Sound Blaster Z intermittent sound problem

[Gouldy80]

Hi,

I really hope one of you lovely people can help

The problem is this, i have a SBZ and have recently noticed that every now and then i lose sound for a fraction of a second. Think of it like a stutter. Weird thing is i can have hours at a time without a hitch, then it'll suddenly start playing up, and usually gets progressively worse! A reboot sometimes cures it temporarily, but the problem will always resurface. The card is connected to my AV receiver by an optical cable.

Here's what i've tried so far:

• Uninstalled everything Creative related, removed card itself and start from scratch installing latest drivers etc (i'm on Windows 10 by the way)
  
  Relocated card to a different PCI slot (i wondered if the fact that the problem only starts after a while pointed to a heat issue, it was right next to my graphics card)
  
  Tried a few different optical cables and different optical inputs on my receiver. Don't think this is the issue anyway as onboard sound via the same cable seems to be running just fine.

As a sidenote, i've managed to aquire myself the 'name not available' application that convinces my SBZ there is a device currently using it (shown as name not available in the volume mixer), and as such i'm not able to test the SPDIF Sound Blaster Z out from the playback devices window. It just tells me 'device is currently in use by another application. Hasn't caused my too much trouble though as i've set it to Speakers Sound Blaster Z and get Dolby Digital Live etc just fine...well not fine due to the above, but you get my point.

So if anyone could possibly shed some light on what's going on, i'd really appreciate it


If you need any other info re system specs etc please let me know


Thanks in advance all


Jamie

 

[Antares1183]

Hi, by chance I just read your post and took notice that I'm having the same problem every now and then. I have had the sound blaster z for a few months now and recently it did that stutter in 2 or 3 occasions. I also have it connected with an optical cable. I have a set of Mutekis and the decoder screen, which normally would show the word DTS, starts blinking. Honestly, this having occurred only a few times (for now) I din't make much of a fuss, and at first I thought that it could be the cable or maybe the decoder (that possibility scared me a bit), but after reading your post I'm thinking the problem is the drivers.
I updated to Windows 10 recently and I must admit that I love it, but I didn't had this problem in Windows 8.1. The card is pretty new (a few months), the cable and the HT too (almost a year old), but the newest thing here are Windows 10 and this occasional stutter.
I know Windows 10 is really new but I don't know for how long have you had your sound card and this problem (maybe is a new system), so considering your system came from win 7/8.1, if that were the case, have you had this problem before updating to windows 10?


PD: just in case of a Grammar Nazi attack, English is not my native language