Audio distortion from onboard sound on Soltek SL75DRV2 Motherboard

[Babulmiah]

Hi,

I run WinXP pro and get slight distortion (crackling sound) when I playback any audio (MP3, DivX, DVD) on my Soltek SL75DRV2 mobo.

I know my speakers are not the problem as they play fine on my other PC, and the same thing happens when I use headphones - hence gotta be onboard sound.

This is only a problem when I play audio at a low volume as at a high volume the crackling cannot be heard.

I have the latest VIA drivers installed from the VIA website (the actual file is called ComboAudio_A1u350c.zip) for Win XP.

I also noticed when NO sound is playing, I can hear that the crackling coincides with whenever I move my mouse (MS Optical Scroll mouse). I checked Device Manager, and there are no conflics anywhere and the mouse and onboard sound use different resources (IRQ) and nothing uses the same IRQ as the onboard sound.

I'm not sure now what to try to get clearer audio. Any suggestions? Thanks.

[Peter M]

Once again, this is not an IRQ problem.

You have the power draw peaks from the mouse movement activity backfire into the sound codec, messing up the digital/analog conversion.

This could be caused by a weak power supply unit, or poor mainboard design.

Besides, you should never go beyond about 80 percent in the volume setting of anything.

[NDD]

Try decreasing audio Hardware Acceleration.
Mute AUX in mixer.

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Mute the line in and upgrade the motherboard drivers

--Jakk:t

[Babulmiah]

Thanks for the feedback.

I'll try muting the line-in/AUX as...

1.
The drivers I have seem to be the latest ones.

2.
The PSU is a 400W Vantec model which worked fine on all my other AthlonXP CPUs and I only have 1x graphics card, 1x HDD, and 1x CDRW in the box.

3.
If it is bad mobo, well can be bothered to replace it as all else works fine ;)