BF2S Forums Creative X-Fi Owners... Need Help!

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=796S73C8

^ Daniel_k's X-Fi Vista drivers ^

Never used it personally as I;m still on XP but, everyone else seems to be getting on well with them.

haffeysucks wrote:

Yep, Creative's not going to help you one bit.  That Daniel k guy made much better drivers, and all he got was shit from Creative, so he gave it up and left.  But you can still use his stuff, and I heard it's good.

Apparently they're 'allowing' him to continue work on the Audigy stuff but, he's banned from offering X-Fi drivers, fortunately, they're still out and about on the net but, he can't make new ones.

Last edited by TheEternalPessimist (2008-06-23 06:32:37)

Uzique wrote:

Thanks a lot, I had heard a lot of good things about this Daniel K guy, didn't think of him when my problem came up >.>

+Karma as promised.

Edit: Does anyone have any links to the Volume Panel and other software elements? The Dolby Unlocker worked nicely... sound has improved, but still no software utilities available from the Creative website that lets me customise my Entertainment Mode / Gaming Mode settings, e.g. EQ and Speaker Volume Levels.

When I'm home I'll have a look for my old CD, it's only for the X-Fi Xtreme Audio though so it may be missing a few functions.

Last edited by TheEternalPessimist (2008-06-23 07:13:58)

Volatile wrote:

That X-fi disc is not compatible with Vista. We'll, at least mine is not.

If there is a Vista disc out there I would like to know. I would give out the green paypahz for that.

It seems to be a common problem where Creative distribute XP install discs with their Creative products.

Well, I 'found' a Vista X-Fi disc, so you're in luck .

http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3772904/Win … fi.CD.2007

(Will remove links if it's deemed inappropriate, but bearing in mind all of the driver software and things included within that torrent are completely free from the Creative website... it's merely a different method of hosting )

I tried it out myself, and it does 'work', but bear in mind it's an .ISO of a distribution CD from 2007- so the drivers are out of date!

Easy way to avert installing old (and possibly non-working) drivers: on the Installation that runs from the Setup.exe found on the .ISO, click for a 'Custom' installation rather than an Automatic or 'Express' install. Then simply untick 'Audio Driver' from the list of things to be installed-- and toggle on/off any other additional utilities you want, such as the Volume Panel itself (the software I was most interested in, which must be manually added to the installation, may I add).

Have fun!

That's only a driver though, as I said in my original post, the Creative website does not host any of the software or control panel utilities that lets you customise the sound output of the card- e.g. speaker volumes, THX effects, EQ settings etc. This is what's most important in setting up a surround-sound system in my opinion... you can have a fantastic card and speaker set-up, but if the sound isn't balanced and equalized, it will still sound horrible.

Oha nd by the way, the 'Known Issue' with those Vista Beta drivers is absolutely card-breaking. Having no emulated CMSS-3D on anything over a 2.1 system (i.e. 5.1/7.1) is pretty much useless- installing those drivers is the equivalent of throwing away your side/rear speakers. I (and apparently everyone else on the Creative Forums) simply cannot believe Creative released those drivers with such a glitch. What's more, because they're Beta drivers- they update the Firmware of the card itself, and cannot be removed from Windows. I had to reformat my partition completely to remove the crippling damage those Beta drivers did, which is funnily enough what brought me to my 'seeking software' predicament in the first place

Uzique wrote:

I tried it out myself, and it does 'work', but bear in mind it's an .ISO of a distribution CD from 2007- so the drivers are out of date!

Easy way to avert installing old (and possibly non-working) drivers: on the Installation that runs from the Setup.exe found on the .ISO, click for a 'Custom' installation rather than an Automatic or 'Express' install. Then simply untick 'Audio Driver' from the list of things to be installed-- and toggle on/off any other additional utilities you want, such as the Volume Panel itself (the software I was most interested in, which must be manually added to the installation, may I add).

Have fun!

FuCK yES! it does work. I just installed the whole package and it's downloading important updates right now.

I don't know why creative didn't put this on their site. Stupid.

.Sup wrote:

Lol if you have a REALLY good sound card you don't need any equalizer or other adjustments, they just change the natural tone to something else. Pure sound without distortions is what matters to me.

Err... K?

I listen to talk radio audio streams from the internet, and the bass always has to be cranked down because the morons that run the studios always crank the bumper music twice as loud as the people talking. So whenever it's time for a commercial break, I get this loud as fuck annoying music(with tons of bass) that starts to blast through my speakers.

Does anyone know if have the X-Fi card really make a difference from onboard sound?  Because i've had this card and it don't do anything anyways.  What games support it besides BF2/2142?

Edit: I would also like to add that my mic is very weak when I used the card in Vista but works great in XP.  Using the same sound card.  Now if I switched to onboard sound would that make a difference?

Last edited by Naturn (2008-06-26 20:27:22)

I also listen to radio streams and the sound quality is the same as if I were listening mp3s offline. I noticed a difference when I had X-Fi but now I don't.
@Uzique-i was also using equalizer and other enhancements when i had crappy speakers by creative. There just wasn't enough high tones so an equalizer was a must but once you have a good speaker set you can forget about enhancements.

.Sup wrote:

I also listen to radio streams and the sound quality is the same as if I were listening mp3s offline. I noticed a difference when I had X-Fi but now I don't.
@Uzique-i was also using equalizer and other enhancements when i had crappy speakers by creative. There just wasn't enough high tones so an equalizer was a must but once you have a good speaker set you can forget about enhancements.

Oh my days .Sup, first my sound card isn't up to scratch, now my speakers are too low rent? My sound system cost over £500, which is enough for any PC audio system - games and MP3's don't extend into the realms of 'uber quality' audio. The simple and fundamental reason why an EQ is necessary is to balance and enhance the levels of sound suited to the users speaker set-up and sitting position. I'm glad it sounded great for you- but my front right/left and centre speakers are 0.2 metres in front of me, and my rear right/left are 2.0 metres behind me...  I need EQ to balance the sound-levels to get a 'real' listening experience in the middle. So please stop stupifying everybody with this 'if you throw enough money at it, the problem solves itself' mentality-- the only creedence it has is if you buy satellite speakers that laser-align themselves and auto-balance, but I've found from looking at a mates set that they do a very poor job of this anyway!

@ Naturn, Creative cards work different in XP and Vista simply because the Operating Systems process sound in different ways. The short answer to your 'does is improve sound at all?' question is simply: Yes. Not only does it take processing loads off other hardware (thus increasing FPS and increasing performance) but it also crystallizes sound and does all sorts of neat things that probably aren't worth explaining here to make it 10x better. The reasons why it maybe didn't sound so different, or the reason why your Microphone was quieter is simply because 'external' sound-cards need configuring and lots of tweaking to suit your own set-up and needs. Integrated sound just plays at one quality, at one basic setting, that will scrape through any audio task with a decent level of quality... but once you configure your sound-card properly, onboard does not complete.

Uzique wrote:

.Sup wrote:

I also listen to radio streams and the sound quality is the same as if I were listening mp3s offline. I noticed a difference when I had X-Fi but now I don't.
@Uzique-i was also using equalizer and other enhancements when i had crappy speakers by creative. There just wasn't enough high tones so an equalizer was a must but once you have a good speaker set you can forget about enhancements.

Oh my days .Sup, first my sound card isn't up to scratch, now my speakers are too low rent? My sound system cost over £500, which is enough for any PC audio system - games and MP3's don't extend into the realms of 'uber quality' audio. The simple and fundamental reason why an EQ is necessary is to balance and enhance the levels of sound suited to the users speaker set-up and sitting position. I'm glad it sounded great for you- but my front right/left and centre speakers are 0.2 metres in front of me, and my rear right/left are 2.0 metres behind me...  I need EQ to balance the sound-levels to get a 'real' listening experience in the middle. So please stop stupifying everybody with this 'if you throw enough money at it, the problem solves itself' mentality-- the only creedence it has is if you buy satellite speakers that laser-align themselves and auto-balance, but I've found from looking at a mates set that they do a very poor job of this anyway!

@ Naturn, Creative cards work different in XP and Vista simply because the Operating Systems process sound in different ways. The short answer to your 'does is improve sound at all?' question is simply: Yes. Not only does it take processing loads off other hardware (thus increasing FPS and increasing performance) but it also crystallizes sound and does all sorts of neat things that probably aren't worth explaining here to make it 10x better. The reasons why it maybe didn't sound so different, or the reason why your Microphone was quieter is simply because 'external' sound-cards need configuring and lots of tweaking to suit your own set-up and needs. Integrated sound just plays at one quality, at one basic setting, that will scrape through any audio task with a decent level of quality... but once you configure your sound-card properly, onboard does not complete.

Speakers cost 400€? What kind of speakers are they?

DSRTurtle wrote:

Going from onboard sound to any good sound card, i.e. Audigy, improves not only sound quality, but system performance by atleast 15%.  I miss my Audigy card.  Stupid thing blew out the firewire port  and now finds new hardware for it everytime i boot. 

Because of the driver situation I won't be putting Vista on my new pc as I have the XP drivers and will actually have to use an even older Creative card.

It will at the VERY least reduce CPU utilization. Onboard to an X-Fi made noticable difference even on my Quad core system with 4Gb RAM in a DJ'ing program I use. (which incorporates a CPU utilization tracker so I could  see the difference in real time.

I definitely have noticed sound quality improvements as well not only in gaming but with music.

Think of it this way, do you ever play on running lets say Crysis on your onboard video card? Good luck.

Same thing with audio. A full card will almost always be better/