Audio Buzzing

[fluke]

Hi everyone,

Just bought the Beyond TV software and an ATI TV Wonder VE card today and am having big problems with the audio. Basically it buzzes with a really high-pitched........ well buzz.

However this is the weird thing. When running the initial setup, at the part where it is asking about the audio setup, the audio is perfect. And I mean perfect, just like over the TV. However, when I then continue through the setup wizard and get to the part where you setup the video it shows the channel fine, but the audio now sucks. This is then carried throughout the entire program. Whenever I try and watch anything (apart from the short 5-second demo from Snapstream) the sound is this way.

Now, just to clarify, I can hear the sound of the TV station I am watching fine, it just has a really annoying buzz that after a few minutes aggravates you enough that you do not want to watch it.

I have tried everything I have read in the posts about messing with volume levels etc etc but nothing.

I am using the on board sound card, which is listed as CMI8738/C3DX PCI Audio Device which I think is a standard on board C-Media sound card that came with my motherboard (Soyo Dragon Ultra SY-P4S-645DX).

Now, one thing. The TV Tuner card that I bought today uses a small stereo (mini jack-type) cable to bring audio from the tuner card to the computers sound card. This is kinda wack in my opinion, but what the hey. Don't know if anyone recommends a better one. I just bought this ATI thing as it was cheap, and also because I only want to use the software for streaming and this one has no on board mpeg encoding; which apparantly means streaming is not possible (I believe I am correct in thinking this).

I do want to reiterate again that on the setup "wizard" audio page it sounds perfect, so it does appear to have the potential, suggesting that it's got nothing to do with the sound card, or TV Tuner card, but rather is a software issue.

Anyhow, just thought i'd ask to see if anyone knows of any solutions. Thanks for any help in advance.


Fluke.

[RobertH]

check the KB and search for audio:
http://kb.snapstream.com

[fluke]

Robert,

Thanks for the reply. I assume you are referring to Article# 1126 "In addtion to normal audio, Beyond TV recordings have a high-pitched whine" which does seem to fit the description, however this article states that the audio will be OK on live TV, which it is not.

Having just read the article again, I noticed that I had somewhat misread it, as it refers to AMCAP and third party apps. So I will have to check those out to see if I still get the same result.

Thanks again

Fluke.

[satirewolf]

Try plugging the output from your tv card directly into your speakers. It's possible that you have a current loop going through the PCI bus, and the sound card, ie HIGH PITCHED NOISE!

The problem is that boards are not always grounded to the case properly, as well as the design of certain motherboards meens that there are ground loops all over the place. A lot of cheap boards have this problem. When you get ground loops on your board, it may not make it unstable, but it can cause terrible audio problems...

You might try a cheap offboard soundcard like the Chaintech in my sig... I got it from newegg.com for like 20 bucks. It's a really good card, and would certainly be 5x better than your onboard audio.

[satirewolf]

Also, there may be some very noisy PCI cards in your system. Try yanking all the cards you're not using (especially keep your network card away from your sound card / tuner card) and see what happens.

Some times, simply swapping pci cards around can elliminate sound issues.

[satirewolf]

As for the streaming you think is not possible without hardware encoding, it is possible

Hardware encoders are currently not supported for streaming out of the box. You have to do some tinkering, as mpeg2 isn't a very streamable media by default. But it can be done.

Windows Media is the default streaming format, and as long as your cpu is fast enough to keep up you should be fine.