I've got the same problem.  Quad core extreme at 3.2 ghz, 4 gigs of RAM, xfi-gamer soundcard, 2 nvidia gtx 275s in SLI.

All my drivers are up to date, and my system is a monster compared to what is needed for this game.  I have no sound issues in other games and i've got a TON of games that I bounce back and forth between.

This only starts happening as more and more units are on the field, and you're zoomed in to a playable level.  If you zoom out, it goes away.  BTW, I play with all settings maxed at 1900x1200.  The same way I play everything else, so don't tell me to lower stuff

The issue screams memory leak to me.  Just my opinion though.

Sound crackling/sound popping is a nasty glitch but I doubt that Demigod is responsible. There are many things that can cause such issues, and it is no surprise to me that Creative's sound cards are once again doing this (they have a history of it, sadly, although other cards and chipsets can have the same problem).

The best you can hope for is tweaking your settings (CMSS 3D and all of that) to find something the reduces or eliminates the sound glitch. Sound cards and drivers are notoriously glitchy, so I fear that GPG and Stardock will be unable to assist you with this.

I'm sorry but reading that is just revolting. How can you say that? Do they pay you?

You know this issue?

http://forums.demigodthegame.com/346250

Or is GPG simply ignoring this bug like you have been since beta? I have 2 friend from RL with this issue and have to play with no sound. And you say "There are no known sound problems with Demigod." ?

When is GPG going to make a decent statment about this issue, instead of encouraging players to play with /nosound ?

Please explain what "no known sound problems" means.

Sorry for the attitude but this is not the only major bug that made it from beta to release, dispite tons of posts about them.

Other one imo http://forums.demigodthegame.com/346875

Whoa, relax. Read my post above, as this does not appear to be a game-specific sound issue. Of the games you own, you may only experience it in Demigod, but I am certain that if you were to load up every game released for the PC in the last 2 years, several of them would suffer from this issue, especially the CPU-intensive ones. Sound cards/drivers are known for these issues, and the best you can do is hope that the maker of your sound hardware does something about it.

Let me reiterate: Sound cards, especially ones that provide a lot of environmental effects, or ones with poor driver support, tax the CPU. Because Demigod is demanding in terms of CPU, you may experience popping/crackling. You can adjust your sound settings outside of the game to turn off any 3D/environmental effects, or you can attempt to lower the load on your CPU through a variety of means.

I had sound popping issue when I first bought HL2, years ago. Had the same issues with VtM:Bloodlines as well, and it turned out to be an Engine issue.

With that said, I've read on countless forums that people have problems with SoundBlaster cards and sound popping. I've experienced this same problem with my on-board RealTek sound, due to they cannot write drivers to save their lives and when I would upgrade, every game would start to pop. You might want to downgrade your drivers and try again.

I had the HL2 issue as well. The HL2 sound popping was actually more of a stuttering, load-related issue. Based on user reports in this thread, I would conclude that these problems are akin to the universal sound popping, and not engine-based stuttering a la Source.

I know my post has nothing to do with this thread, and i'm sorry for the attitude.

Regarding what i posted, i just did it because i've been around this bug for long (http://forums.demigodthegame.com/346250), since beta2 if i'm not mistaken, and there is no relation with CPU or Creative, since many of the complainers in old beta threads had powerfull and recent PCs sometimes with onboard sound and no relation to creative.

Right now the solutions is /nosound and i dont think it is satisfatory. At least in some issues they write "we are looking into it", but i never saw that about this issue in any of the multiple threads.

i'll just move along now

No worries. I should say that in all of my experience in troubleshooting game-related performance, sound distortion/looping/hanging is usually the most troublesome. It's hard to diagnose the cause, hard to resolve it, and the hardware manufacturers (Realtek and Creative, namely) provide miserable drivers. Microsoft became so frustrated with poor hardware-based audio that they totally rewrote their audio stack for Vista, and attempted to force the OS to handle more sound processing.

Who knows, this could be an engine issue. I remember that another GPG game, Space Siege, had horrible sound distortion. I am simply providing my thoughts on what I believe to be the root cause, of which I am confident. Users with this issue need to take the following steps before blaming the game:

• Turn off environmental and 3D effects, or any other post-processing effects (reverb, yadda yadda)
• Update drivers
• If you have a sound card, remove it and test the game with onboard audio
• If you have onboard audio, try borrowing a sound card
• Check your CPU load
• Lower in-game audio settings
• Lower all in-game settings and see if reduced load on your machine reduces the sound distortion
• If all else fails, provide as much detail as possible to Stardock support; vague reports are meaningless

This is what he said Rumors:

I guess they will look into it

Sorry, like i wrote above, none of my posts were about the issue reported in this thread in particulary. Was just speaking my mind regarding other sound issues. And the truth is that about those two bugs i refered "there is no know 'we're looking into it' in sight".

If it's not demigod, then why is the sound glitch audible in my youtube videos?

I have the same problem - I have a SB Audigy and this is the only game with the crackling.  Turning off reverb doesnt fix it but seems to help a little bit. I have had some success with turning speakers to stereo from quadrophonic in Win Vista so try that :/ 

Realtek HD audio here and the same problem, never had this in any other game (didn't play SC or SS). I also sometimes get sound stuttering when I select which demigod to use. Disabled reverb long ago, issue improved but it still happens and looks like is connected with high cpu load for me (happens late game with lots of creeps on the map and more often on large maps).

Drivers are up to date.

This thread had a working solution for me (lucky me finding the right thread directly)

http://forums.demigodthegame.com/347546