Speakers playing static instead of normal sound

[Englander]

Hello all,

I own a pair of Creative Gigaworks T20s series II which I believe are less than a year old and they are running through a Xonar DX sound card. I turned on my PC today to be greeted not by the Windows 7 jingle, but a horrid cacophony of static and weird sounds instead. I've tried restarting and rejiggling the cables, I haven't touched any of the speaker settings - as far as I can tell this is completely out of the blue. This happens whenever I try to play any sound. When no sound is playing, they're fine, but they just spew out static whenever sound is played.

This has happened once before but a restart fixed it for a couple of weeks. My setup has otherwise been perfectly happy.

Any clues?

Thanks in advance,
Michael

Gah, it just fixed itself after another reset. But still, does anyone have any idea what's going on because it really is annoying.

[peterb]

Do they work normally with another sound source (eg, a stand alone MP3 player)? If so, the problem is not with the speakers.

Do you have another set of speakers (or headphones) to try instead?

If both those tests work, the fault lies in the cables. If (as I suspect) the problem is still there with headphones or another set of speakers, then it is most likely to be a driver problem within the OS. Try re-installing those. If that doesn't solve the problem, it may be the sound card.

[Englander]

Last time I tried it, headphones through the socket on the front of the socket was still dodgy - I'll give the drivers a reinstall if it happen again, that hadn't crossed my mind.

[jim]

I've had issues like that with my T40s, but when plugging my MP3 player into the back of the speakers, the problem has gone away.

I think it's most likely to be the soundcard/drivers.