What sort of sound card exactly are you using?

Glad this topic was here as I was going to resurrect one from March before seeing it. I'm having the same problem described as the thread creator.

I was playing for about 20-30 minutes just fine when all sound effects, voices and music began breaking up badly.

Things I've tried to fix the problem:

Alt-tab
Enable/Disable Hardware Sound
Closing any Background Programs

My sound driver is a newer version than what Asus offers, but I'm downloading from Realtek's site to see if their newest one is any more up-to-date than the one I'm currently using for my AC'97.

I probably won't be testing it any more tonight as it's late, and it's a pain because there's no way to determine when the problem will appear. Sometimes as little as five minutes, all the way up to a good half hour of play.

oh forgot to mention:

GFX: Radeon HD3870 with Catalyst 8.5 drivers
Windows XP Pro SP3 - all updated.

having no virus scanner, no firewall or any other similar program running in the back while playing sins.

hmmm thats the problem for me, i do not have a USB wlan adapter, and i have the same radeon model as yours, as a matter of fact, i ran nearly the same things are you, just .4 gigs less on the processor speed. I have this small thing my dad put on my computer, its a linksys brand, i think it does the same thing that your USB did, if i i unplug it probably would have the same outcome

My sound driver's completely up to date now, though it was only a month or two old to begin with.

Sound is still randomly deciding to crap out and stays that way until I quit the game and reload. Not really sure what to try next.

I've taken care of 2 and 3.

Haven't tried number 1, but I doubt it will help the problem. I've done 4 by turning Bloom off and on to no effect and I'm rather glad anyway as I want to be able to play with Bloom on. I'd really prefer to not have to turn my graphics settings down, but I'll try that as well and see what happens.

I've done 5 by setting both to TRUE or FALSE and both ways have the problem develop.

I can try 6, but I'd prefer not to disable a very standard feature my entire system uses just because Sins can't get along with it.

I'll have to try 7 as well.

So, 1, part of 4, and 7 to test. Will report back.

One thing of possible interest is that even with the checkbox checked to disable the game sound upon losing focus, the game keeps playing while I'm on the desktop.

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Got 'lucky' so to speak and had the static problem occur immediately upon creation of a new game. Just tried everything I hadn't yet. Nothing fixed the problem. Horrible breaking up in all sound. What now? And now after resetting sound acceleration back to full and alt-tabbing back into the window, the sound is working correctly again. *sigh* No idea what's causing this.

Crackling just came back again. No settings were changed or new programs run. Noticed it started up as an enemy Krosov's nukes hit one of my worlds. Not surmising that caused it in any way, but that's all that was going on at the time when the sound decided to crap out again.

Entirely quit out of game, changed sound acceleration to standard again and loaded my game once more. Was feeling pretty good as I played for thirty minute with no sound defects. Guess what. They're back again. So sound acceleration isn't the issue.

*sigh* I'm trying to be patient here...

I don't know when it started for me exactly, but I recall playing with friends for hours from 1.02 and earlier without any issues. It's only now when I've regained interest in playing again that I find myself plagued by these audio issues.

might have something to do with the patch v1.04 like what Jeskelech typed down, something in that patch did more then what it was suppose to and made the sound screw up for people, this case is more bigger then i thought i would be

I've tried turning the graphics down. Still happens on a random basis. Sometimes large battles can cause it, yes, but other times there can be 5 or less of my own ships in a desolate system of mine and it starts up then too.

So I'm still at a loss as to how to solve this.

I doubt this is sound-card related as stuttering sound only makes you hear there is something wrong with your system.

either your vga or cpu is too weak, you don't got enough ram and your system is swapping or you have other components connected (like my usb-wlan adapter) which kinda lock up the system and slow it down.

things you can do to find out whats causing it:

- try removing any unnecessary hardware from your pc (including external components)
- tune down graphics settings to a minimum
- see if your system starts swapping during the game
- turn off any nonessential software that is running in the background (virus scanner, auto-defrags etc.)

Hey i thought i'd just come back to say that i have a GeForce 7150m and its integrated with an Nforce 630m and last night i downloaded the new Nforce driver. The sound problem i've been having has practically disappeared. i even put my graphics back on high and its running almost perfectly.