Sound Corruption

[Vimeous]

The Problem :
When listening to music (MP3 or ingame) and other audio (sound effects etc) my PC suffers an audio stutter. It occurs every 4-5 seconds and lasts about half a second. It sounds like a judder and the entire machine joins in (in windows the mouse stops and in-game the whole thing briefly pauses).

The problem doesn't occur when the sound isn't in use. The problem will occur even if only a simple program like winamp is running with all anti-virus and spyware removal products switched off.

The Hardware :
It's my main rig so the spec is:
1 : Athlon XP2600 Barton | 512Mb Crucial | ASUS A7V8X | Radeon 9800 Pro | Videologic SonicFury | Maxtor 120Gb + 40Gb | NEC DVD | Samsung CDRW | Coolermaster ATC-201B-BXT | Yamaha TSS-1

Can you suggest any avenues of investigation?

Thanks,

Vimeous

[Shogun]

Not sure, but check your northbridge temps/southbridge/sound card temps,
also try moving it into a different pci slot.

[pre]

Sounds (ho ho ho) like an IRQ conflict. Look in device manager and see if it is and then try an find a PCI slot that doesnt result in IRQ sharing.

[yamangman]

Try changing the level of direct sound acceleration and report back with what level of acceleration alleviates this problem.

[Shogun]

Yea turning down the level a notch on my pc for direct sound acceleration stopped massive static and distortion in Cs. Now that i've reformatted i haven't had to...

[Vimeous]

Thanks for all the suggestions guys. The problem is now solved.
I had a long think about the history of the sound card (I've had it years) as I've had it in various different machines. Usually a complete uninstall/reinstall of the drivers fixed the problem but this time it hadn't.
That said I persevered reinstalled them again and eventually the problem went away!

PCI shuffle was next on the list (thanks for the suggestion)

Thanks to all.