Yo.

I have a Creative Labs SB Live! soundcard that came with my original Dell system from 4 years ago. It's always been a good card, and I haven't seen the need to upgrade. I've recently switched motherboards in my rig and now, for some odd reason, the sound card isn't working. According to my Windows XP device manager, it's detected and working fine. I've even downloaded and installed the proper drivers. So what the dilly? Any ideas would be helpful.

The new motherboard is a sweet K7-Triton, with an integrated Lan, USB and sound card. It's possible that the integrated sound card is even better than the SB Live! anyway. But for some reason, when I run BG2, the low-frequency sounds (like explosions, etc.) sound all scratchy and bad. My other games are ok, but I have yet to crank up the sound to tryly find out. This may have something to do with the fact that my CD-rom cables are connected to the SB Live! card instead of the motherboard, but I doubt it since BG2 was a full install.

Any ideas? Which should I stick with?

They should both be pretty much the same performance-wise. But you can turn off the onboard sound in the bios upon boot-up to see which is the problematic one.

I tried disabling the on-board card through the Device Manager, to no success....do I need to do it exclusively through the BIOS, or should that have done the trick (if indeed the trick was do-able that way)?

I don't know about the K7-Triton, and I'm too lazy to do a google for it right now. However, most mainboards since the VIA KT133a chipset recognize the Sound Blaster Live series, and solve it's bus-mastering problem. The audio on your mainboard should automatically disable itself on detection of the Sound Blaster card.

I still disable mine in the BIOS, regardless.

As for the specific pops and crackles, it sounds like your speakers or your cable to your speakers (or headphones). When the bus-mastering issue develops, it affects sounds across the entire range, not just a band. You might also have the bass/treble slider cranked up, inadvertently.