Hi Dave, Glad you finally solved the problem with your system. However, the "cause of the problem is still unknown, and it certainly has mystified many folks who tried to help.
Creative (Soundblaster) essentially started the soundcard business, and generally has been the "soundcard that works". History suggests that this is still true in most cases. I wish I had suggested trying a total system restore to eliminate any variable due to the Windows system. There is also the possibility of operator error, especially with the Audigy, since it is so complex. We have a member of our digital net here who finds it very hard to understand how the Audigy works with his ham programs, but it works perfectly with fldigi on all modes, and DM780 as well, once he finds the correct settings and leaves them alone. I have often recommended changing to a simpler card, but he thinks the decoding will be better with the higher quality card, and it could be, depending upon the comparison sound system in the same computer, but the jury is still out on that one. I personally have had situations where a total system restore was the only way to make things work. Why, I do not know. Since Windows has over 10,000,000 lines of interacting code, it could be almost anything. I seriously doubt that your problems are caused by the SoundBlaster or fldigi, but most likely by something we do not know about your system. I say this because there are probably thousands of systems with SoundBlaster cards, and even hundreds with Audigy cards that are working with no problems at all, and if your system were one of those, it would obviously work also. Just like you are not condeming SoundBlaster, I am not trying to defend SoundBlaster. However, I just want to point out to anyone with soundcard problems that the Windows system itself can often be the culprit, and the way the operator is configuring the system, or the way programs have modified the system, could be the problem as well. When I test fldigi for any version release, I have a computer on which I always do a total system restore so I am testing with a truly virgin system. We have another net member who cannot get fldigi to run on his desktop machine, but it is OK on two laptops. Since he has so much data and programs on the desktop machine, it is not practical to reformat and restore that machine to fix the problem. He is one of our fldigi beta testers, and in one case, did have to do a restore on one of the laptops to get fldigi working, because somewhere along the line, a remnant of one of the beta versions continued to do something to the system and cleaning it out completely was the simplest (and probably only) way to get it working again. If there are mysterious soundcard problems, next time I'd first try a total system restore before assuming the soundcard is at fault. BTW, Peter Martinez, G3PLX, has found that some USB soundcards have a greater offset between receive and transmit tone frequencies than most onboard soundcards. In this case, the soundcard might be the problem, and not the system. Anyway, we have beat this horse to death. I am happy you finally found a solution to your own system that works for you, and we can move on to other issues. :-) 73, Skip KH6TY NBEMS Development Team > Little problems began to show up again. Once in a while, the PC > wouldn't boot properly, but most of the issues were with digital ham > apps. Beginning to see a trend, I just replaced the Soundblaster again, > but this time with an inexpensive Diamond brand sound card. All problems > have completely disappeared! > > This isn't an ad for Diamond sound cards, or a blanket condemnation > of Soundblaster. Just a hopefully informative note to anyone out there > who has problems with their PC that are unexplainable by other causes, > that looking at your sound card /*might*/ be a place to look. > > 73 > Dave > KB3MOW >
