Sound Card Woes... I'm stumped

Hello to the Wizards and Dr. Doom! Here we go:

I’ve redone my sound and am having many problems with it:

P-III 600/ 512MB Ram/ MoBo: PowerSpec(SuperMicro) 370SED (3 PCI no ISA) / Win98SE

Board comes with integrated wavetable on-board, a CrystalClear SoundFusion CS4299 chip. (AC "˜97 2.1 compliant)

Installed: Asound Express PCI (FM Synth) Card and drivers. On-board soundchip disabled in BIOS.

I have Noteworthy Composer, Sibelius and Finale music writing programs installed, all of which use MIDI sound.

Problem:
I could get no sound thru Noteworthy, Sibelius or Finale with the CS4299 chip in operation, so I thought to install a cheap soundcard I’d had in another computer and which worked well in that. ( P-III 450MHZ )

I went into device manager and uninstalled all the items under Sound Video and Game Controller category, restarted to BIOS and disabled the CS4299 chip ( on-board sound system chip) shut down, installed the Asound Express card, rebooted and let windows take it’s time finding all the drivers it needed. Eventually, it was satisfied and we got back to the GUI (desktop). As soon as GUI loaded up, I got the "Microsoft Greeting" sound thru the headphones, but it didn’t shut off and the computer locked midway thru the Systray load.

Soft shutdown and reboot and wait..... this time, the GUI loaded, the sound played and (sorta) stopped and the Systray loaded. All seemed fine except that I had the most annoying high whine thru the cans (I don’t use speakers). I went back to device mangler and checked, but all the items listed showed drivers installed and operational, no conflicts and no other remarkable problems, so I decided to live with the whine.

I went into Multimedia to be sure that the Advance Sound was the player and recorder of choice, as it was, then went to Noteworthy to configure the MIDI player to use the Advance Sound as the MIDI, making sure it was the only one showing in the playback box. Started Noteworthy to play a file and the computer locked up - completely. Could not get anything, even with the "Three-Finger-Saluteâ€. This seems to be infinitely replicable.

After restarting several times with the same results, I went to Sibelius to see if the same thing would happen and it didn’t even fully load up before we hung. Sibelius has a rather long introductory soundfile that is played during loadup and it continued to sound on one chord fragment from the point of the lockup until I soft-re-booted the computer.

After restart ( several times, this also is infinitely replicable) I once again checked for more than one device in Multimedia, conflicts on device manager and read TFM as well, all with no joy. The only suggestion that the manual really gave was to uninstall ( using an program provided by Asound) all previous drivers and reinstall the soundcard from scratch.

To the accompaniment of several reboots and restarts I deleted all sound drivers, removed the sound card, reinstalled the sound card, used the updated driver set from Asound’s site and.... same thing.

All looks rosy enough in Device Mangler and Multimedia, but the music programs all hang the computer upon attempting to use them and I stillhave that **** whine in the cans.

AMENDMENT! Not only are Noteworthy and Sibelius crashing the system, any game ( Virtual Pool 3, e.g.) heavily reliant on sound will do the same and even opening a browser site in IE 5.0 when it has background music will do the same! This is truly annoying!
! ! !

I do not have the option of getting a better soundcard at present and - although I’ll NEVER buy a super-micro product again - neither have I the option of replacing the MoBo with a "˜real’ one. I have to make do with what I’ve got, so I’m here looking for advice or abuse, whichever comes first. (just kidding....)

Thanks in advance for looking at all this drivel. I await your suggestions and comments.

(Dr... I have a few board procedure questions and a suggestion... coulldja email me?)

Vincenzo

 

FM Synthesis cards use oscillators for generating sounds. Possibly one of them is leaking through to the output.

Did the whining sound in the headset appear when the card was in the other box? You might plug it back into the original box to see if the whine remains. Also be sure that the card plays properly in the other box, and didn't experience some sort of damage in the transfer.

If it functions properly without the whine, this will limit the problem to the new box and its configuration.

 

Solved....sorta


Well, the problems listed above are fixed. I don't know why, but I jut got a wild hair to re-do everything and see what happened. Well, I now have sound in all programs , both MIDI and WAV after uninstalling and re-installing the soundcard one more time. Doggone if I know what I did differnetly, but what ever I did worked.

Now the only problem is dealing with that sh***y FM Synth sound.... like listening to a can with a string thru the bottom.

Thanks Dr.Doom!

Vincenzo

 

There are some really good PCI wavetable cards such as the Soundblaster 16 PCI that are quite low-cost. If you can't find the 16 PCI for less than $20, y'all ain't lookin'.

Check out the prices on PCI cards on this page at Pricewatch.

PCI Sound Cards

 

****, I like this BBS

Thankew Brother! ( and I have not forgotten that I owe you a suggestion!)

Being unemployed and poor but poverty-stricken all at the same time really puts a crimp in the ol' computer-parts-purchasing-powers, but I can probably beat enuf boys at pool to afford a $25.00 ( incl shipping) card.

Soundblaster 16 be 'da bomb for lo-price cards?