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...or am I going crazy?


OK, here's the deal. Recently, I reconfigured my system a bit in order to get Doom 3 working. I moved my audio card (an OEM Audigy 2) down one slot in order to do this, to move it far away from the fairly-noisy video card.

When I restarted, the computer felt the need to reinstall the audio card. I updated the audio drivers and moved on.

Here's the thing, though. Suddenly, the audio seems to be *painfully* midrangey and trebly. I can't figure out whether I'm imagining this or whether something has actually changed. I find myself killing the upper-mids in my Winamp equalizer. There suddenly seems to be a lot less bass on the default settings. You get the drill.

So here's the thing: am I imagining this? Can moving a sound card and updating drivers actually change the default sound it produces? Could it be the video card sucking up more power? What's da deal?

I assume that you have checked the default settings for the sound card. Many of them have different EQ settings that are labeled with speaker designations - for example, "headphones," "computer speakers." and so forth.

Is the audio so bad that it is affecting your game play, or is it more subtle - i.e., only a concern when playing music? I'm thinking that it's the latter if you are questioning whether you are imagining it.

Is your hifi anywhere near your computer? If so, I highly recommend a product called Hifi link, which runs your audio out of a USB port (bypassing your sound card) and into your hifi through the RCA inputs (comes with 20 feet of cable). I don't know if it can completely replace all the functions of your sound card, but I consider it essential for listening to WAV files. I couldn't do my remastering without it!

Dob wrote:I assume that you have checked the default settings for the sound card. Many of them have different EQ settings that are labeled with speaker designations - for example, "headphones," "computer speakers." and so forth.

Nothing of the sort is on.

Is the audio so bad that it is affecting your game play, or is it more subtle - i.e., only a concern when playing music? I'm thinking that it's the latter if you are questioning whether you are imagining it.

Yeah. What's driving me nuts about "imagining" it is that it was fine before I moved PCI slots. I'm thinking that the interference from the INCREDIBLY loud video card might be a factor, but why would it manifest itself so oddly?

This is really hard to quantify.

Is your hifi anywhere near your computer? If so, I highly recommend a product called Hifi link, which runs your audio out of a USB port (bypassing your sound card) and into your hifi through the RCA inputs (comes with 20 feet of cable). I don't know if it can completely replace all the functions of your sound card, but I consider it essential for listening to WAV files. I couldn't do my remastering without it!

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That wouldn't work, unfortunately.

Remember when you got your new car stereo and you imagined that horrible midrange boost?

Yeah, I do. I think I'm just very suggestable to changes like this. I hope I'm imagining it.

Why not try moving it back to the slot it was in before to see what happens? And you really, really need to figure out how to quote things here...

I know how to quote things. I just sometimes forget to close the tags. And don't care.

I think I solved the problem, FWIW. When the drivers reinstalled, some of the IRQ settings were referencing a device that didn't exist. I killed those, and suddenly I'm getting a lot less treble. I think the "treble" I was hearing was extra distortion layered on top when the signal exceeded a certain limit.