fried sound card?

[beefhole]

I have had an unbelievably annoying problem with my sound when playing flight simulator-the engine sounds are very, very crackly.  I was about to re-install all the default sounds when I noticed the problem was popping up in other games as well.  That narrows it down-it's either the speakers or the sound card, and I've never heard of speakers causing a sound problem.

How can I run a diagnostic on my card to see whether or not it does indeed have a problem?

[congo]

start / run / dxdiag

Pop a headphone jack into the back of your PC to isolate whether or not it's the PC or the amplifier/sound system that is the problem.

If it's the PC, then remove, clean and replace the soundcard and see if that helps.

Try checking your physical connections, from your PC to your sound system, sound system to speakers................

Re-install the soundcard drivers.

[beefhole]

Not the speakers, it happens with my headphones too... I've known this for a long time and it never registered

Thanks, will get to work.

Oh yeah, btw, turning the acceleration down takes care of the crackliness-and makes everythig else sound like ****. Does this mean anything?

[the_autopilot]

Looks like a driver problem.

[FridayChild]

What sound card is it?
What version of DirectX are you using?
Could it be that you upgraded recently to DirectX 9?
If it is so, maybe it's a driver problem (old drivers not 100% compatible with DirectX 9). Pray that there is an updated driver set, because you can't roll back DirectX.
Let us know.