Hi Folks - I have done some further investigating and am pretty sure this is a known issue with these types of sound cards and 4GB or more of memory. See discussion thread here: http://forums.creative.com/showthread.php?t=577245
The thread mostly details Windows experience but the exact same issue is replicated in 64bit Ubuntu when 4GB or more ram is present. To verify this I booted with mem=3840m in Grub2 parameters which limits the amount of ram the OS can use and the problem no longer presents itself. So if it is a driver problem it appears to be present in both the linux driver (snd_ctxfi) and the windows driver. Alternatively perhaps it is more intrinsic to the hardware/firmware of the product. Posting this comment for future troubleshooters benefit. Cheers - Andy -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1074839 Title: [SB-XFi - Creative X-Fi, playback] Background noise and Distortion To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alsa-driver/+bug/1074839/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
