Soundblaster trouble

[Blake50]

When I play music on my computer and the bass kicks in and the music picks up I get a bad hissing and crackling. It isnt the speakers because I have tried two sets of them so it leads me to believe it is my soundblaster card. If this is fixable can someone please explain to me how to go about doing it, if it's not then please let me know if I need to get a new soundblaster. I get paid this week so I'd like to know what should be done before I get my check. In reality I'd like to buy a new soundblaster but I'd rather save that money for a new graphics card. Hopefully one of you can help me out.

[ski]

Reseat the sound card making sure it's fully seated.

If no good, then shut down all unnecessary programs running in the background, especially an antivirus program.

If still no good, then update the sound card's drivers.

If that does not help, then reduce the sound card's acceleration, and/or disable different sound enhancement options in the sound card's software, like 3D sound, stereo expansion, etc.

If still no good, then try a different(borrowed?) sound card.
If it works better, then replace yours.
If the same problem happens, then the speakers may be getting driven into clipping.

[saphalline]

Depending on how old that Sound Blaster is (and how old the rest of your system is), updating your music player app might also help. By doing that, you're sure to get the latest codec enhancements used by your player, and it couldn't hurt to update WMP (if you aren't already using it).

I would put this step right after updating the drivers in ski's excellent list of things to do. :)