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Sound problems

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by guy west

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I have an Ensoniq Soundscape Vivo 90 soundcard in a Gateway PentPro200 box running Win98SE. I have uninstalled reinstalled the latest driver for the card several times. There are no IRQ conflicts. It will play wav files but not mid files. It won't play mp3's out of Napster's internal player but will play them out of WinMedia Player just fine. When it plays windows sounds I hear part of the correct sound surrounded by white noise. It sounds like it's skipping. The Gateway book on the sound card says that if it will play either one of the sounds but not the other that the problem is internal and has nothing to do with the audio system. I've tried switching sound cards and speakers to no avail. I reinstalled Win98SE. Same problem. Anyone out there have a clue?
Thanks in advance.

11 replies

by istech

Hi there,
I had the same problem with a SoundBlaster 128 pci card. It's a real frustrating problem isn't it??
I installed the latest version of Direct X.
I believe it was version 8.
This solved the problem for me!! Hopefully it will work for you too.
Best of luck to you.

by istech

Hi there,
I had the same problem with a SoundBlaster 128 pci card. It's a real frustrating problem isn't it??
I installed the latest version of Direct X.
I believe it was version 8.
This solved the problem for me!! Hopefully it will work for you too.
Best of luck to you.

by paul d. masley

Check and see if you have a VIA chipset on your motherboard. If so, remove the sound card drivers through add/remove hardware. Shut down and physically remove the card. Reinstall the VIA drivers. Shut down and then reinstall the card. Restart.Let 98SE find the card and ask you for the CD. After the reinstallation, if everything appears to be working, then install DirectX8A.

Hope this helps!

Paul.

by paul d. masley

Have you checked to see what IRQ and DMA channel the sound card is using. Ensonic (Sound Blaster) prefers IRQ 5 and I believe DMA 3. However it will use any DMA available. It appears that with all of the white noise that you are getting, it may be a possible bad connector (ground and right or left reversed) wire between your CD Rom and sound card. When looking at the plug (large, usually black with the lock clip towards you and wires at the bottom) the wiring should be left to right red, skip black and white. If using the small plug, wires at bottom it should be left to right red, black white and skip. Try this. If this does not solve your problem, you may have a bad sound card.

by guy west

All IRQ and DMA setting are as they should be. I have tried several diferent cables, and have plugged them in everyway possible. And I have swapped the sound card with a known good one. Still no luck. Thanks for the help anyway.

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