And now, the sequel to the "Disappearing Now Line" thread as well as the one I posted some time ago about "audio crackling when moving mouse."
 
In the case of the Now line, as the OP and I had the same graphics card and I never experienced the same problem, I figured it probably wasn't the graphics card. CakeAlexS opined it was the driver. Robert Bone researched the card and found out a new driver was released last April, which I wasn't aware of until he mentioned it.
 
Tonight the audio crackling problem, which tended to be intermittent, was out of control and it was driving me nuts. Then I remembered about the new driver, but the AMD web site underplayed the update:
 
"AMD has received feedback that some users are unable to install the Catalyst 14.4 driver on some motherboards with AMD chipsets. We have investigated the issue and have determined that it was caused by the AHCI driver component that was included with the driver package.

We have therefore removed the AHCI driver component from the driver package and will be providing it as a separate download. If you were affected by this issue, we recommend you download and install this updated version of the driver."
 
Well I was able to install the 14.4 driver to my Intel motherboard, and I'm not using an AMD chipset, so OBVIOUSLY this wouldn't apply to me...right? Of course it wouldn't! Why waste the time de-installing, downloading, and re-installing?
 
But then I kept thinking about some of the wisdom that was disseminated in the Now Line "bug" thread, and even though the OP didn't pursue it, I figured hey, there are smart people on this forum, I should listen...
 
So I installed the new driver that supposedly has no relevance to my Intel motherboard and non-AMD processors...
 
And the crackling is gone. Zip. Zero. Nada. 
 
Lesson learned.
 
 
 
 

Or...
 
 
...it could have been the reboot.

mike_mccue
Or...
 
 
...it could have been the reboot.

Re-boots never fixed the problem in the past, and it's still not crackling today on the same project that was crackling like crazy. So I'm pretty sure it's the driver. The only thing that changed between having crackles and not having crackles was the driver change. Well, actually that's not quite accurate...in between those times I also went to a baseball game that got rained out. Therefore, the other possibility is that if you're getting audio crackles when you're moving the mouse around, go to a baseball game that gets rained out . 

Yes, I too have had the mouse move crackle problem more than once in the last decade..... it seems to come out of nowhere (even though I know I must have changed something to bring it on) and yes, an updated graphic driver has fixed it but not all the time.
 
Therefore, I am convinced that there exists a combination of settings that ultimately lead to the symptom of the crackling audio mystery, all brought on by moving the mouse (like the mouse movement is the last straw my system can take without choking)....
 
As a matter of fact, I currently have a slight, random crackling when moving the mouse, but I have not updated anything to do with my graphics system to bring it on.... but I did change the number of maximum threads that X3 will use and I think I need to change that back to make the crackling mouse symptom disappear.
 
For me, it appears that leaving enough CPU power for the OS to do its thing is part of the tuning you can do with your system to have it run smoothly, that is why I tweak the max thread attribute in the config settings.  In my case, if I leave this at its default value (which uses all Thread power), my TB apollo audio stream gets choked.  I found I had to leave some power for the OS to manage the TB connection, hence I stole a couple of threads from X3 and all was GREAT again.
 
Just another thought that is based upon ZERO science just observation.
 
Jim

@jkleban - your quote "Just another thought that is based upon ZERO science just observation."
 
The above WELL qualifies you to post anything you wish to this forum, as facts or science have little to do with many posts here - mine included.  :)
 
Bob Bone
 

Any Questions about system drivers...Ladies !

I don't develop windows drivers so I'm not an expert, but I just glanced at a microsoft document that shows that the x86 architecture has device driver IRQLs 3-26 and AMD 3-11. A device driver can block any IRQLs that are equal or higher. I don't know what IRQL audio drivers are given, but it's certainly conceivable that a bad device driver from some other device could mess with audio drivers.
 
FWIW,
Robert

To think that at one point all you needed to do was clean and demagnetize the heads...

Anderton
To think that at one point all you needed to do was clean and demagnetize the heads...

And manually splice, and pool money for paying for the actual tape used.
 
Bob Bone

Ironically I'm stuck on old nvidia graphics drivers as the latest seem to freeze my system (apparently effects only my specific model).