X-Fi Support Syndicate & Owner's Clubhouse

[Wile E]

Originally Posted by AphexDreamer

Its Realtek High Definition Audio. Has pretty much all the same features as my Xfi Titanium did (minus EAX of course), sounds the same too. I suppose if I had better speakers and if the games I played had EAX I would have thought twice about removing it.

You must have REALLY shitty speakers. The Xfi absolutely embarrasses ALL on-board solutions. Hell, the old Audigy 2 cards are better than ALL on-board solutions.

[johnspack]

Yep, I so wish I had the Realtek audio, much better. I just tried an experiment, my cpu usage was at 4% idle, I fired up winamp, still 4%. Still like the audio acceleration I get under xp64 compared to vista or win7. I have crap headphones, still sounds better with the x-fi.....

[Wile E]

Originally Posted by johnspack

Yep, I so wish I had the Realtek audio, much better. I just tried an experiment, my cpu usage was at 4% idle, I fired up winamp, still 4%. Still like the audio acceleration I get under xp64 compared to vista or win7.

Yeah, but you also get more bugs, because you are using an outdated, and overlooked OS. Seriously, most of your problems are likely because of your choice to stick with that OS.

[travva]

add me to the club. xfi titanium hd using my trusty hd-555's for now! more of a gamer than an audiophile

[johnspack]

Figured out the issue with the titanium driver, so no more problems. Yes, XP64 takes a bit more brainpower to tweak and get running perfectly, but the 20-30% fps increase I get in games over win7 is worth it. The os is mature, and rock solid, and miles better than the old and now unsupported xp32. Shut down unneeded stuff so I could get 0% cpu usage on both cores, ran an mp3 on winamp, cores stayed at 0%. That's real audio acceleration, which doesn't exist in vista or win7. Ran a video in winamp, stayed mostly at 0%, with occasional jumps to 2%. That's just extra fps for me!

[AphexDreamer]

Originally Posted by Wile E

You must have REALLY shitty speakers. The Xfi absolutely embarrasses ALL on-board solutions. Hell, the old Audigy 2 cards are better than ALL on-board solutions.

All with the exception of my two front speakers are good (5.1) can't recall the detail of them atm. I played songs back to back and the only thing missing was bass which I could do with out. Really though its the same. I have the ABS FX-7 Virtual 7.1 Surround Sound but since they use USB audio and never my Xfi I again had no need for it. I have it in my closest, if I ever get some good 7.1 headphones to make use of it I'll switch back.

[imperialreign]

Time to dig out the dredge, lol

Originally Posted by AphexDreamer

I stopped using my X-fi Titanium and switched back to my integrated realtek sound from my motherboard and I'm liking it all the same.

On the plus side my Graphics Card is using all 16x PCIe lanes. It couldn't before when my Xfi in its PCIe slot would force my card into x8.

Depends on how your motherboard splits the PCIE lanes . . . if some lanes are already being used for onboard features, simply tossing in a PCIEx1 card will force x16 down to x8 as there aren't other lanes available. This was a big issue with a lot of older NSBs a few years back, before the advent of PCIE2.0. Sometimes disabling some onboard stuff via BIOS will help, but not always - depends on the board and BIOS.

Originally Posted by Wile E

Asus will not drop cpu usage. And quit using XP x64. It's poorly supported, even by Asus. Most XP x64 drivers are inferior to Vista and Win7 or even 32bit XP.

Agreed. If anything, ASUS' DSPs add to CPU usage. It's not too much of a problem with the higher bandwidth provided by more modern PCIE setups - but if you're still using a PCI card, expect some issues to crop up somewhere (especially if you're using nVidia graphics). ASUS' PCIE cards add a ton of latency to the audio stream, too, as they make use of a translator chip . . . it leaves the SYS having to spend more time catering to the demands of the audio hardware, and latency in the audio stream is a bad thing . . .

Originally Posted by johnspack

Figured out the issue with the titanium driver, so no more problems. Yes, XP64 takes a bit more brainpower to tweak and get running perfectly, but the 20-30% fps increase I get in games over win7 is worth it. The os is mature, and rock solid, and miles better than the old and now unsupported xp32. Shut down unneeded stuff so I could get 0% cpu usage on both cores, ran an mp3 on winamp, cores stayed at 0%. That's real audio acceleration, which doesn't exist in vista or win7. Ran a video in winamp, stayed mostly at 0%, with occasional jumps to 2%. That's just extra fps for me!

It's possible to obtain 0% CPU usage of the audio system on Vista/OS7 - with a native PCIE card. Only Creative and Auzen offer these ATM. The biggest caveat of Vista/OS7, though, is lack of DirectSound support, which means software cannot directly make use of your hardware (no hardware acceleration). Instead, everything is passed through a translation layer between the software and your drivers via the OS kernel. Using OpenAL API can get around some of the headaches involved with this process, but it still adds some latency to the whole deal . . . and WIN doesn't always handle hardware tasking properly. unlike with XP, your audio driver software and the OS don't always work in symbiosis, and changes made via the audio software won't always affect the hardware settings in WIN's control panels - conversely, if WIN gets too "confused" it has a bad knack for chaning your audio hardware settings without making the changes to your driver software, which can lead to conflicting problems that crop up with certain types of playback (DVD, gaming, etc.). The only hardware that doesn't have this problem is onboard, and simply because of how WIN can allow for interfacing compared to discrete cards.

IMHO, there have been more audio related issues since Vista and OS7 than there ever were with XP. Problem being is that XP is very near EOL, and MS is slowly dropping all support of the OS . . . which means we all will simply have to learn to cope with the problems of Vista and OS7, or find work-arounds for it's quirks . . . or go back to on-board audio solutions (which many of us are simply not willing to do). Hopefully in the future, MS might see the err of their ways and re-instate DS . . . but, doubtful.


. . . and for anyone not aware of how piss-poor on-board audio quality is compared to a dedicated card: http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=64921

[Wile E]

Holy shit. Imperialreign is still alive. I thought you died or went to prison or some shit. lol.

Merry Christmas buddy. How's it going?

[imperialreign]

Originally Posted by Wile E

Holy shit. Imperialreign is still alive. I thought you died or went to prison or some shit. lol.

Merry Christmas buddy. How's it going?

Merry Christmas, man.


I've been around, mostly lurking . . . the last few times I started posting regularly, it resulted in some heated threads. IDK, just kinda grew tired of a certain level of fasicsm that occasionally exists around here

Otherwise, been alright - working too damn much. Got some down time, though - laid up from some surgery earlier this week, and going a little stir-crazy being stuck 'round the house

[TK-101]

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/oct0...es/pcnotes.htm

Has anyone come across this in their web-crawling?

[imperialreign]

Originally Posted by TK-101

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/oct0...es/pcnotes.htm

Has anyone come across this in their web-crawling?

The application recommended in that article? No. Can't say I've seen that program before . . . but, the use of adjusting PCI Latency to cure audio clipping? Yes, that's been a known fix since audio cards first moved from ISA slots to PCI back in '96. The problem wasn't too bad with most consumer level cards, and adjusting PCI latency as a fix practically fell to the way-side for a few years. Around 2004 when the X-Fi was released, though, it came back with a vegenance as the APUs are extremelly BUS heavy. It was even more of a problem depending on how many other devices you were using, what kind of motherboard you had, and what kind of video card you were using.

I'll look into that app - it might be worthy of recommendation for users with latency problems that have no means to adjust clock times via BIOS.

[Swamp Monster]

Add me please to the club, I have X-FI platinum PCI + Sennheiser HD 280 pro, for 3-4 years already and not going to onboard ever again.

[TK-101]

Originally Posted by imperialreign

The application recommended in that article? No. Can't say I've seen that program before . . . but, the use of adjusting PCI Latency to cure audio clipping? Yes, that's been a known fix since audio cards first moved from ISA slots to PCI back in '96. The problem wasn't too bad with most consumer level cards, and adjusting PCI latency as a fix practically fell to the way-side for a few years. Around 2004 when the X-Fi was released, though, it came back with a vegenance as the APUs are extremelly BUS heavy. It was even more of a problem depending on how many other devices you were using, what kind of motherboard you had, and what kind of video card you were using.

I'll look into that app - it might be worthy of recommendation for users with latency problems that have no means to adjust clock times via BIOS.

This app appears to work under XP, nosomuch Windows 7.

On my machine, I can affect how bad the clipping is by how many PCI-E video cards I have installed.

I run three 4850's typically, and I was using the default Windows 7 drivers with this X-Fi Fatality.

Once I realized I was not getting sound out of my surround speakers, I installed the Creative Auto-Updater to get the entire suite of software.

Since thing, everything skips and clips and chops.

Nothing I do, short of removing two video cards, affects the clipping any.

I have forced my PCI latency to 32 and 248, and everything in between.
Not sure what else I could attempt, besides overclocking the PCI bus.

[Cratzky]

Anyone know why the MIC input on my X-Fi Xtreme Gamer does not work ? Additional information about my system in the system specs to the left

[Swamp Monster]

Maybe you have flexijack selected to digital I/O rather than MiC, in Creative Audio Control Panel

[Cratzky]

Originally Posted by Swamp Monster

Maybe you have flexijack selected to digital I/O rather than MiC, in Creative Audio Control Panel

What?could you provide a picture?

[majestic12]

Originally Posted by Cratzky

What?could you provide a picture?

[Swamp Monster]

Yes, that is what I was talking about, thanks Majestic12. You are getting up earlier than me obviously

[majestic12]

^Different time zones!

[Cratzky]

Originally Posted by Swamp Monster

Yes, that is what I was talking about, thanks Majestic12. You are getting up earlier than me obviously

I dont have flexijack

[majestic12]

If your soundcard is an Xtreme gamer, you've got a flexijack. Change the settings in the creative control panel for each mode (entertainment, gaming, audio creation) and you should be fine.

[Cratzky]

Originally Posted by majestic12

If your soundcard is an Xtreme gamer, you've got a flexijack. Change the settings in the creative control panel for each mode (entertainment, gaming, audio creation) and you should be fine.
http://img.techpowerup.org/101229/x-...gamerflexi.jpg

[Swamp Monster]

Originally Posted by Cratzky

Originally Posted by majestic12
If your soundcard is an Xtreme gamer, you've got a flexijack. Change the settings in the creative control panel for each mode (entertainment, gaming, audio creation) and you should be fine.
http://img.techpowerup.org/101229/x-...gamerflexi.jpg

Sorry, kinda noticed that Flexijack setting isn't showing in console mode for me too, but it shows on audio control panel. I guess it depends on ,hmm- something

[Cratzky]

Originally Posted by Swamp Monster

Sorry, kinda noticed that Flexijack setting isn't showing in console mode for me too, but it shows on audio control panel. I guess it depends on ,hmm- something

Its not showing for me in audio panel either , it says the same there: unkown

[MT Alex]

You could plug your font panel i/o cable into the sound card and use your mic that way.

EDIT: Also check the SPDIF I/O tab in the Audio Control Panel, and see what your SPDIF Input Settings says.