It appears that under WindowsXP these problems are solved.
Use version 2.0.0925 of Highpoint drivers.
Try reducing the volume on the software mixer control running under Windows. Setting this near maximum can often cause distortion - it is better to set this at 75% or so and then use the volume control on your speakers to increase the volume!
The Soundblaster card is not good at sharing IRQs with other devices and so freeing up additional IRQs by disabling one or more COM ports, or the Highpoint controller (if not in use) can help. This seems to be particularly related to the Soundblaster sharing an IRQ with ACPI and disabling ACPI can also resolve this problem.
This can often be fixed by using BIOS ZTB01 (see BIOS page) and later and disabling Delay Transaction and PCI master Read Caching and setting PCI master time-out to 0, in Advanced Chipset Features. Ironically, a few users find ZT causes crackling problems, and that flashing back to BIOS YH solves the problem. Some users with crackling problems and the Soundblaster Live! series of cards have reported that BIOS release WZ resolves this problem. You'll probably need to experiment.
Crackling with a Soundblaster PCI 64 or PCI 128 can often be resolved by enabling Delay Transaction and PCI Master Read Caching.
One user with Windows 2000 found that by adding the following keys to the registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VxD\BIOS then crackling problems were resolved: PCIConcur = 1 (enabled), FastDRAM = 1 (enabled), AGPConcur = 1 (enabled) [if your video controller is AGP based]. These settings speed up hardware specific operations by allowing installed devices to use extra CPU cycles: PCI, AGP and/or DRAM based I/O transfers from the motherboard interface/bus/bridge (PCI, AGP, DRAM) to the CPU, and the other way around.
Disabling UDMA modes for disk drives in the BIOS solves stutters and crackles, at the expense of reduced disk performance (20% or so lower). This is because bus mastering can prevent the sound card from gaining access to the PCI bus.
One user with crackling problems with his Soundblaster, particularly when the CPU was under heavy load (e.g. when running SETI@home) found that upgrading his memory to PC133 and thus setting the memory bus at HOST+PCICLK solved all crackling problems.
One user found that by enabling 'enhanced chipset performance' in SoftMenuIII of the BIOS the crackling could be removed.
One user with crackling problems found that by setting all ATAPI devices (eg. CDROM, CDRW and DVD) in the BIOS as None rather than Auto resolved crackling problems.
Reducing the hardware acceleration setting for the graphics card in Windows by one "notch" can resolve crackling problems (presumably by reducing the traffic on the PCI bus). Disabling V-sync on your graphics card can resolve crackling with 3D games.
Installing the latest driver from Creative Labs can also resolve crackling (this solution report for SB5.1 under Windows 2000).
FORUM HardWare.fr
. si quelqu un a une autre suggestion....