Crappy Audigy drivers

[Wombat]

Does anybody have a solution for running an Audigy under XP? I get tons of crackling with the Audigy and the 134 or 136 drivers. The default XP drivers don't have this problem, but I also can't enable the digital out, which is what I use 95% of the time.

I've actually gone back to my Live! for now, since it doesn't have these problems.

[Helevitia]

hmm, I haven't tried anything but the recommended XP drivers from windows update. Smock some crack and then install the drivers. That always helps me.

Dave

[Gurm]

The 134 and 136 sets are, if I recall correctly, UDA drivers (Unified Driver Architecture) - and beta. There are two possibilities...

1. Install the default drivers. What exactly don't they do that you want them to?

2. Try the Compaq UDA's (non-beta) with the Compaq .ini file removed (HUGE download, though) so that they will install on your machine.

The problem with the second option is that even those drivers have issues on older chipsets. They run fine on my new board (SiS 745) but sounded TERRIBLE (skipping, etc.) on my old board (Via Apollo Pro 133A).

Creative themselves have issued officially only the CD drivers and a couple of updates available from their site - and those drivers work fine. You will, however, need to reinstall Windows no matter what - since their beta drivers hose your registry to the point where you cannot uninstall them.

- Gurm

[Wombat]

My problem with the standard drivers is that I can't seem to get the digital out of my Audigy to work. I have an older Cambridge 5.1 speaker setup that takes a digital signal, but it doesn't seem to work with the standard XP drivers - only the analog outs work.

[isochar]

You have to install Surround Mixer to enable the digital out.

[Wombat]

Which only seems to work if I install the other drivers?

[Gurm]

Surround mixer should work fine with the off-the-disk drivers plus the updates from Creative. You MAY, at this point, need a reinstall of the OS, however. Sucks, huh? Creative, man.

- Gurm

[Gurm]

Buddman,

Nice idea. However, for me it's a no-brainer. The Philips card was not, at the time of my purchase, stable enough under Win2k to be worth looking at. Additionally, ALL Crystal based cards (Santa Cruz, Hercules' entire lineup, etc.) crap out when playing ANY game from Bioware. Sucks, huh? Since that's all Julie plays lately.

- Gurm

[EvilTypeGuy]

Originally posted by BuddMan
Ok, after reading this, I'm definately not getting an Audigy...

I have one and love it! I use the creative drivers from their site with a Klipsch Pro Media 4.1 THX Certified Speaker Set. I couldn't be more happy with it. Especially the excellent Linux driver written by the community and partially done by Creative.

Oh, and BTW I do run Windows XP Pro.

[Indiana]

Oh so Creative's drivers suck? What a surprise....

(Sorry but after having paid $200 for a crappy SBLive Platinum that never fully worked as it should AND had BAD sound-quality, I'm mad at Creative.)

[Gurm]

The KX Project is much better quality. But still not up to par for gaming.

- Gurm

[EvilTypeGuy]

Originally posted by Indiana
Oh so Creative's drivers suck? What a surprise....

(Sorry but after having paid $200 for a crappy SBLive Platinum that never fully worked as it should AND had BAD sound-quality, I'm mad at Creative.)

When I owned an SB Live! and an ASUS P3V4X (VIA Apollo Pro 133A) I used to have problems, but when I changed motherboards to an ASUS CUSL2C (Intel i815EP) all the sound problems went away. The reason? Simple. VIA didn't implement the full PCI feature set that Intel did. Notably bus parking, which creative depends on, VIA didn't admit this until just recently. My new Audigy works fine with the KT266A, even though VIA has stated that the KT333 chipset will be the first to implement the bus parking feature that many vendors like Creative use.

[Indiana]

No, I don't mean the VIA problems, I mean the not-working AC3 out in Win2k, the buggy/crappy drivers for Win2k (win98 was mostly fine) and occassional stuttering when web-browsing that also occured on my IntelBX mainboard (and I doubt that anyone would put the blame on the BX here..). Dropped frames while vid-capturing and various other small but annoying issues.
Then add the inferior sound-quality and you know why I kicked this garbage card out.

As said I don't care for those gaming 3D audio standards, and I guess this would be the sole reason for buying a Creative soundcard that I could understand.

[EvilTypeGuy]

Originally posted by Indiana
No, I don't mean the VIA problems, I mean the not-working AC3 out in Win2k, the buggy/crappy drivers for Win2k (win98 was mostly fine) and occassional stuttering when web-browsing that also occured on my IntelBX mainboard (and I doubt that anyone would put the blame on the BX here..). Dropped frames while vid-capturing and various other small but annoying issues.
Then add the inferior sound-quality and you know why I kicked this garbage card out.

It is unfortunate that you had problems, but in my experience you are in the minority. I know lots of people that have Creative sound cards that have not experienced the issues that you mention. This doesn't mean it's your fault by any means.

In my NSHO the Audigy posesses excellent audio quality. I will say that when I upgraded from my SB Live! to my Audigy that the sound quality increase was quite noticeable on my Klipsch Pro Media 4.1 THX Certified Speakers.

As said I don't care for those gaming 3D audio standards, and I guess this would be the sole reason for buying a Creative soundcard that I could understand.

They are dominating the sound card market as far as 3d standards. Aureal was the only one to surpass / come close, and look where they are. Out of business. I owned a Diamond Monster Sound card that was based on an Aureal chipset. You want to talk about buggy drivers. That was a horrific experience. And they never did update the drivers almost 2 years later. I've read a lot of developer posts and overall EAX3 seems to be well received.

Although any company is free to implement the OpenAL specification which is slowly being adopted by different companies. Epic games is using OpenAL for Unreal Tournament 2003 and Dolby Labs has certified them for Perfect 5.1 Surround Sound output.

[Indiana]

I have no doubt that the Audigy has better sound-quality than the SBLive (isn't very hard to do), and the SBLive is all I can comment on since I never had (and most likelynever will have) another Creative soundcard.

For my problems, the "occassional stuttering" issues even amongst Intel users are quite frequently reported, the dropped frames issue (due to the card being a major PCI hog) can be read in fact in nearly EVERY desktop video forum (including, but not restricted to the MURC one). And the AC3 didn't work for any user as it was simply not supported by the drivers (later on there were third party patches for specific DVD players that sometime even worked if you were lucky enough to have the right player and the correct version).

Maybe the Audigy is better, but seeing the size of the Creative driver archive I seriously doubt I could be happy with them.