It would seem I am experiencing a crackling/distorted sound with high piched notes coming through my speakers. When ever the master control and the wave music control are set to the highest volume, even when my speakers are set to the lowest volume, I will hear a distoetion in the music. I have tried to change the card to another slot and I made sure I am not sharing my sound card IRQ with anything else. My system is an Athlon XP 1500 Abit KG7 motherboard 512 PC2100 ram Soundblaster live Mp3 5.1+ Radeon 8500 video card. Altec lansing ACS54 I seem to have the lastest 4in1 drivers and soundcard drivers. I also noticed that when I go in the speaker controls and I set my speakers to a 2 speaker system, I have no more traces of the problem, it's only when I set my system to a 4 speakers system or 5.1 speakers. I have tried changing my card to another PCI slot, made sure I wasn't sharing my card with any other (IRQ)... Does anyone have a clue? Did anyone experienced similar problems? Thanks P.s. this is happening with windows ME and XP alike.

I would suggest that you ask Creative like millions of other users have, who have had the same problem as you. To this date i dont think there is any one specific fix, you will have to try lots of fixes until one works including via drivers, creative drivers, video drivers, etc etc....I think there also may have been some fix with turning down your sound hardware acceleration if its on max.....but dont quote me on that one! Hope this helps (XP is what you make it!)

I had the same problem with XP and simply turning down hardware acceleration one notch from max will sort it out. Right click on the desktop, properties, advanced, troubleshoot tab.