Major Sound Card Problems

[what!?]

Recently I reformated my hard drive and reinstalled Windows XP (Home). Now I have this weird sound glitch. My setup is a Audigy 2 (Dell OEM) with 5.1 speakers. Sometimes when I start up a game or music there will be crackling and popping in my speakers. This seems to happen randomly, but at least 50% of the time. If there is no crackling when I start up the game, it will be fine for hours, and if there is crackling no amount of time will cause it to stop. It seems to be a 0 or 1. The crackling also seems to be equally persistent throughout all CPU loads (from being in a menu to being in a large firefight). This happens on UT 2004 and FarCry, as well as most of my other games. The only exception is Doom 3. Doom 3 never has that problem. I heard that Doom 3 uses its own sound engine and doesn't use your soundcard. Does this mean that it is my soundcard and not my speakers? Does anyone have any advice for me as this is extremely annoying.

P.S. My Audigy 2 is 2 PCI slots away from my GPU. There shouldn't be any problem with interference from the GPU.

 

[Asus]

It would probably be drivers or settings. I wouldn't think it would be a speaker issue.

Check your control pannel or Creative sound settings. Maybe play with them a bit but remember where they were so you can set them back. Make sure they are updated as well, rather than just an install from the CD.

 

[what!?]

I am 99.999% sure that it isn't a speaker issue because it always works fine with Doom 3, and sometimes it works fine with my other games. I can't update drivers because I have a Dell OEM Audigy 2. The retail drivers are not kosher, and I can't find any Dell updates. I changed some settings, but it still happens.