Sound Blaster Audigy static crackling and popping

Well, I put in a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Value edition I had lying around, and now I remember who I took it out and tossed it aside. It crackles and pops incessantly, whether or not anything is playing.

Back when I took it out, it was when I upgraded from WinXP to Vista (or was it Win2k to WinXP?) I dont even remember any more. But whichever it was, it was working fine before, and then cracking and popping after the software change.

Basically the drivers for the newer OS were broken or something.

When I went back to the older OS, it would work all right (good thing for multiple hard drives eh) But when your buy a new OS and want to USE it, some sacrifices had to be made.

Especially when you have an onboard sound card that works fine in either OS. Sure it isn't as high quality sound as the Sound Blaster, but the onboard sound was working while the SB sounded like a record player with a worn out needle.

Anyways, it happened long ago enough that I'd forgotten about it, since I could still get working audio even without fussing over an old SB sound card.

So, now that my onboard sound's jack is messed up, and the Soundblaster is still crackling and popping, I decided to poke around and see what other people have the problem, and perhaps find if there was ever a fix for it. Google search provided a ton of links when I searched for "Sound Blaster crackle crackling" showing it was an extremely common issue with the Audigy and X-Fi lineups.

As I understand it, Creative says that these cards can't handle the PCI buffer delays introduced by certain motherboards, making it a hardware issue. (what happens when you haven't changed any hardware like in my situation?) Even if it was a latency issue that is related to how the OS decides to allocate resources, you'd figure that the company would release fixed drivers, right? But there is a lot of conspiracy theory style talk about how Creative doesn't want to support these older products in order to sell it's newer products. Its a shame if that's true.

So, I found some alternative drivers that people say seem to eliminate the crackle problem, written or modded by Daniel Kawakami. They havent seemed to help me much but I had a hell of a time trying to get the newer official drivers uninstalled. Maybe something didn't work out. I'll try uninstalling and reinstalling the software again later - SB drivers take forever to install.

I did find a work-around late last night though. (or so I thought) I tried the Audigy's digital out port with my stereo jack-to-rca jack adapter, and found the R-audio could deliver digital audio that my stereo's co-axial audio would accept. With no static even! I was happy, why didn't I think of using digital audio to eliminate something that sounded like analog static? (well cause it always failed before) However that was short lived, as when I turned it on this morning, the crackle was back in all its glory, on a digital audio connection. I don't get it.

Maybe I should splice some jacks onto my Logitech USB audio headset's cable and split the sound to headphone and to the stereo. Then I could go office space on this stupid Sound Blaster and smash it.

Someone slap me if I ever buy Sound Blaster again.

Upsen.

Oil PC Completed

I've been a bit busy at work so I haven't posted the results of my Mineral Oil PC - its worked, and I haven't seen any wicking yet. Though, I have the oil at a level where the interfaces are just above the oil. This was about 7 gallons plus a bit from the 8th jug.

Here I have the tank set up with all the parts inside - this actually took a while, since I had to figure out how to arrange the cables in a way that I could use them, and not have it running criss-crossed all over the place like in a closed case pc. I sort of regret going with such a tall fish tank. I suppose at some point I should try and locate some long cables like the ones they use in those clear-case modified PCs. Then maybe I can plug in the DVD drive again. I'll have to network off another DVD drive for now if I need it, which is rare in any case.

I almost gashed my arm putting these things in place - gotta be careful...

Rear view showing the vidcard

Giving up all the drives I had was sort of a toughie - only my little 32G solid-state is left.

I had the PC on when I started filling - when the oil reached the CPU fan, it started spraying - I had to shut down in a hurry!

Here it is completed!

I filled it to a point where the oil is just covering the bottom of the interfaces on the back of the board. The computer turned on with no problem. The pump was a different story, it refused to pump oil through the radiator until I cleared all the air from the tubes. That was a bit of effort since it required me to basically suck the air out by mouth, without getting a mouthful of oil. The rubber tubing smell was pretty gross already, so I tried to just get a mouthful of air at a time as if it were a drink through a straw, without getting any in my lungs. It also changed the level of mineral oil in the tank, so I had to top it off again.

Checking the fans, the CPU fan was turning, but the video card fan and power supply fan ran only intermittently - on a bit, off a bit, as if the oil was too thick and had triggered a safety stop mechanism. I turned up the speed of the vidcard fan from 30% to 100% using NTune software and and that solved it. Though I have to do it in software every time I'm powering up - I wonder how I set the fan speed to 100% permanently? The power supply fan I haven't found a way to modify, blah.

---

The PC has run like this for about a week or so now. I haven't kept it on continuously, only when I'm using it. The video card runs at 50 degrees instead of 80 degrees now. The motherboard is still running at it's 30ish degrees that it usually runs at.

The system is a LOT quieter now - the pump's muted hum is the only sound. I did submerge the pump under the oil to help keep it quiet, so it's not in exactly the same spot as you see in the pictures above.

I put a chassis fan in front of the radiator the other day, to help with cooling - the chassis fan runs silently, though it looks kind of silly. I wish I had a desk fan or something bigger, that ran at a quiet, slow speed. The only ones I have sound like an airplane taking off. Maybe I'll get a potentiometer or something and modify it to run slowly and quietly. I only want to have a quiet breeze on the radiator otherwise what is the point of this whole project? :P

The only bad thing that's come out of this is that the built in sound card stopped working. I didn't actually find out till last night, since I'd been just using my USB headset. I think there is something messed up about the line out stereo jack. The software works, the drivers are fine, the meters indicate operation, and even the cables and stereo are okay when I hook up it up to something other than the computer. I messed around with the SPDIF in/out ports and tried to plug it into my digital inputs on my stereo, but I couldn't get it to work. I may have to try a seperate sound card. :P Yeesh.

Anyways, more later when I figure out how to tidy up the cable mess on top of the tank.

Upsen.

Setting up for an Oil Cooled PC

After reading about some of these projects online, I figured it would be a nice little project to get going myself. My PC runs so hot that I can't shut the case cover on it, without it soon crashing. It's also a noisy bugger and collects enough dust to warrant a cleaning every few months.


Here it is, sitting with it's insides hanging out. Notice the chassis fan pointing at the video card? Yes, it is needed when I run important 3d applications like City of Heroes.

I figured that getting the parts over a period of time would soften the impact of the costs, so I've been occassionally buying a part here and a part there for the past 4 months. I am still a couple pieces short, but I am almost done. Basically there are 4 important things:

1. the computer to submerge
2. a cooling system
3. mineral oil
4. a container to hold it all in.

The computer I have. I bought a transmission radiator from Canadian Tire for the cooling, and you can see it as the black grid in the picture above. The container wasn't too hard, I just had to find a fish tank of a shape, size and price that I was happy with. It turned out to be a 10 gallon tank that is almost the same footprint as a computer case. Taller for sure though.

The hardest part seemed to be locating the mineral oil.

Mineral oil is sold several ways. It's sold as a laxative or enema at pharmacies in 250/500ml bottles and at the veterinarian's in larger amounts. Higher quality versions are sold industrially as napthenic electrical transformer oil by the barrel or truckload (yeesh), and as laboratory supplies from lab suppliers at like $10 per 5ml. In the end, I got a pharmacy to supply me with 8 1-gallon (~4 Litre) jugs of the stuff. 8 Gallons is worth about $300 Canadian, at retail price. I managed to get it wholesale, which was a lucky break for me. Though, the pharmacist must think I'm either really constipated or really perverted.


I disassembled the computer on a large cloth sheet - there was a ton of dust that I had to scrub off lightly with a toothbrush. I thought about using an air can, but I didn't have one around and besides it would have sent dust flying everywhere in the house.


After assembling it, I had to test it out to be sure it still works. So far so good. You'll see in the picture below that I stripped the plastic case off the video card. I dont think that the fan will push enough oil through the card to cool things properly.


Anyways, all that I have left to buy is something to line the bottom of the fish tank with, and perhaps something more to support the motherboard frame. Also, a way to cap off the fish tank that I can rest a hard drive or two on. Once I have that, the oil is going in.

I wonder if I have to worry about oil wicking out of the tank through the cables? I might have to mount a power bar and internet router above the tank to keep it dry, but I'll find out when I get to that stage.

Upsen.

Over 3000 HP now!

Tenmos broke the 3000hp mark today when I got all the Luck of the Gambler IOs that I needed. This is the toughest tank I've ever had in the game so far.

Over 3000 hp, woohoo!

Upsen.

IO Shopping List

Edit March 1st -

Here is the current shopping list. Those purple IOs are currently listing in the 70-100million range each, scary stuff.

Upsen.

• 1 x Miracle: Heal/EndRdx (40)
  (have a placeholder Mira H/E/R right now)
  
• 1 x Pounding Slugfest: Stun% (30) optional*
• 1 x Reactive Armor: ResDam/EndRdx (40)
  (placeholder low level version)
  
• 1 x Apocalypse: Dmg/Rchg (50)
• 1 x Apocalypse: Acc/Dmg/Rchg (50)
• 1 x Apocalypse: Acc/Rchg (50)
• 1 x Apocalypse: Dmg/EndRdx (50)
• 1 x Apocalypse: Dam% (50)
• 1 x Ragnarok: Dmg (50)
• 1 x Ragnarok: Dmg/Rchg (50)
• 1 x Ragnarok: Acc/Dmg/Rchg (50)
• 1 x Ragnarok: Acc/Rchg (50)
• 1 x Ragnarok: Dmg/EndRdx (50)
• 1 x Eradication: Dmg (30)
• 1 x Eradication: Acc/Rchg (30)
• 1 x Eradication: Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg (30)
• 1 x Eradication: %Dam (30)
• 1 x Obliteration: Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg (50)

Slotting +Regen and +Recovery into RttC is strange

There's something buggy about slotting the +regen/+recovery IOs in Willpower's Rise to the Challenge. The amount of health and endurance recovered scales with the opponent you are fighting. At first I thought, oh, maybe it's scaling with the number of opponents! That would be pretty cool, but it wasn't the case.

It turns out that it scales based on the level of the opponent that your RttC hits. If you change the foe group you are standing in, the amount of regen from the IO actually changes too. The higher the foe, the less benefit you get. The lower the foe, the more benefit you get. The biggest differential you can get is your L50 fighting a L1 foe, and you should see what crazy numbers you get. Too bad you can't get those numbers in any useful encounter where you actually need them. In a fight with L54s when you really *need* the boosts, they are only running at about half the effectiveness they are supposed to run at.

Tenmos is L50.

Here's the empirical data (some screenshots follow) :

%/s Numi RTis Numi Mira
Lvl Regn Regn Reco Reco
F.H 0.16 0.20 0.17 0.25 <-- Using Fast Healing as a baseline comparison
---------------------------
L01 0.98 1.23 1.00 1.50
L05 0.92 1.14 0.93 1.40
L10 0.83 1.04 0.85 1.28
L15 0.75 0.94 0.77 1.15
L20 0.67 0.84 0.68 1.03
L25 0.59 0.74 0.60 0.90
L30 0.51 0.63 0.52 0.78
L35 0.53 0.42 0.43 0.65
L40 0.34 0.43 0.35 0.53
L42 0.31 0.38 0.31 0.47
L44 0.27 0.34 0.28 0.42
L46 0.24 0.29 0.24 0.36
L48 0.20 0.25 0.20 0.31
L49 0.18 0.23 0.19 0.28
L50 0.16 0.20 0.17 0.25 <-- This is what you get in Fast Healing.
L51 0.15 0.18 0.15 0.23
L52 0.13 0.16 0.13 0.20
L53 0.11 0.13 0.11 0.16
L54 0.08 0.10 0.08 0.12

If anyone has their +regen/+recovery IOs slotted into Fitness:Health, can you give me the percentages?

Thanks,
Upsen.

Level 1 foes

L25 Foes

L50 Foes (same as slotting in Fast Healing)

L54 Foes

What Numina and Miracle numbers look like in Fast Healing

Almost 50 but not quite

I've been on a merit craze in order to get Invention Origin set enhancements for Tenmos. It's actually coming along - I have just over half the IOs that I want to get, besides the hard to get purple sets I want. I've changed my build around more times than I care to remember - I've even sold off IOs I didn't think I'd need, only to find out I still want them after all in the next version of the build.

I mildly regret giving up on the Willpower/Superstrength version of Tenmos - SS is really the powerhouse offense set for tanks. It just does that much more damage, and gets all this to-hit bonus on top, if I could just live with the rage crashes. I can console myself in that the fire AOEs are a bit better than SS's AOE. Maybe I'll build an Invul/SS later on after Tenmos is completely done.