Early 08 Mac Pro crackling/popping audio (Vista X64)

[Spud1]

Hey,

My brand new 2.8 8-core mac pro arrived a couple of days ago, and needless to say its great..for the most part

It's standard spec but with the 8800GT and the airport card.

Although I use it with OSX for most things, I need to be running Vista for the odd bit of gaming, and more importantly for software development (still need Visual Studio and .NET)

So i've installed Vista x64, installed the bootcamp drivers, and then updated the graphics to the latest Nvidia drivers, but i'm having issues with the audio output.

I'm using the optical out, which is connected to a hi-fi system/decoder, and i'm hearing apparently random cracking/popping noises when playing sound. This happens with pretty much any sound output, from MP3s to videos to basic windows sounds (such as the login tune).

I've not yet tested with the internal speaker (though its so utterly rubbish that you probably couldn't hear a popping sound anyway) or with the analogue outputs, but i'm pretty sure it is not a hardware problem anyway.

It's not the optical cable - that works fine on my old PC, plus i've tried another two that I have lying around and the same issue appears.

Pretty sure it's a driver problem, either with the sound card or something else - i've heard that it could be something to do with the Wifi drivers? Either way i'm having trouble locating updated drivers for anything other than the video card, so I can't rule out drivers as the cause..and from my experience with computers I would put money on it being the drivers for something at fault.

Further evidence for this is that I can play MP3s for hours in OSX without issue - the problem only happens in Vista.

Has anyone else noticed this issue? Even if not, does anyone know where I can get updated Vista x64 drivers for the sound card/wifi card?

Any hints/tips would be greatly appreciated

 

[Spud1]

Well after a bit more hunting around to find exact chipset names etc i've fixed the problem!

It's definitely caused by the wlan driver..don't quite know how or why, but I found a newer driver and it fixed the problem

For anyone else who is having this issue, here are the drivers I used to fix the problem, along with a newer audio driver which may or may not have helped..can't hurt to have a newer driver though can it

Audio: ftp://61.56.86.122/pc/audio/Vista_R189.zip
Wlan: http://tc.versiontracker.com/produc...zipWLAN_Broadcom_v4.170.25.19_Vistax32x64.zip

 

[joBox]

Downloading drivers NOW. . . . . .

Man, if this works it will completely ROCK!! I have the exact same computer, exact same Vista-64, and the exact same problem!! The crackles in the audio are random and annoying . . especially if you are working on audio projects. I will write back and let you know if it works

joBox

 

[joBox]

BOOM!! Works perfectly!! The audio crackle is GONE Here's how it played out:

- Downloading the WLAN zip (21MB) went pretty fast, but the RealTek zip (39MB) took a little while for some reason.

- Unzipped both of them

- Went to Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Device Manager>Network Adapters and right clicked on Broadcom to update the driver. Browsed to the WLAN Broadcom folder and then installed. WHA-LA!! The crackle was gone immediately. I know because I was playing the Beatles in Windows Media Player No restart. . . .

- <big smiles>, then I decided to update the RealTek for no other reason than they were newer than the one supplied with BootCamp.

- Went to Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Device Manager>Sound, Video and Game Controllers and right clicked on RealTek to update the driver. Browsed to the RealTek (Vista_R189) folder and then installed. Vista wanted a restart . . .

- Restarted and everything was just fine!

I can't thank you enough!! I hope others find their way into this forum thread as I'm SURE there are plenty with the exact same issue

joBox

 

[Spud1]

No problem, glad it helped to solve the issue for you

 

[Koriaje]

Just have a quick question. Does anybody know if this works for PC as well? Thanks!

 

[pippins100]

I really must write in and say many thanks to Spud1!! I have had EXACTLY the same problem with my Mac Pro, and after many hours of trawling the net, I discovered this thread. The result is 100% No more glitches and popping. I spent 2 hours on microsoft technical with "unresolved", have written to Apple with no reply, and had disabled my airport extreme card, using a wired ethernet connection to use the web, which resulted in no more popping. Hence the deduction that the driver that Apple supply with BootCamp for their airport card in Windows Vista 64 was incompatible.

Version tracker driver version 4.170.25.19 is the one to look out for and download etc which will solve this problem with the WLAN card.
The driver for the audio card comes out at version 6.0.1.5582, but I found that just doing the WLAN card driver did the trick. (I upgraded the audio anyway). As the drivers Apple supply come packaged with BootCamp for use in Windows, surely the way out for them is just to issue an update download to all BootCamp users?

Cheers, Spud1, I have gone from being miserable back to being overjoyed at my very expensive purchase!!

 

[euphoriasonic]

i have windows vista 32-bit (black edition) installed onto my Macbook Pro 2.4 GHz (penryn), with 4 GB of ram. the Bootcamp install for windows went great. Installing the drivers for bootcamp in windows vista, from the os x leopard install disc says successful, but no wireless/network is found. the keyboard eject button, brightness, etc - don't work, either. and no audio.

i tried downloading and installing the links above. the vista_R189.zip file comes up empty, with nothing in it! and the dlpage.html goes to a page, with no real link on it... except it pops with a dialogue box for a download. i downloaded the InqScribe 2.0.5.dmg file, but i can't open a .dmg file in windows vista, even on the Mac!

can anyone help? any new ideas?

thanks!

 

[rtrt]

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