Hi folks, I was wondering if anyone else had come across this rather annoying problem i've had since upgrading my hardware.

Recently upgraqde to a new 4770K Haswell rig on a z87 chipset mobo, part of the upgrade was a new soundcard which is pci-e x1 and sits in the socket behind my GPU (that is to say not the fan side)

With the new rig I leave SETI running all the time if i can with the computing preferences set to only use 50% of the PCU at most and only to use the GPU after 45 minutes of inactivity.

The problem is that when any sound plays when SETI tasks are running there are constant glitches in the sound, a little like radio static, each glitch isnt very long certainly no more than a second but it keeps happening. When I manually suspend all SETI work this problem disappears :S Any ideas ? I've tried the soundcard in a nother pci-e slot with the same result & reinstalled/updated its drivers again with no luck. Same with just trying different speakers, no joy.

OS is win7 Pro Soundcard is a Creative Zx

Hope someone can help or suggest something, its slowly driving me slightly insane trying to figure it out

how big is your power supply and have you checked to make sure it can handle the load you are putting on it.

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

I can only hope that a 1200W 80%+ Platinum is more than enough to supply an adequate power supply to the rig, you cant get much larger in a single PSU format

Try to disable the digital audio port: right-click on the volume icon in the taskbar, choose Recording Devices. Note, it can take a while before the actual menu comes up, so have patience.
When it does, check again that it's on the Recording Devices tab, select the S/PDIF In, right-click it and choose disable.

Crackling can also occur when there's a lot of wire between case and speakers. This can start to work as an aerial. Try looping as much of the wire as possible through a ferrite ring.

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What is the source for the sound?
Is it a loss of sound for a second, or does the sound stall and restart at the same point?

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Disabled the digtal in & out although i cant see why that would make that any difference?? but will give it a try and let you know how it pans out

I cant see it being interferance between the soundcard output & the speakers otherwise the problem would be present all the time no? not just when i am running seti@home?

However my original speakers do have ferrite chokes on their cables & the current ones dont & there appears to be no noticable difference between the two sets between choked & non-choked.

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Sound source? you mean which programs am i am using to generate the sound, well usual desktop programs like winamp / vlc / audition etc various music & media players.

The sound doesnt disappear, but appears to skip, like a radio on the edge of reception range, when the sound output that is expected stops static seems to replace it and then the expected output continues. whatever was supposed to play when it skips you miss, its *not* like pause/stop/play/

What does DPC Latency Checker show (with/without SETI running):
http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

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- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 

Many thanks BilBg, that lil utility helped me track down the problem to my motherboards builtin wifi & bluetooth module.

As I dont really use them that much except to testing fuctionality on the odd one or two things i've disabled them & since all the audio glitches have disappeared :)

Many Many thanks to everyone who has helped with suggestionsm it seems the problem is now fixed