Soundblaster X-Fi Crackling and Popping Update
@ 2006/06/19Since it's introduction there have been a lot of people reporting crackling and popping caused by their SoundBlaster X-Fi making games unplayable. In an effort to fix this problem Creative released a new X-Fi driver (beta) and wrote a technical analysis. If both failed, which still seems to be the case for many X-Fi owners, here is a new update straight from Creative.
According to Creative only approximately 0.03% of the users are affected from which only 0.01% reported the issues. Overall Creative believes a Motherboard BIOS update will fix the crackling and popping and they are still working on that with nVidia and other motherboard/chipset manufacturers. If there is no BIOS update available for your motherboard yet there might be other ways to fix the problem which are listed below.
According to Creative only approximately 0.03% of the users are affected from which only 0.01% reported the issues. Overall Creative believes a Motherboard BIOS update will fix the crackling and popping and they are still working on that with nVidia and other motherboard/chipset manufacturers. If there is no BIOS update available for your motherboard yet there might be other ways to fix the problem which are listed below.
either way, the information offered is useful and worth looking into if you are experiences these issues with your X-Fi