Creative has posted some info in their forums about why they have some issues with their new X-Fi line up. This seems like deja vu for those who remember the SoundBlaster Live! issues back in the day. So now to our findings: We believe that the larger volume of data being requested is, in some systems, causing larger access delays to system memory, especially when Sound Blaster X-Fi is sharing memory access with high-end graphics and/or hard drives. We have found that with certain high-end systems and configurations, Sound Blaster X-Fi is being held off from receiving data from the PCI bus for significant periods of time, in some cases for close to two-thirds of a millisecond. This causes our audio buffers to underflow, which produces crackling sounds. The obvious answer to this would be to increase the latency tolerance, but due to the requirement for audio to synchronize accurately with graphics, we cannot increase the latency tolerance beyond a certain point. If you are having problems, they are suggesting that you snag the latest BIOS version for your motherboard, even trying a beta version. Of course, if you're not having problems, it's suggested that you don't update the BIOS.
