I really can't figure out what's wrong here. I have an Auzentech X-Fi prelude soundcard and basically when I play the game STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl the sound screws up on the entire computer. The main menu music is usually okay and so are the intro movies and what not but in-game when sounds are playing some are either distorted to the point that they sound just like pure static, or, they have sudden cracks of static in them (you can hear the sound, say a characters voice and every second for instance there will be a sudden distortion that lasts for a nanosecond). This problem, though, replicates itself elsewhere. For instance playing music in WMV or using other things like VLC will cause the same thing to happen. It started off only occurring in the game, and usually only after the game had crashed - so prior to the game crashing the sound in the game and on the computer would be fine. When the game crashed for whatever reason when I started the game up again the sound would be having this problem. Then I'd notice it if I tried to play music or whatever. To rectify this problem I had to restart the computer. After a reboot the sound would return to normal, until of course the game crashed again. Then it started to occur more frequently. This time the game didn't have to crash for the problem to happen. It would happen if, for instance, I'd opened up usually any other application like Firefox before I started playing the game. Once again a reboot was the only cure. Now it does it all the time in the game. Rebooting doesn't seem to be able to cure it. A reboot only makes music in WMP or VLC play okay, but as soon as I start the game up again the sound goes. I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling the sound drivers (which are the latest), uninstalling, reinstalling the game, even installing older sound drivers. I tried using different openal file versions with the game too but that just stops the sound working completely. Is there any way I can completely reset the sound system without having to reboot the computer though?

Integrated sound uses CPU cycles. The sound is competing with the other tasks. The reason it has gotten worse may be due to additional items using CPU cycles. Could be malware or other programs running in the background. Run some cleaners and an Anti-Virus program. Try CCleaner for the cleaner. Malewarebytes for malware. Check Task Manager to see what is running. Try right clicking on My Computer and choose properties> advanced> performance settings. You may be able to tweak the system a little there.

The OP is not using on board sound. My suggestion would be to turn off audio hardware acceleration in STALKER and see what happens. Next I would take the card out and try the on board audio to see if the problem is hardware specific. Coffee...The true life blood of the IT Industry!

Well, i turned eax off at first in the game, that didn't make any difference. So I used the console to turn off sound acceleration. Still no difference. I restarted the game both occasions by the way. Changed a few other sound settings like the cache size and channels (lowered them because they were already on max). No difference there. Decided maybe there was a driver corruption going on something so I wiped my system clean, reinstalled everything and tried again. That time, no sound distortion, until I launched the game again later on, then it was back to square one. I can't be bothered to go to the hassle of taking out the sound card just to see if it happens to the on-board audio or not. I'm going to put this one down to a screw up in the drivers because the sound card works fine for every other game I have and music and whatever. Its just when I try and play stalker, the sound goes all weird and then that moves to other sound applications once stalker is quit.

You may have the Integrated enabled in the BIOS. If you are not using integrated sound then Disable in the BIOS if it isn't.

Yea, it is turned off in the bios. Do you think Dolby Digital Live might cause trouble? I don't use DDL at all and its supposed to be switched off in the audio console but I did read in the changelog for previous drivers for this sound card that DDL was causing distortion in some games and applications, though it was supposed to have been fixed and also said it only happened when DDL is on. I did try turning DDL on (not that I could use it anyway, because I don't use the digital output on the sound card, only the analogue), and the computer BSOD'd.

I've just tried uninstalling the DDL package. Made no difference at all. I also tried switching off my AV software, that didn't work either. Earlier I tried to use updated OpenAL drivers by putting the newer ones in the game's install folder replacing the old ones but, that just makes the sound stop working in the game completely. Lastly, I have no hardware conflicts according to device manager.