Let's all yell at creative

[Stuntman_Mike]

Okay so i own a rather old Sound Blaster Audigy SE (the cheap model).
In the past it has always offered performance that suited my speakers nicely (a cheapish 100watt 5.1 set). Now with windows vista i find that creative have NOT yet released proper drivers that support a feature as essential as Bass redirection (you know, where it sends the bass signal to your subwoofer instead of the tiny sattelites).

Anyone else have an audigy card and got it working somehow? i'm reading stuff about using XP drivers with tweaks and stuff, i guess ill try this but its appalling how creative fails to write decent drivers for all but the x-fi series.

experience with this? thoughts? tips?

[Stuntman_Mike]

Oh the most important thing is, i can hear instantly that the sound quality it produces (even with the cruddy drivers) is far superior to that what my onboard realtek solution produces. EXCEPT THAT ONE HAS PROPER BASS REDIRECTION. bass is important. it vents anger :P

[Yabbering Yeti]

Dont know if you have read this topic or not:

http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=Vista&message.id=9940&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

This may be the answer you are looking for... or not!

Its a kick in the groin that the audigy SE doesnt support OpenAl, and therefor, cant be use hardware processing in vista (Due to it dropping Direct Sound)... which is basicly all its does. I used to have the save sound card, but upgraded to a cheap audigy 4... use it with creative alchemy and presto! I can actually use hardware processing now!

GL with your issues, hope that this method will work with ur audigy SE

[Stuntman_Mike]

Ooh thanks a lot, i've been searching those forums myself but somehow missed that topic. I will try what they say soon, it sounds like it could very well work!

How much was your audigy 4 if i may ask? i'm generally unwilling to spend more than 30-40 euro on sound boards since my speakers are not top notch or anything nor is the position they stand in. (due to room-limitations :P)

[Yabbering Yeti]

My audigy4 was about $90 NZD, which is roughly 45 euro's.
Plus components here have the prices hiked up, you should be able to find one cheaper (just dont get an OEM version, if there are any, they are normaly stripped).

[Bioshock_FTW!]

Sounds like the same issues I've had with my Audigy 2 ZS in Vista. At first it took a bit of tweaking to get EAX working; I had to install OpenAL and XP beta drivers originally. Now the latest 32-bit Vista drivers for it work fine, even though they're essentially McGuivered to work properly.
I say try some of the newer Vista drivers...theyre worth a shot

[Stuntman_Mike]

Trying it now.. looks like the drivers described there are just for the audigy, not for the SE. (god there are so many versions, SE, LS, ZS, ''normal''). hope the thing will work after all :p

[Stuntman_Mike]

Bah, doesnt work. and the SE drivers don't have a corresponding executable.. i guess i'll get a fresh card somewhere in the future.

[Yabbering Yeti]

Ah, that stinks.

Well, ALL the Audigy SE can do in vista is route sound to your speakers... With no OpenAl and no DirectSound theres no way to access the hardware processing on the card through vista at all. Its just a paper weight.

So its not that bad really... on top of all that the base redirection should be the least of your worries :)

Getting a new card would bring your performance back up as you've been running all ur games in software audio mode, which actually can degrade the performance quite a bit. I'm very happy now that mines on a shelf collecting dust, rather than being in my case being equally useless.

[Stuntman_Mike]

Yep, however the rest of my pc is quite powerful so performance isn't an issue (yet).
Browsing the various boards i've found out that the SE is indeed rather useless, well, at least it was cheap :P

The thing is my 5.1 set has no built in crossover so i have to rely on the low frequency signals being routed to the woofer by the computer. Probably can't be done through software or something...

I guess ill use my Realtek ''HD" solution for now and use the SE to plug in a headset for voice communication stuff that i never use :p

[Sabbatai]

How is it Creative's fault that Microsoft dropped directsound?

I own a rather expensive Creative XFi, got Vista for free from Microsoft (I sell lots and lots of computers and they treat me nicely) and have not looked back since reinstalling XP.

Sound works great in XP, my 3GBs of RAM are not being torn up by the OS alone anymore and every game I own works wonderfully.

In 2-3 years Vista will be the jam..until then XP is the OS of choice for gamers.