Volume on CDs Cuts Out After a Few Seconds. Advice Badly Needed... (1 Viewer)

[Larry Talbot]

So with Thanksgiving right around the corner I was hoping to play some holiday music for all the family coming over BUT my computer picked this moment to malfunction. Wait, no scratch that, it is always malfunctioning, it picked this moment to quit playing CDs after just a few seconds...Actually Real Player says they're still playing, it's just that the volume cuts out and I can't hear anything. I don't have this problem with games, just CDs...VERY frustrating. The only related change I might have made that I can think of is I loaded Audigy 2 drivers for my Audigy 1 soundcard. The drivers seem to work fine in every respect and I can't understand why they would affect my CD-Rom Drive...I'm using Real Player to access the drive anyway (not my choice, my computer just suddenly defaulted to Real Player...)

Any advice on what this could be or how I could fix it? I'm kind of desperate with Thanksgiving only one day away...

 

[Max Leung]

I am assuming that the CDs you are using do not have copy protection (for example, some EMI CDs have the Copy Control label on them).

I'd try uninstalling the Audigy 2 sound drivers and reinstalling the original Audigy 1 drivers. They are DIFFERENT cards! My understanding is that the mixing hardware internal to the Audigy 2 card is different from the Audigy 1...the resampling from 44.1 KHz sources are done differently!

Or, you can try a different player, like WinAMP, or Windows Media Player, and see if the problem is still there.

Are you using the 4 pin cable from the CD-ROM attached to your Audigy card? Or are you relying on the CD-ROM to pass the audio data digitally through the IDE cable? If the latter, I suggest trying a different player like Windows Media Player that has that option.

 

[Larry Talbot]

Thanks a lot for your response, Max! Below is a link to Tech PC which claims you can in fact use the Audigy 2 drivers for the Audigy 1...They say the hardware is in fact the same, except for certain models, Audigy 2 Platinum, etc.

http://www.tech-pc.co.uk/audigy-2.php

Anyway I fixed my problem, sort of...I found a box which had digital output checked, unchecked it, now the songs play all the way through. I have no idea why they would still have played for a few seconds with digital output checked, but that is what they did...
Now I have another problem however. The sound in the right speakers is very weak. It isn't my speakers since the same is true with headphones. This has happened to me before. I'm going to try loading drivers AGAIN (I first tried the Audigy 2 drivers because I was having another problem where someone suggested I try reloading the original drivers, but I couldn't find my Audigy disc..)

By the way, if anyone is in the market for a new audio card, I STRONGLY recommend you never buy anything from Creative. They drop support for their cards - like the Audigy - almost as soon as you unwrap them. Since Aureal, their main PC gaming competitor, went bankrupt, they just don't seem to give a shit about consumers anymore, promising driver updates that never come, etc. This happened to me with my Live card and now the Audigy...Never again.

 

[Max Leung]

Ouch! Maybe try fiddling with the balance control and see if that forces the drivers to balance the speakers correctly. Could also be that the speakers aren't plugged into the card all the way. BUT! You said it happens with headphones too? Did you set the card to be in 2 speaker mode, and not 5.1 or 6.1 mode?

 

[Larry Talbot]

"Did you set the card to be in 2 speaker mode, and not 5.1 or 6.1 mode?"

Yeah. I reloaded the drivers yet again and it actually worked - for about two CDs. By the time we actually had guests over, however, the sound started cutting out again - this time it would drop in volume every thirty seconds or so, then come back to normal again...The net-result was to make it unplayable, because it was too annoying to have the music keep cutting in and out...I swear my PC is cursed. I just don't understand how it could work - for at least an hour - and then suddenly start malfunctioning again...

 

[Max Leung]

Hmmm...try a virus scanner? Maybe spyware is fiddling with something.

Although, it almost seems like you have a loose connection somewhere! Or the CD-ROM player is dying! Ouch.