the new problem (crackling sneaks into live input)

try with just one delta card

dave - the delta driver links them, or at least it should.

thanks, dave, i will, and i'll look into what you're saying as well. the more i think about this the more i wonder if it isn't an IRQ issue because the noise only starts happening when stuff moves on the screen...like mouse goes from 1 monitor to the next in my dualscreen setup, or if i open an exlporer folder or something. will definitely look into this. luckily m-audio has a troubleshooting section in their manual that i haven't looked into as much as i oughta.

Another shot in the dark (assuming the problem is due to interrupt sharing): Does your mainboard support APIC ? enabling this in BIOS helped for me with a interrupt sharing problem, as APIC gives more possibilities for IRQ assignment

odd. geforce 5500 doesn't appear in devices manager under "sound, video and game controllers" perhaps that's what "unknown" is. i will try re-downloading the geforce 5500 drivers and installing them for "unknown" in the meanwhile, delta66 A is IRQ 18 and delta66 B is IRQ 16.

ummm those are not 'real' irq's but 'managed' irq's by ACPI I believe... normally a nice irq of audio might be like 5 or 7... what else do you see on those irq's... anything at all? also your video card is not where you are looking... it should be in device manager under display adapters... :)

-> display adapters: ah - of course, my mistake. ok - here are the other things on fake irqs. 18 also has 3 entries for Standard Universal PCI to USB host controller and 16 shares with Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller and also Standard Universal PCI to USB Host Controller.