Hi all. I'm hoping someone can help me. I've recently installed an Audigy Value soundcard and am running the Logitech Z500D 5.1 speaker system. I have a CD and a DVD drive. When I play a cd in the cd drive, the sound is fine. BUT when I play it via the dvd player (or when i play a DVD) the sound is very patchy/stuttery (and so is the visual in the case of a DVD). I have no idea why! I've tried various settings. I highly doubt that the DVD player is faulty. I have a feeling it may have something to do with decoding or something related to that. Sound comes out of all speakers but is very jerky. However if I run something like the THX optimizer, it doesn't pick up all the speakers. I've tried changing the speaker settings to a 2 speaker set up and the playback is still jerky. Oh, i've tried using Media Player 10 and InterVideo WinDVD6 to run the movies. Oh and be warned, i'm not the most computer literate so I'll do my best to answer any questions I may get thrown. Also, I have a Pentium4, 2.0GHz, 512MB, Windows XP SP2, Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-106D. Thanks very much!!

Just a thought. There is usually a cable that links the optical drive to the soundcard - just a thin twin wire with a plug on each end. With this the sound is taken straight to the soundcard, without it is goes via the MOBO. Now I'm not sure if DVD's use this link or not, but if they do, and the cable is connected to the CD not the DVD, perhaps this is the cause of the problem? A clue is that CD's play badly in the DVD player - so it seems it is not specifically related to DVD's, and is probably therefore not a codec issue.

I recently had a similar problem with my DVD burner. In my case it turned out that the ide interface had gone from UDMA 4 down to PIO mode. About 1/6 the performance. You can check for this by going into the device manager (Start / Control Panel / System / Hardware / Device Manager / IDE ATAPI Controllers then to either primary or secondary IDE Channel Depending on which one your DVD is hooked up to and look at the Advanced Settings tab. If the DVD drive is not running in at least UDMA mode 2 then this could be your problem. There is a Microsoft KB with info on this that indicates the only way to 'repair' is to delete the offending IDE channel and reboot which resets the transfer mode. http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=817472#top I hope this helps "Two roads diverged ina wood, and I -- I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference." R. Frost