edwardp Posted December 30, 2007 Report Share Posted December 30, 2007 (edited) On Desktop 2 (see sig), I am getting mild static coming out of the speakers when a CD is playing and there is any type of window/page refresh, if a new window opens, or if a page is scrolled up/down. Mandriva is using Sound Juicer by default to play CD's, however, I still get the static when "CD Player" is used instead. I previously had openSUSE on this system and the audio was perfect. Aside from the different distro, for video, openSUSE used the X.org "nv" driver, where Mandriva is using the nVIDIA 96xx driver. When I attempted to change this from using the nVIDIA driver to X.org "nv", X would not start afterwards (the error was "no screen found"), nor would it successfully configure to use "nv" while in "text mode" after prompting for the root password. I ended up reinstalling Mandriva and it continues to use the nVIDIA driver. The sound card is a Creative SoundBlaster Live! 5.1, using the snd_emu10k1 driver. The monitor is a Sceptre X9G-Naga III 19-inch LCD. openSUSE had a buffer setting that could be changed in case of audio issues, but I did not see anything similar in Mandriva when I looked in Control Center/Hardware/Soundcard. The static could obviously be worse, but strangely enough, on the much slower Desktop 1 (which is now 10 years old), the audio is perfect. That is using X.org "tdfx", has a standard CRT monitor (Samtron (Samsung) 77V) and has a generic sound card with an ESS Solo-1 chip. Any suggestions on how to eliminate/reduce the static? Thanks and Happy New Year. [moved from Software by spinynorman] Edited January 20, 2008 by edwardp Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scarecrow Posted December 30, 2007 Report Share Posted December 30, 2007 (edited) That noise may come out of many different things (or combos of different things). The most widely known audio troublemakers (besides problematic cabling, that is- actually this is the main reason for static hiss) are: 1. Weak PSU's - get sure yours is sturdy enough. 2. wifi cards - disable yours when listening audio SERIOUSLY if you don't need it. 3. ACPI events. Disable ACPI if you don't explicitly need it at your desktop, even if that means a few annoyances (like having to push the power button to completely shut down). 4. Your videocard is the only one not to blame - and by the way the "nv" driver you want to reestablish is the opensource one, which doesn't have even half the performance of the proprietary "nvidia" one (as well as virtually no 3D capabilities). 5. Your sound server - Gstreamer may be much better than Arts but it also has many quirks. Have you tried a different, more professional approach- say using Jack audio server and a playback software that can utilize jackd as output driver? 6. The soundblaster card driver. There has never been, and it will never be a great driver for these cards, quite simply because Creative is unable even writing decent drivers for Windows. 7. Your USB subsystem being short of oomph. This is normally a mainboard limitation, which can be partially cured by using an external USB hub with its own power supply. 8. Your kernel structure. Generally using a low latency "mm" series kernel improves audio performance - and reduces the video one accordingly... I may forget some, but start from the cabling... Edited December 30, 2007 by scarecrow Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edwardp Posted December 30, 2007 Author Report Share Posted December 30, 2007 (edited) I had the case open yesterday and the cabling was good, I always check it before closing it. I've never had a problem with the power supply, it received a much stronger fan some years back, which probably explains its longevity. I'm going to start with ACPI and just disabled it. As both desktops are AT-based, the power button must be pressed to turn it off. Both desktops do not have wifi cards. I can only use USB directly by way of a USB PCI card, there are connections on the motherboard to use a USB-port bracket with cables that plug into the motherboard, however the cables that were available at the time did not have the same number of connectors as required by the motherboard (4 vs. 5). Although, the speakers (Benwin) are powered by the USB card itself... EDIT: I replaced the USB-powered speakers with AC-powered speakers, no change in audio. Edited December 30, 2007 by edwardp Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edwardp Posted January 20, 2008 Author Report Share Posted January 20, 2008 Problem solved. It was in fact, the proprietary NVIDIA 96xx driver causing the audio problem. After removing the driver and rebooting, text mode came up. From the command line, I ran drakx11 to configure the X server, selected X.org's "nv" server, saved, and rebooted. No more static. :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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