Audio distortion on music playback while navigating menus

[dougsing]

I am considering switching from GBPVR to SageTV and have been really excited about the features SageTV offers and the extensibility. However, I have had a very odd problem with the software. When I navigate through SageTV's media center menus (or just navigating sage tv), I get a squelching/skipping type sound from the audio output of my M-Audio DiO2496. This distortion is from both the digital and analog outputs of the sound card. This distortion occurs if SageTV is playing the audio file (it does it on mp3, flac and mwa files) or if another program is playing the file. I have also tried playing music from Windows Media Player, Slacker (via Firefox's Flash plugin), and J River Media Center, and as soon as I navigate menus in SageTV I get the distortion and skipping sound, even though I am NOT playing (or recording) an audio or video file with SageTV.

I have tried changing the audio renderer from default, to DiO2496 1/2 (the analog outputs on my card) directly to the digital outs for my card, DirectShow, etc. but I get the same problem regardless of the renderer. The card is a PCI sound card. My system is an ASUS P4P800E Deluxe with a Pentium IV 3.4GHZ processor running Windows XP SP3 Professional. THe video card is an nVidia 6800 and I have a Hauppauge PVR-350 and PVR-250 installed in the system.

Any ideas what could be causing this. It causes my audio player response to be very slow and the distortion makes using the software during playback unbearable. I am definitely going to purchase the software and a couple MVP licenses if I can get this up and running.

Any help is greatly appreciated!