Sound distortion problems

[tobz1000]

I've had my current PC for a couple of months now, and I'm pretty sure the only problem lef to deal with, which I have been kinda putting off, is to do with the sound.
For whatever reason, it seems when there is too much going on with the audio, things get quieter, and the volume kinda pulsates.

It seems the problem occurs only rarely, if at all, if I don't activate the equalizer in a media player. Even with the equalizer activated, classical music and other calm things ore fine. However anything with distorted guitars or loud percussion starts randomly getting quieter at times. This effect doesn't seem to be present in games, however if I have music running in the background (i.e. not part of the game itself), the music seems to suffer from the same problem if anything in the game gets loud suddenly, regardless of any equalizer setting I am using.

The equalizer setting I am most fond of (it produces the clearest sound from my speakers) worked fine on my old computer, but produces the described effect on this one. I have tried several media players, and while the effect is greatest in WMP, I have determined this is simply because I cannot achieve the desired EQ setting on Winamp, iTunes or RealPlayer as closely. Still, the closer I got the stronger the problem was. Right now I have to kinda find a balance between clear sound, and non-pulsating sound.

Anyone got any suggestions? I have a P5K deluxe with SoundMax audio driver on Vista Ultimate - I'm not sure which to blame.

[shadowpr]

did you try installing the newest audio drivers from Asus website?

[tobz1000]

Yep - all my drivers are up to date to the best of my knowledge.

[pally01]

I had that problem with my Vista/P5B/On-board audio/Media Player 11 too. The sound "surged" and was basically unlistenable.

I switched from Media 11 to Winamp and all my troubles went away. I see you've tried Winamp and still had the problem, so maybe your Soundmax is at fault? I know there were tons of audio issues with Vista/Creative users earlier on. Perhaps this is related too.

Maybe try using on-board audio with Winamp and see where that gets you.

[tobz1000]

The problem isn't as bad on Winamp - maybe that's because it is just better, but I'm pretty sure it's partially because the e.q. is slightly different. Plus the lack of taskbar integration is a small nitpick that makes me prefer wmp11 =/
I've tried disabling soundmax (well, whichever part of it shows up in the system tray... i'm not too up on my driver knowledge) to no avail. Winamp is definately listenable, but the experience is nowhere near as good as I had on my old XP computer... I suppose I'll just have to live with it.

Thanks for the advice; glad to see I'm not the only person with this problem.

[shadowpr]

i might be a bit slow, but what is soundmax? is that a program, or a sound card that you have installed?

[pally01]

Maybe try using on-board audio
My bad:(. I didn't know Soundmax was onboard audio. Thought it was a card...

[pally01]

i might be a bit slow, but what is soundmax? is that a program, or a sound card that you have installed?

I googled it and it looks like a driver for an onboard chip http://www.softwarepatch.com/utilities/soundmax-audio.html

[shadowpr]

indeed it is. just went to asus and saw that's the name of the driver for the deluxe board.

[tobz1000]

Yeah, that sounds about right =P

There seems to be some extra software that came with it - I think it directly altered sound output. I have this disabled, although the problem I'm having seems to be the same with or without the software running.