Creative Driver and Vista x64

[wqwert]

Please help me for the following issue.

I have a creative Xi-Fi Xtreme music and Vista Ulitmate x64 edition with creative 7.1 system.I have no issues with windows xp.But problem with vista x64 edition, sound is coming through 3 speakers only.i change various settings in the creative audio console and also player level. i listened very very very low sound from rest of the speakers.i tried upmix aswell.but not working.I installed and tried creative beta,retail drivers. And also my AC3 filters also not working.​

 

[ltwally]

First thing: If memory serves, Creative drivers do not do AC3 or DTS decoding under Vista. The hardware is capable, but they have restricted the drivers. There is a guy on the Creative Labs forums that has hacked drivers that re-enable these (and other) features under Vista. Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

On to the 3 speaker problem: have you tried using the Vista controls for altering your speakers and volume and such? Start > Control Panel > Sound > Playback tab > select "Speakers" and click Configure. You should see 7.1 as an available option. Procede from there.

You can change volume levels by runing "sndvol.exe"

 

[joel406]

itwally is correct. Creative Labs is not planning on releaseing in new Vista drivers for anything eccept the XFI-2.

Do what everyone ele has done.

Drop creative.

THey have made a fatal mistake IMO with their decision on how they are treating their faithful customers.

The person that itwally was talking about was treatend with legal action from creative and driven from the forum there.

Take my advice and use your onboard sound. Mine sounds great.

Creative is dead as far as myself and thousnds of others are concerned.

 

[grimreaper]

I remember when Creative screwed people big time with the driver issue, and I do know what guy joel406 is talking about...he put Creative to shame big time by altering the driver himself, even though Creative made such unstable and crappy drivers, this guy made them perfect, which in turn made Creative pissed, issued a stern warning to that guy, and before you knew it a ton of people sold off their cards, went even far as selling their stock options cause they treated him like s**t.
I was one of those people who HAD a Creative sound blaster extreme X-Fi, and was so pissed with Creative and their Vista drivers.
I sold mine permanently and used my EVGA 780i on board, and it sounds amazing.
Yes, Creative is seriously in trouble, the worse PR disaster in the history of that company.

 

[WildEagle]

itwally is correct. Creative Labs is not planning on releaseing in new Vista drivers for anything eccept the XFI-2.

Do what everyone ele has done.

Drop creative.

THey have made a fatal mistake IMO with their decision on how they are treating their faithful customers.

The person that itwally was talking about was treatend with legal action from creative and driven from the forum there.

Take my advice and use your onboard sound. Mine sounds great.

Creative is dead as far as myself and thousnds of others are concerned.

Wrong, they have a new beta driver out for the X-Fi, and who knows when that will come out of beta, and Creative cards are known for their incompatibilities with 4GB's or more of ram on Vista.

They recently put out a new non beta driver for the Audigy cards, that restored Dobly Digital EX and DTS, but I still don't trust them. They still won't renable and support DVD Audio on 64bit Vista, only 32bit Vista.

The reason they're doing this is the recent mess over what Daniel K was doing with the drivers, and they decided they didn't like him fixing Creative's mess, and threatened him on their forums, and with legal papers that if he didn't quit, they were going to sue him. Needless to say, he had enough of Creative Labs, and is getting a couple of non Creative Labs soundcards, and will not having any to do with Creative Labs anymore. He didn't say what brand or what audio chip the soundcards he's getting use.

It was the mess of Creative cards, being a royal pain, no driver support hardly at all for the Audigy series of cards on Vista and problems with Creative cards going nutso in my machine inside of 6 to 9 months a couple of years ago, that I dumped Creative Labs and got a CMEDIA based card, which doesn't give me any trouble, not does it have the bloatware and the mess that Creative has. Creative still won't put out the applications that Audigy 2 has on XP in a Windows Vista 32bit or 64bit version.

What's even worse, is that a few months ago, it was revealed that Creative Labs was in such financial shape, they started selling the headquarters and it's associated buildings in Singapore.

Further more, what doesn't and didn't help Creative was all they could do was blame the snap crackle and pop issues with the X-Fi on motherboard chipsets such as Nvidia, ATI, ULI, and VIA, when in fact it was their card that wasn't truly PCI compliant, and they even wound up with some idiot, who thought he knew more than anyone else backing Creative's bullcookies, concerning the snap crackle and pop issues on the X-Fi also blaming the chipsets, don't know who the idiot was. Then Creative Labs and that idiot tried to blame Crossfire and SLI configures in the process of it all.

It was about this time, that more and more people, started to use their onboard sound, or get CMEDIA or VIA ENVY 24 based soundcards.

I still won't recommend anyone get a Creative card, and highly urge people to dump Creative Labs.

 

[wqwert]

gr8 thanks all replies....

 

[wqwert]

now im using daniel_k mod driver.that one is working fine without trouble @ moment in Vista x64.im going to update only the driver file from creative x-fi beta release.

 

[wqwert]

Apart from the Daniel_k, another person also developing mod driver for creative drivers.He is also claiming,renables all features of x-fi and Audigy cards.It is called PAX driver.

IMO, nowaday Azuentech Auzen Prelude sound card is the very best soundcard card .They are using creative sound processor,but there is no restriction on audio features.Two weeks before they introduced new driver bundle (more than 200mb) and contains all features.

 

[fieseler]

The creative drivers are so messy, half of it gets installed to program files x86. I dont know about anyone else, but i like having my hardware drivers all in 64 bit. There isnt even an uninstaller for the driver package in add/remove programs which is usually a sign of bad quality.

The only way they're going to sort this out is to start the drivers from scratch, & all of it in 64 bit for us with x64 o/s.

If they release a new card instead of sorting the drivers out, i dont think ill buy it. I have this feeling they've done it on purpose so that you spend another £50+ on the xfi2, only for it not to work on windows 7, then they bring out another card that will work with that.

 

[WildEagle]

The creative drivers are so messy, half of it gets installed to program files x86. I dont know about anyone else, but i like having my hardware drivers all in 64 bit. There isnt even an uninstaller for the driver package in add/remove programs which is usually a sign of bad quality.

The only way they're going to sort this out is to start the drivers from scratch, & all of it in 64 bit for us with x64 o/s.

If they release a new card instead of sorting the drivers out, i dont think ill buy it. I have this feeling they've done it on purpose so that you spend another £50+ on the xfi2, only for it not to work on windows 7, then they bring out another card that will work with that.

What Creative's solution is, rather than sort out the driver mess on the current X-Fi and Audigy cards, is to work on X-Fi 2, and that alone is a joke.

 

[WildEagle]

Apart from the Daniel_k, another person also developing mod driver for creative drivers.He is also claiming,renables all features of x-fi and Audigy cards.It is called PAX driver.

IMO, nowaday Azuentech Auzen Prelude sound card is the very best soundcard card .They are using creative sound processor,but there is no restriction on audio features.Two weeks before they introduced new driver bundle (more than 200mb) and contains all features.

Contrary to what you think, the Auzen Prelude uses the X-Fi soundchip, and Auzentech gets the base drivers from Creative Labs, and heavily modifies Creative's drivers for their product, though they claim they're supposedly making their own drivers now.

 

[ltwally]

What Creative's solution is, rather than sort out the driver mess on the current X-Fi and Audigy cards, is to work on X-Fi 2, and that alone is a joke.

I haven't been a fan of Creative Labs since the AWE32 (best consumer-grade MIDI, ever). I remember the Live! driver caused a BSOD on multiprocessor NT4 systems. In fact, they didn't get around to a thread-safe driver until the X-Fi series. Cute.

However, their hardware is decent enough. It's just the company's attitude and their software that sucks.

If you already have a Creative product, I'd recommend just using the Daniel_K or PAX driver.

However, because of the really stupid restrictions against hardware decoders in Vista sound drivers, I really don't see much advantage to purchasing a fancy sound-card these days. (In-other-words: no DirectSound hardware EAX, AC3, DTS, without resorting to yet another set of drivers and libraries.) Unless you're either an audio professional or serious gamer with too much money on your hands, purchasing a fancy audio card is just throwing away your money. Onboard audio has really matured in the past few years, and should suffice.

I can't believe I just said that. I used to hate onboard audio... but, the facts are the facts: these days most onboard audio has acceptable quality and features, Vista largely makes a fancy audio card a waste of money, and the price is definitely right for onboard.

 

[ltwally]

Contrary to what you think, the Auzen Prelude uses the X-Fi soundchip, and Auzentech gets the base drivers from Creative Labs, and heavily modifies Creative's drivers for their product, though they claim they're supposedly making their own drivers now.

Yeah, but you still can't use DirectSound for hardware decoded DTS or AC3, or for EAX, can you? You have to use OpenAL, don't you? And, to make use of OpenAL, you have to have an OpenAL aware application/game, correct?

So, other than higher sound quality, you really don't gain much, do you? I mean, how many media players are OpenAL aware? For that matter, most games don't seem to be, either.

Just my $0.02.

 

[WildEagle]

I bailed out long time ago on Creative, and the CMEDIA 8788HD based cards, can do Dolby Pro Logic II and DTS, and Dolby Headphone on Vista 32 and 64. I really don't care for OpenAL, it's a Creative only thing. Yes you do have to have a Creative based card to make use of OpenAL, but I haven't had a Creative card for over 2 years.

How CMEDIA does it with the drivers for the 8788HD cards, is the sound is input in to the card in 2 channel which is stereo, then in the driver control panel, the user has to set the output to 2 channel which is for headphones or 2.1, 4 channel which is 4.1, 6 channel which is 5.1 and 8 channel which is 7.1, or enable SPDIF which out puts the sound to optical speakers. CMEDIA cards on Vista, also use ASIO, which is a form of hardware sound. At present, there is no version of DS3DGX which is actually called Xear 3D EX, though I'm told by HT OMEGA, that CMEDIA is in the process of getting it ready for a future 8788HD reference driver release. Also on Vista 8788HD cards can do Dolby Pro Logic II, DTS or Dolby Headphone.

The onboard Sigmatel 9274 codec on my motherboard, is really good, but I don't use it, because the sound quality isn't better than my HT Omega Claro, it comes close. Don't like the IDT control panel with Dolby Surround, it sucks from what I've seen to the Intel Application Studio set of drivers.

 

[ltwally]

I bailed out long time ago on Creative, and the CMEDIA 8788HD based cards, can do Dolby Pro Logic II and DTS, and Dolby Headphone on Vista 32 and 64. I really don't care for OpenAL, it's a Creative only thing. Yes you do have to have a Creative based card to make use of OpenAL, but I haven't had a Creative card for over 2 years.

How CMEDIA does it with the drivers for the 8788HD cards, is the sound is input in to the card in 2 channel which is stereo, then in the driver control panel, the user has to set the output to 2 channel which is for headphones or 2.1, 4 channel which is 4.1, 6 channel which is 5.1 and 8 channel which is 7.1, or enable SPDIF which out puts the sound to optical speakers. CMEDIA cards on Vista, also use ASIO, which is a form of hardware sound. At present, there is no version of DS3DGX which is actually called Xear 3D EX, though I'm told by HT OMEGA, that CMEDIA is in the process of getting it ready for a future 8788HD reference driver release. Also on Vista 8788HD cards can do Dolby Pro Logic II, DTS or Dolby Headphone.

The onboard Sigmatel 9274 codec on my motherboard, is really good, but I don't use it, because the sound quality isn't better than my HT Omega Claro, it comes close. Don't like the IDT control panel with Dolby Surround, it sucks from what I've seen to the Intel Application Studio set of drivers.

I think you mis-understood me: There is nothing in Vista to prevent surround channels. But Vista does not allow direct-soundcard-hardware access via the DirectSound API any longer - which is needed for hardware EAX and AC3/DTS decoding.

OpenAL is sort-of a competitor to DirectSound, as it is a low- and high-level API for audio. Unlike DirectSound, OpenAL can make use of your soundcard's special abilities, such as EAX and a DTS decoder.

The problem is that your video-game or dvd-player software has to be written to be able to use OpenAL... and very few are.

Which goes back to my original point: it doesn't really matter if your soundcard is capable of doing hardware DTS decoding, because Vista won't allow it. The only AC3/DTS decoding that you're going to get is a software solution. You'll still have your surround sound, but it'll be your CPU doing the work, not your soundcard.

So, if you were to throw down $200 on a super-duper audio card, you will probably get higher quality sound than off your onboard. However, you will not get all the added hardware functionality that its sound processor comes with. Not under Vista, at least.

 

[Flyhii]

Hi All,

I am a new user of Vista & am loving it.
Y'all don't know this but I have been reading this forum a LOT in the last 2 weeks & the information gleaned here has been a big help.

Just to let y'all know, there is a very viable sound card out there that can give you all the features that you loved on XP on Vista x64:

Asus Xonar DX 7.1 SS PCI-E sound card (if you're a gamer w/ audiophile tendencies)
Asus Xonar D2X 7.1 SS PCI-E sound card (if you're an audiophile w/ gamer tendencies)
Asus Xonar D2 7.1 SS PCI sound card (same as the D2X in capability)

Drivers are very clean (no bloatware) & work like a charm w/ Vista x64.
I have & am running the Xonar DX ver right now w/o any issues, period.

There is a review on Tech Reports that compared this card w/ the Creative X-Fi series. Check it out for yourself.

Newegg has 'em listed. I actually have purchased both the DX & D2X-both are stellar performers.

If you do decide to try 1 of these make sure that you have the room to install them, especially the PCI-E vers due to the mobo slot placements.

The DX is a half-height card but it is 6 3/4" long. The D2X is MUCH larger & is 7 1/8" long so measure the area where you're considering to put 1 before you buy.

This card will solve all your Vista issues concerning sound.

Check out the Asus website & read up on it's features.

Once again, Hi to all!

 

[johngalt]

For those wanting to check out above mentioned review - here is the link:

Remixed audio cards in Windows Vista - The Tech Report - Page 1

 

[wqwert]

gr8 info...thanxxxx

 

[wqwert]

Yesterday Creative released new set of drivers...i hope,they will resolve some vista x64 problems.

 

[fieseler]

hopefully they work