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So... I was thinking my xonar dx was perfectly fine, at least until the crackling started.

A few days ago, I powered on my computer and played a song, resulting in the voices and a few frequencies being both barely (yeah) audible and extremely grainy. After running some flac files, the sound was actually distorted on all playback mediums.

Taking the thing out of my case, I discovered that the floppy power connector was loose. Finding no solution, I simply taped the connector to the plug with scotch tape.

I then cleaned the drivers and installed unixonar again, resulting in the same issues. I even tried switching the pcie slots, but the results were still the same. Can anyone assist me, and I can try posting an audio recording if possible (by aux cable through the sound card).

PLEASE HELP! I NEED THIS CARD OPERATIONAL ASAP!

Here it is.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/862c0dcdgpyun ... 281%29.wma

I haven't had a discrete sound card since the AWE64, so I might not be much help, but...

Have you verified that it wasn't the cable or the audio out connector? Does the Xonar have a hardware test utility? You already mentioned re-installing the drivers and such, so we can probably rule that out. Other than that, you may have to run out ASAP tomorrow and pick up a new one.


EDIT:

BTW, did the scotch tape melt at all on the cable or the connector?

I put it right on top of my gtx 760, but it hasn't melted. The connector is still in, and I might just have to buy a creative z in south korea next week.

Damn, I was looking forward to listening to my flac collection. There are no hardware utilities available.

A bad ground connection on the output jack or in the cable to your speakers or headphones will cause exactly these symptoms. Did you try different headphones/speakers? If you did, and the problem persisted, then the output jack on the card is most likely bad. If the problem goes away, it is time to RMA your speakers/headphones, or perform a DIY cable replacement if they are out of warranty.

More technical explanation: The standard 3-wire headphone/speaker connection used by the vast majority of PC sound cards, headphones, and computer speakers uses a common ground connection for both left and right channels. If the ground is broken, this results in the *difference* between the left and right channels being fed to both speakers (or both sides of the headphones). Since vocals and bass (and maybe other instruments too, depending on the whims of the recording engineer) are typically panned to the center of the mix (i.e. they appear in both channels equally), this can result in vocals and bass dropping almost completely out. Reverb (and other effects) are often "out of phase" and can result in you still being able to hear a distorted version of the cancelled center channel even with the bad ground...

I posted an audio file in the op with a good aux cable. Also, all of my playback mediums (including my senheissers) showed the same issues.

Should I just get a creative z next week? If so, or not, should I delegate the sound card to a rma center?

xonarlover wrote:

I posted an audio file in the op with a good aux cable. Also, all of my playback mediums (including my senheissers) showed the same issues.

Ahh, missed that somehow.

That actually looks (in Audacity) and sounds (to my ears) like the gain is set too high somewhere in the signal path, driving everything into extreme clipping. Could be a settings issue, or a driver problem. Or, yes, a failing card (RMA time).

Can you try the card in another system to see if the issue persists? Just because you "cleaned" the drivers doesn't mean all of the wreckage from the previous install was truly gone.

Turn the volume down in your audio software, and turn up the volume on the sound card output / speakers. Or, if you're using EQ/effects in your sound card's control panel, turn the sound card's output down.

Melvar wrote:

Or, if you're using EQ/effects in your sound card's control panel, turn the sound card's output down.

Or just (temporarily) turn off all of the EQ/effects, to see if the sound cleans up.

I tried, but no change. The issues still persist, and no improvements are noted.

It might be some capacitors going bad or some cracks developing in soldering joints (which hold the power connector or some other surface-mounted resistor/capacitor/chipset), blah, blah, blah. I'd just throw it out and get a proper Soundblaster Z card instead Meanwhile you can just use a built-in sound solution which your motherboard might have.

What the... the card is working fine again. I'm paranoid that the issue will return.

Isn't it rather unusual? Should I get the soundblaster z anyways for a fallback?

xonarlover wrote:

Isn't it rather unusual?

Not at all, no. You probably did something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEkOT3IngMQ#t=26, only in a more gentle way That might have re-connected the loose soldering joint of some component on the card, or something like that