Audio issues with Sound Blaster Z

Hey guys,

I recently bought a Sound Blaster Z and I'm getting some strange issues with sound in the game while using the card. Every now and then the game will make a popping sound, then all audio will go very quiet, and over the course of maybe three seconds come back up to full volume again. Sometimes the popping sound is replaced by a high-pitched one, and once when it happened all sound stopped and wouldn't come back again.

It only ever happens in Warband (while playing Napoleonic Wars, specifically) - I've never had the issue in any other game, and I have quite a few installed on my pc. I've tried looking on the 'net to see if anyone else is having this issue with Warband and this card, or the card in general, but can find nothing like it. I'm using driver version 2.04.10, which is the latest, in Windows 7 x64 alongside a Radeon 7970 if that's of any use.

Any suggestions would be welcome!

Nobody, huh?

I have a similar issue with the same sound card.  Coincidentally, I also have a 7970 but I don't see how the problem could be related to that, although I'm going to look into it a little. 

I randomly get a loud popping noise and less frequently the sound goes away completely until I reboot.  I've pretty much chalked it up to terrible Creative driver support as there are multiple similar unresolved complaints on their troubleshooting forums.  I also have my system volume down to 5 because anything higher is deafening and apparently there is no way to lower headphone gain.  I'd read about how bad Creative's support is in the past, but I went out on a limb and bought the card when I saw it on sale after reading some good reviews for it.

I've actually found a 3rd party driver that claims to fix the popping and tweak some other things, but the guy's English isn't that great and on top of that he doesn't actually possess a Z card, just pretty much every other Creative card.  Here's the site if you want to take a look, but I wouldn't recommend messing with it if you don't know what you're doing and aren't prepared to deal with a bunch of headaches: http://www.hardwareheaven.com/pax-drivers/. 

Either way, I'll post an update when I have time to try these to let you know if they fixed my issues.  If you do figure it out, please do the same. 

Just an update.  I installed the 3rd party drivers I mentioned above and they actually were an improvement.  Sound quality is better, and the volume is now at a decent level.  The popping has not gone away, however, and I lost sound completely once last night.  So still no fix. 

Hey, Helz. I completely forgot about this - the problem continued, but it was just something I dealt with. Just now I had the same thing happen to me as happened to you, where it started popping and then just died altogether, and I had to restart. I've heard of Creative's bad drivers and support in the past, but all the reviews and everyone I spoke to prior to buying the card said they'd sorted all of that out. Maybe they have for the majority, but I doubt they'd give us the time of day, the small few having trouble with a niche game such as this.

Sigh... just have to continue dealing with it, I suppose. Can't say I've had any problem with the card being too loud, but I've seen that problem posted around the 'net, so you're not alone.