Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Series Driver 2.18.0004 for Windows Vista Released

[chron]

creative can suck a fuck. EAX doesn't even sound that great and DD Live on most cards is definitely good enough. I'm sick of having to randomly reinstall my drivers because the speakers all play the wrong channel, or one channel stops working, or the control panel locks up anytime it's opened. And I mean, literally, one day everything works, the next day it's fucked up, nothing changed, nothing tampered with.

[mab1376]

that's what happens when you refuse to open source your drivers.

Better drivers than the last ones .

Solved my issue, where winamp would say direct sound buffer not found while a song was playing and changing speakers config in Creative Control panel. I had to restart winamp to play the song. Now i can change speaker config on the fly .

I dont understand what the dolby and dts features do .

[scope54]

just an fyi, they did put out a driver for the audigy, audigy 2, audigy 2zs cards that return decoding features:
File Name: SBAX_PCDRV_LB_2_18_0001.exe

This download is a driver providing Microsoft® Windows Vista® and Windows® XP support for Creative Sound Blaster® Audigy® series audio devices. For more details, read the rest of this web release note.

This download supports the following audio devices only:

* Creative Sound Blaster Audigy including Platinum and Platinum eX series
* Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 including Platinum, Platinum eX, and Value series
* Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS including Platinum and Platinum Pro series
* Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 4 Pro and Sound Blaster Audigy 4
* Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Notebook PCMCIA

http://support.creative.com/download...wnloadId=10581

[1c3d0g]

Originally Posted by Weer

So, what sound card do you have?

...

I have an integrated Sigmatel STAC 92XX C-Major APU. It works great and produces better sound than my X-Fi XtremeMusic.

[bogmali]

Originally Posted by HaZe303

You need to unpack it with winrar or 7-zip, and then in that folder go to "Drivers\SBXF" folder and use the "setup.exe". A small pop-up will show, "Creative Driver Update Utility", choose driver installation and press ok. Should work. Oh btw, you wont get any audio console or other software this way, only the drivers will install, just so you know.

Thanks for the help. I decided to go back and install XP Pro instead

[AsRock]

Originally Posted by TheGuruStud

aside from the cd rom problems, etc

I'm pretty sure a few people went insane and became serial killers b/c of creative in the dos days.

Yeah fun times lol...

[imperialreign]

so, it looks like the beta drivers released back at the beginning of June worked out enough to go alpha release with them, as I don't see any change between what the two versions support - alpha should be more stable, though . . . that's wonderful cause the drivers released back in March have been buggy as hell . . .

nice to see Vista support greatly improving.

[iLLz]

Originally Posted by speedpc

Thanks Crash
Ok So do I install over the top of the old drivers or do i uninstall the old drivers 1st ?????

You can install right over the old ones. It will detect them and uninstall them first before uninstalling the new drivers. Works well I did it with no problems. Hope that helps.

[MatTheCat]

Originally Posted by Weer

Are you running FRAPS by any chance?

yeah...I do run FRAPS.....

But that has no bearing on noise distortion problems......in almost half of the games that I play.

[imperialreign]

I'd like to point out, this new driver release isn't just for Vista 32b and 64b, it's also applicable to XP 32b and 64b.

New version of ALchemy was released as well, as well as a new version of the Console Launcher application.

new versions of almost all major Creative applications have been released as well over the last couple of weeks, and there is a new driver pack version for the Xtreme Audio cards just released today.

[MarcusTaz]

New Vista 64 bit driver causing BF2 to CTD.... POS company and their drivers....

[largon]

These drivers actually fixed one nasty & annoying audio glitch in STALKER - SoC under XP.
Look at that...

[mab1376]

the new console launcher finally has the same behavior on vista as the original CD drivers did for XP. (tray icon)

[largon]

Hot damn that Creative Console Launcher (the flashy blue techno-thingy) is ugly...

[MatTheCat]

Just resurrecting this thread to vent some more hate towards Creative.

Building a new rig or thinking for goign for X-Fi.

DONT DO IT...DONT BUY ANOTHER CREATIVE PRODUCT EVER!!

The quicker this shitty company go out of business the better for all.

[imperialreign]

Originally Posted by MatTheCat

Just resurrecting this thread to vent some more hate towards Creative.

Building a new rig or thinking for goign for X-Fi.

DONT DO IT...DONT BUY ANOTHER CREATIVE PRODUCT EVER!!

The quicker this shitty company go out of business the better for all.

what a pointless reason for resurecting a thread. If you're intent was just to waste some more internet space bashing Creative, go do so with the other's on Creative's forums.


What good would come in the audio market from Creative going out? Unless you want to pay an even higher premium for audio cards compared to what we already do, and don't have any problems settling for a complete lack of innovation within the market . . . hoping for Creative's fall is no different than those who hope AMD/ATI, Intel, nVidia, Microsoft, Apple or countless other companies go under. It would serve no good purpose to the industry as whole. Unless you can cite some truly founded and rock-solid reasons for the hope in their disappearance?

[MatTheCat]

Originally Posted by imperialreign

what a pointless reason for resurecting a thread. If you're intent was just to waste some more internet space bashing Creative, go do so with the other's on Creative's forums.


What good would come in the audio market from Creative going out?

If Creative never existed. Neither me nor countless other thousands would have forked out in excess of £100 ($200) for a Sound Card that doesn't bloody work properly or wasted probably almost 100 hours of my spare time trying in vain to find a solution.

If Creative never existed, I would be sitting now with my Supreme FX card that came with my mobo and having no issues as opposed to sticking with this piece of crap fury inducing crackling popping piece of sheiss X-Fi Fatal1ty number. (yeah, music does sound a whole lot better through it which is why I stick with it.....that and I paid £100 for it).

[btarunr]

Interesting, MatTheCat, you spurt out propaganda, and on the other hand, didn't yet RMA your card for another brand's card (within its period) or sell it (not like where you live, there aren't any who would buy one from you). So you didn't quite practice what you preach.

[imperialreign]

Originally Posted by MatTheCat

If Creative never existed. Neither me nor countless other thousands would have forked out in excess of £100 ($200) for a Sound Card that doesn't bloody work properly or wasted probably almost 100 hours of my spare time trying in vain to find a solution.

If Creative never existed, I would be sitting now with my Supreme FX card that came with my mobo and having no issues as opposed to sticking with this piece of crap fury inducing crackling popping piece of sheiss X-Fi Fatal1ty number. (yeah, music does sound a whole lot better through it which is why I stick with it.....that and I paid £100 for it).

no one forced you to purchase a Creative product to begin with. As btarunr pointed out, you could've easily RMAed the card (which would've resulted in an updated model being returned to you), or you could've returned the card to the place of purchase and instead spent your money on an ASUS, Auzen, HT Omega or other quality product.

Just because you've had issues with a card doesn't mean that every single Creative owner has, or will have issues.


Keep in mind as well, without Creative around, the cost of competing audio cards will rise, as the only big manufacturer of audio chipsets would be C-Media, and you can bet on the cost of their DSPs would climb without proper competition. And without Creative and their proprietary techonology (i.e. EAX, CMSS-3D, audio processing technologies), there would be little to no incentive for the other audio manufacturers to develop their own responses to these features, and an audio expansion card would end up being no better than the sorry-excuse-for-audio-quality onboard chipsets currently wasting space on current motherboards.

[btarunr]

Forget C-Media, PC Audio itself wouldn't have come this far if it wasn't for Creative Labs. Just that Intel messed it up with AC'97 specs (and later Azalia, though Creative used Azalia itself, (with DAC design)), everyone started settling for whatever their motherboard came with and gave up on discrete cards.