Unfortunately, the new media driver has caused a 
new problem, namely, I can no longer use any of 
my Creative Labs configuration utilities to tweak 
my sound settings. When I try to launch any of 
them, I get the error message shown below. I used 
to use AudioHQ a lot to fuss with the speaker 
settings, adjust the equalizer, set the EAX 
environment and so forth for a variety of 
different tasks. I've tried a few things, as I'll 
discuss below, but there seems to be some 
kind of fundamental incompatibility between the 
latest media driver and the latest available 
version of the Creative Labs utilities. 
Presumably, y'all need to update those utilities!

Cannot initialize audio driver. Reinstall audio 
driver.

If I reinstall the latest audio drivers available 
from Creative Labs, that fixes the second 
problem; i.e., I can then use AudioHQ and the 
other tools. However, it fixes the second problem 
by reintroducing the first. That is, it 
overwrites the media driver with the older 
version that was causing the stuttering in the 
first place! The problem is absolutely 
repeatable. I must either sacrifice AudioHQ and 
the other tools, or I must live with nasty 
stuttering in audio playback.