kinda weird problem.. maybe not to you guys but to me anyways. so heres the deal: i got a creative soundblaster audigy 2 zs for christmas. hooked it up with my crappy old 2 speakers. went out yesterday, picked up a set of creative inspire t5400 5.1 speakers, and now it seems like whenever my sound is 'stressed' like when im listening to music over the internet (i have 56k)and it gets scratchy or squeaky, the speakers will just stop dead in their tracks. did it with my old speakers too, but i blamed the speakers and how old they were. however never had that problem with my creative soundblaster 128awe sound card. if i go into speaker settings in the area of the software that creative gives you, the speakers work fine like in channel testing or listening to the special features, but anything windows related konks out sound wise. aol instant messenger, the clicks from internet explorer, windows media player, windows startup/shutdown noises: dead. really baffles me, and its getting a tad annoying. is there possibly something wrong with my card thats causing this? thanks for any help in advance. Oh just tried this: hooked the back of the subwoofer (aux in) to my radio and sound is coming out fine, so I think we can rule out a speaker problem.

I have an audigy 2 platinum and i found that if I enable the audio effects in the eax console my sound becomes unstable like you describe. I just stopped using it and kicked myself for upgrading from my santa cruz. Seems like buggy software is all.

ok i'll give that a try, see if it works, because i do have them enabled, if anyone else has any advice feel free to give it in the meantime. thanks for your help.

What motherboard? Does it have a VIA chipset? If so, there's a known compatibility problem with the VIA & Creative Soundblaster series...there's a fix, but it's not without risk...make sure to read the README file before doing anything! http://www.georgebreese.com/net/software/

nope, i got the nvidia chipset.