X-Fi bugs? I have solution

[trodas]

If you remove all the eight audio caps, you won't be able to do a RMAA measuring using loopback cable, since the input jack will not work anymore. So, to make it work, you gotta add a C48 and C49 caps. The original are bipolar 4.7uF 50V Jamicons. I used audio quality polypropylene film caps to replace them, 4.7uF 63V MKT ones (Digi-key order number 495-1131-ND ):



And then I can make my first RMAA test: http://ax2.old-cans.com/X-Fi%20Fatal...ps%2024_48.htm

It is much better that trying to pass the -200mV DC offset right back to the input: http://ax2.old-cans.com/X-Fi%20Fatality%20NOCAPS.htm

...

[Eva]

There is nothing wrong with modern electrolytic capacitors or muting circuits.

No bugs were solved by replacing the capacitors and you even managed to make the output buffers unstable by removing too much of the mute circuit (probably some required resistors) and/or adding small capacitors.

The terrible stuff that makes computer sound cards buggy and noisy is inside the chips and the drivers. If you could imagine you would not bother touching the poor capacitors...

[trodas]

There is nothing wrong with modern electrolytic capacitors

Ehm, excuse me, bu I beg to differ. Most modern electrolytic caps are known bad fake ones, that dies soon, ofter taking the HW in witch they are with them to silicon heaven. Just look:
http://capsmod.net/forum/viewthread....extra=page%3D1
Do these images looks like that there is "nothing wrong"?

muting circuits

Removing muting circuits give more detailed sound. That is what counts.

No bugs were solved by replacing the capacitors

On the contrary Did you even bother to read at least start of the thread?!

you even managed to make the output buffers unstable

Only for the test. You again completelly missed the second round of testing WITH these MKT caps, lol. Why reply when you did not read anything? Why bother? Posthunting? Showing own ignorance?

The terrible stuff that makes computer sound cards buggy and noisy is inside the chips and the drivers

Witch is why I replacing the opamps and using only choosen drivers... but that is, what is this thread all about

[Eva]

As I understood, you thought that you solved the problem by replacing capacitors, but as soon as the chipsets on the soundcard and the motherboard got back hot the bugs showed up again. This is extremely common (placebo effect). These faults are usually temperature dependent.

There is nothing wrong with op-amps either, they are very simple and well behaved circuits (then again, they are made out of a few dozen transistors). The problems have to do with logic chipsets (the ones with several million transistors in them) and the timing and sequencing of the PCI bus. Do you want to tweak this? No chance of course

These chips are the ones missing clock cycles, losing the pointers to sound buffers in main memory and corrupting digital sound data on the fly And they usually do that due to bad design and extreme cost reduction.

Remember that Creative Labs has been releasing buggy sound cards and drivers to the market since the times of the old AWE32 (I still keep two of these and I even learned to program their EMU8000 chipset at port/assembler level). These cards were already tricky to program, there were many programming situations that resulted in noise or random playback (due to hardware quirks) and had to be detected and avoided before they happen.

The channel swapping bug is very funny because it was already present in very old Creative Labs cards form the Sound Blaster Pro era. They released a document explaining a particular programming sequence to overcome it in these old cards. It seems that 15 years later they are still not able to get the hardware right (or even to get the software fixed to overcome hardware bugs).

BTW: Never load an op-amp directly witn a capacitor or connect its output to the outer world without a resistor for RF decoupling and capacitive load isolation, it will oscillate at times as you are experiencing. Suppressing DC-blocking capacitors is quite a bad habbit too.

[classdphile]

Whew..

Modding these cards is big business these days isn't it.

I also see you closely mimicking other modders who've come before you and speak of these same "bugs" and "solutions". Not sure it's a great move on your part, because really, what makes you think they had the first clue?

Your logic is often false, jumping from one conclusion to the next for the sake of justifying "good" caps and other tweaks.If you want to learn you'll have to be more scientific and objective in your method for the results will mirror your efforts.

...my BF2 play experience and eventualy geting rid of the pause bug. ...Not only I have to mod drivers to work/install on Win2k a bit, but they also suxx and the pausebug is still here.

I managed to get rid of it for some month or so, after I replace some major caps on the X-Fi, but as the other caps aging (and they are bad brand of caps also - something that is hard to believe in a $260 pricetag at the buy time product) I get the pause bug yet again.

So there you have proof, that Direct Show decoders seeking could be a problem, when using 5.1 output with 24bit AC3 filter settings and quickly do many random pause/unpause of a AC3/DTS movie.

Frontpannel is full of Jamicons too, and it obviously accelerated the dying of Jamicons on card or so

How is it you suppose caps ageing on the front panel will accelerate the caps ageing on the card, telekinesis? You're seriously paranoid about these caps for no reason, would it drive you mad if I told you X7R or Y5V MLCC ceramics commonly used all over the motherboard aren't that stable and are known to crack?

Was your problem really gone for a month, or were you pampering your typical test conditions while your new caps were babies?

I have no clue how your mentioned "proof" is proof, decoders seeking, what's that?.. "quickly do many pause/unpause". Does that fall under normal or sane usage patterns? If I pour gas in my water tank, my plant will stall when I invert it too. Therefore the solution is obviously, C02, and I have enough in stock for all of you! Please tell me of your experience with gas in your ater.

Let's review:

Win2k? Upgrade to XP to start with.

Mafia stable? No. It's a known buggy pig coded game. That's how it runs. BF2 is not so different and I doubt Prey is either. These all seem like notorious choices to a make a case for something.. how odd.

It would not even matter if you had optimized the PC for gaming by turning off services you don't need, deleted the porn from your desktop, or upped the ram to the 64mb min requirement.

Is your hardware even configured half decently? Bios settings optimal? Cooling adequate? I see you recapped your PSU.. is it stable? Did you recap your motherboard? Swapping motherboards out at random either isn't going to help unless you take the time to figure out how to configure them properly.

For example you haven't a single mention as to whether or not the obvious first choice of shared IRQ's was looked after, or how about, and look this one up, PCI latency and hogging. There goes 99% of your issues right there, the basics covered.

Moving on, not all mute circuits are created equally, I sure don't like the looks of that one, but I'm not convinced it's a correct representation of it either and I'd almost bet that it isn't. Another problem you set out to cure but later failed to report on, the DC offset never changed when you removed those, did it.

"Don't attempt to solder this yourself unless you're a master".. but it sure sounds great now, you'll really want this, I can do it for you? I could solder that blindfolded with my toes, kind of stinks like marketing tactics there.

"The tick is as loud as the amp". Turn the amp up and don't just reboot, actually turn the PC off. Expect fatality. You clearly have critical stability issues with it as well, recommend a turn about here, you're over the bend and on the wrong street.

Changing the op amp originally got you no difference, much to be expected as it's largely the DAC that sets the stage. So, upset that you see no difference, naturally you go messing with caps until you do, with FC's no less. Then you're happy to hear their signature distorted response.

The truth is the original caps were better for the job as the board was designed, and will sound best for they are superior for audio than anything you've used to date. DC coupling the DAC is of very little benefit, and probably raised your DC offset.

Even EMU's highest end hardware suffers some small glitch when you hit mute on your media player rapidly with it under load, which is in relation to timing issues, buffers, latches, clocks, PCI related etc. It's not something you'll be fixing, and certainly not by recapping anything. If you think you fixed it, you imagined it.

Caps not in relation to the circuits in use are not going to hurt the sound, neither will they improve it if you remove them. You can't imagine that removing them is somehow going to, what, clean up your computer's disgusting ground?

The whole bad cap thing is yesterday, and not a good business model really. It's the very tail end of faulty 5 year old hardware dying off that you can show recent pictures of. These cap companies are still in business to turn a profit and they do so by offering products that least meet spec.

The cap on the Fatality you've shown as "bad" doesn't look so bad to me, it looks more like someone took a black marker and traced the vents. It's not even swollen so it's hard to believe it's "leaking" out of the pressure vent..

LM4562 has the furthest thing from a "hard edge", and how could it pick up RFI that's not already there, say perhaps, from resonating with ultra low Z caps that shouldn't be there to begin with and don't sound good anyway?

You're doing a lot more harm than good thus far, and are floating on cloud placebo.