Asus P4PE Sound Issue

[compuflyer]

Hello All ! I just put a new machine together using the Asus P4PE and a P4 2.53GHZ Northwood and the onboard sound chip AD1980 crackles and whines. I have the latest driver which seems to be the only driver available. This chip is supposed supposed to Produce excellent quality sound as far as onboard sound goes. Any ideas? Thanks...

 

[neo4s]

Maybe try moving PCI cards to a different slot, check all the audio connections.

 

[compuflyer]

I have no PCI cards installed. The crackling is driving me crazy ! Help !!! Anyone ?

 

[Ketchup]

Try unplugging the audio cable that goes from the CD-ROM drive to the motherboard. Sounds from your CD-ROM can leak to your speakers through this cable.

 

[Bharat]

Hi there

I've just bought this m/b and am waiting delivery of the heatsink, so I can slap on my 2.0A Northwood and test out for myself.

During question/answers here related to the heatsink and memory, I have had some feedback saying that the Onboard sound tends to suffer a bit if you are overclocking (I think once you touch 150FSB).

So, are you overclocking at all ? If not, then I may not have any answer for you, but maybe this might be of help...

 

[compuflyer]

Very odd ! I unplugged both the audio wires from my DVD ROM and my CDRW and it did not fix the crackling noise. Are these wires for recording and downloading sound only ? I am able to play CD's without these wires plugged in. Apparently the IDE bus is what transfers the sound from CD ROMs or am I mistaken ? In any event that damn hideous crackling is going to be the death of me...

 

[Ketchup]

These cables are for playing music directly from the CD to your speakers (through your sound card of course.) If you don't have these plugged in, the sound travels through your IDE bus, and may make the sound suffer a bit since it has so much more to go through, but I have never noticed it.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Are you certain it's not an issue with the speakers or maybe dirty power? Sorry I got nothin' I have the P4PE/L and the sound is quite good for my usage even@173fsb

 

[eclectro]

Evidently this is an issue for this motherboard. There are several usenet postings (do a google search) about this problem. I was planning on buying this motherboard because the audio was supposed to be 'high end" with the AD "sound max", and the specs seemed impressive. The audio has even received a couple of favorable reviews. The microphone was especially supposed to be good so you didn't need a noise cancelling mike for speech recognition.

The way that the noisy audio has been fixed with this board is to disable the onboard audio and stick in a different soundcard. (a bummer). You could try to send it to ASUS for warranty repair, and they might would send a quiet board back. They have to be aware of this problem by now.

Telling is that ASUS hasn't used the AD "sound max" in any of their new boards (as far as I am aware) and going back to the standard chip that they all use.

I have since changed my mind and will go with a different board, even though I really liked the feature set that the p4pe has. But there are better performing boards that don't have shaky audio.