Tweet
Okay, I splurged a bit on upgrading my games PC. I got a new set of THX-certified speakers, a new graphics card, a new power supply to handle the graphics card, and a new soundcard to get the most out of the speakers.
The speakers, the power supply and the graphics card work fine. I checked the speakers using the m/board's on-board sound before changing the internal hardware.
The soundcard is from the Creative X-Fi series. I'd heard dodgy things about them when they were new, but I thought they might have dealt with the driver glitches by now. Well... apparently not.
I want this card to do three things competently:
So far, it seems to be incapable of reliably doing *any* of the above. Problems I've had so far include:
Now before I tear my hair out and do something rash (such as dropping the card into a bag of dog poo, setting it alight and leaving it on the step of the nearest Creative Labs office), does anyone have any suggestions for making this thing do what it was advertised to?
The speakers, the power supply and the graphics card work fine. I checked the speakers using the m/board's on-board sound before changing the internal hardware.
The soundcard is from the Creative X-Fi series. I'd heard dodgy things about them when they were new, but I thought they might have dealt with the driver glitches by now. Well... apparently not.
I want this card to do three things competently:
- Pass stereo and AC3/DTS soundtracks from videos and music to the speakers unmolested, through a digital connection. (The speakers are fancy ones with a surround decoder built in.)
- Correctly process the 3D sound field requested by some of the games I play, and pass the resulting surround signal to the speakers.
- Deal with the stereo soundfield from all the other games, without dropping any sounds through overload.
So far, it seems to be incapable of reliably doing *any* of the above. Problems I've had so far include:
- Occasionally not even being detected.
- The "Auto Update" system spends half an hour downloading drivers, then tells me that the versions Windows installed automatically are in fact newer than the ones it's just downloaded.
- Failing to handle even basic CD-quality stereo signals if the card is set to 96kHz output. The resulting sound is akin to attempting to play an MP3 on a 386.
- With the output set for 48kHz 5.1 speakers, and starting a game with 3D sound on Creative's native EAX system, the speakers claim they're only getting a stereo signal. I plug in the 6-way direct analogue version, and find that it sounds identical. So the card isn't running a 3D soundfield.
- Even though it's running in stereo mode, there are random buzzes, squawks and glitches. These appear on both the digital and analogue outputs.
Now before I tear my hair out and do something rash (such as dropping the card into a bag of dog poo, setting it alight and leaving it on the step of the nearest Creative Labs office), does anyone have any suggestions for making this thing do what it was advertised to?
Comment