Weird pop/crack sounds from speakers

[Canon]

Hi ppl, I'm a bit new around here, so there's my warning ahead of time. I have a question regarding the sound coming from my sound card. Ever once in a while I my speakers have a weird pop and cracking sound. This seems to happen at random times.

Can somebody help me with this?

[xtremsabu]

during doing nothing at all? Maybe something is loose?

What kind of soundcard?
Hey are you the same canon from 3dfiles?

[mondayz]

I was working on a friend's pc lately with the same problem. It was the most obvious...dust in the speaker out jack. Try some canned air in there and see what happens.

[NDC]

Are you hearing these sounds when you play an MP3 file?

[Canon]

My soundcard is a SB 128, I belive. The crack/pop sounds happen when randomly [both when there is sound and when there isn't]. I've checked for loose connections already, and there doesn't seem to be anything loose.
Sorry, I'm not the same canon from 3dfiles.

mondayz, I'll try that can of air trick, but I don't understand why dust would cause these random sounds.

NDC, as I mention above, it has pops and cracks when I play anything. They have an interval of about 2 to 5 minutes or so. It seems regardless of what I'm playing on my speakers, from MIDI's to Mp3's.

Thank you for your input. I'll post again if it works or not.

[skywalker[TSG]]

it could be a bad cable
or the speakers might be damaged

[Canon]

Skywalker, the speakers I think are pretty fine, cuz I just tested by hooking them up to my portable CD player, and they sounded perfect, without a problem. Thanks for the idea.

[dcc1977]

Ok, i'm going to toss out random ideas. But if they work fine in another device its breaks that down to 2 main ideas. Interferance and Sound Card Problems.

So, in accordance with the first.

A) Is it picking up a radio station? (sounds like one of those "yeah right, whatever" but I've seen it happen.)
B) Is your power supply going? Pops and cracks could be surges or drops in power.
C) EMF, again your power supply could be doing that with spikes and drops, or it could be something else interfearing with it.

the second.

A) is your sound card 100%, no hardware problems?
B) reinstall your drivers or perhapes you may have to format and install windows again.

I have pops and cracks but only when I play MP3s using windows supplied codecs. Winamp, sound forge, Media player 7 all play mp3s fine, but media player 6.2 and thsoe that use the same "device" for mp3 decoded sound like ****. This may be what NDC was getting at, and heck if I know what the answer is. I've already posted a question about that a few days ago but no one has bothered with a responce. And at current time I can't format and reinstall.

[rlpos]

on a couple of different occasions when installing S/B cards I found that for some odd reason I had to change the address in system manager to get rid of bad sound

[HKS]

Double Click on the speaker in your system tray and try Lowering the Master, Wave and Midi Volume just a tad bit. I had the same problems. After lowering the volume, the poping noise went away. I have a SB plat on altec lansing forgot what model, but the one with 4 speakers http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

Hope this helps

[eweruk]

I have had this issue before and were caused by two different things. One was the speakers were not shielded good enough and too close the monitor. When I switched between programs, the speakers cracked a little. The second was my cell phone cause interference when the signal was weak.

[rh71]

As weird a solution as it sounds... whenever I had this problem with my SBLive! + Cambridge FPS2000 digitals, I simply reinstall the SBLive drivers, reboot, and the problem goes away. This has worked for me the past 3 occasions.