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Xonar Phoebus causing audio-pops and drop outs with official drivers

thedrunkenpumpk
Level 7
I got a pair of Astro A50 wireless headphones for christmas and they are amazing - they use Optical/Digital audio

I plugged them in and listened to music, watched a couple clips on youtube then started gaming

Up until this point, the sound was amazing and playing a good fps like Far Cry 3 blew me away

But then I started noticing audio pops and minor drop-outs - they were extremely frequent as well (I had an analogue 5.1 ch headset previous - ROCCAT KAVE - and there were none of these issues)

In the end I figured it was the ASUS drivers/software as when I uninstalled the drivers/software I never experienced any more audio pops/drop-outs. I even tried all of the available drivers for my system and the issues persisted consistently

I also tested the headphones on another system and didn't receive any audio pops or drop-outs - it was also suggested to me to by Astro to lower game settings but that didn't help

At the moment I am still using the Windows default drivers for the Phoebus and although the sound quality isn't as good as the drivers can get, at least there is no audio drop-outs

This is more of an FYI to the ASUS guys and for anyone else looking to get a pair of A50s or anything else similar (digital etc.) plus if the problem could be isolated I can let Astro know as well (have a thread on their forums also, describing the situation)

Cheers!
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28 REPLIES 28

Sihkster
Level 7
Happens to me to. I have had this card for about 1yr 1/2 . Its my second one cause the first actually caught fire and i had to RMA it. My first card would have those audio POPs and dropouts and the second card was no different. I will still get little pops and dropouts while watching youtube vids. I dont notice it much in games like BF4 cause all hell is breaking loose and you dont really notice the Audio pops, but they do happene if you listen closely. Its Bull**** cause I bought over 3k worth of asus products and i have had to RMA just about everything. Has not been a pleasant experience. Not buying asus again witch is a shame because they do make very nice products (when they work). And cmon I think the Phoebus could use another driver update and Add the damn sound radar like you guys did for the motherboards that have the onboard sound.

Darkinstar
Level 7
I too have an Astro A50 and a Xonar Phoebus. I also experience these audio pops in nearly every game. CS:GO, Assassins Creed Unity, sometimes Arma 3. It's getting really frustrating and I was about to RMA my A50s before finding it that it's not just me and it's actually the sound card. Please release a driver fix or something to address this issue. Does anyone have a possible fix for this?

Doc_Mortis
Level 7
are any of you crossfiring 290/290x's by chance?

iF0z3n
Level 7
I have audio distortion all the time after i installed my new GTX 980. I have had that problem before but somehow it went away alone after some driver reinstalls pci lane switch etc. i have noticed that the sound card gets quite hot.

Splosh
Level 7
I have the same problem, especially when playing World Of Tanks.
I normally buy creative cards but as they don't do a 7.1 I thought I would give the Xonar a go, never again!!!!

PixelsROG
Level 7
I've had my card for around the last week, but since then, have almost, quite literally, pulled all my hair out!

Always known never to judge a book by its cover... This may look like a great piece of hardware, but doesn't quite live up to that, in the audio department, for me, anyway...

I have the same problem, with almost constant pops, clicks and drop-outs with the latest official drivers (same problems with the earlier drivers, too, if they work long enough, without crashing, to test...).

I'd imagine I've tried absolutely everything possible to try and get rid of those problems mentioned above, but all to no avail - including everything mentioned in the posts from those above...

About the only piece of software that isn't inflicted by the problems outlined above, is playing music through iTunes using the headphone jack on the back of the card - the main reason I bought the card, was to be able to use a quality set of headphones, being powered by a decent headphone amp...

Dare I say, overall, I'm very disappointed with the experience I've had whilst using this card. Like many others here, I'm very loyal to ASUS, and my whole system is pretty much based on their (otherwise normally very descent) products/hardware, where possible.

Any help would be much appreciated...

Many thanks in advance...

Awful necrobumping but i'm having exact same issue as OP.
Any frequency above 44.1KHz is causing audio drops on Windows 10 with any of the official drivers.

SkacikPL wrote:
Awful necrobumping but i'm having exact same issue as OP.
Any frequency above 44.1KHz is causing audio drops on Windows 10 with any of the official drivers.


this used to happen to me due to the card getting too hot - installed a fan that blows directly on the gpu and sound card, never had any popping or cut outs since.

Devaz wrote:
this used to happen to me due to the card getting too hot - installed a fan that blows directly on the gpu and sound card, never had any popping or cut outs since.


I'd be willing to agree with this diagnosis if it it weren't for the fact that it seems to only affect SPDIF output. I can run 192KHz/24 bit audio from this sound card just fine but optical output starts dropping audio at any setting above 44.1KHz. Higher the frequency = more severe audio drops, up to 192KHz being no audio at all.

What is weird, this only really seems to affect games. System sounds/music/videos work fine, but audio input from any game is affected by this issue.