Win7 and Creative = failure

[steelcity_ballin]

I've had windows 7 for a few months now, overall very happy with it. However, since day 1 my sound and specifically my mic has not worked properly. Sometimes It's pristine, sometimes it's complete ****. I have an audity2 zs and while a bit longer in the tooth, it's still more than I need for gaming, and I'm frustrated with creative's lack of a fix for what I believe is 100% a driver issue. After googling for quite some time, I found these Daniel K drivers which seem to fix my mic issue, but then completely hose my sound, clearly not a real fix.

I've had it with creative's shoddy support in the past, and now I am swearing them off. I will never buy another creative product again. That said, I will be needing a sound card that meets these rather humble specs:

- 5.1 capable
- pci-e
- mic input
- ideally comes with a front-bay plate for headphone connections
- guaranteed tested and working with windows 7
- isn't a creative product.
- Hopefully doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

[grantmeaname]

The Xonar DX is very highly thought of around here, but lacks a mic-in; could you get by on the motherboard's mic-in? It runs $90 on Newegg, and slightly less elsewhere. It lacks a front bay plate, too, but Asus is the only real competitor to Creative, so I don't know what you can do about that one; it's too bad the market is now so limited.

[Neutronbeam]

As my system specs show below, I'm very happy with my Xonar, which does have drivers for Win 7.

[Madman]

Creative driver are the suckiest. I have an X-Fi, but it still plagued with problems. It had problems on XP, on Vista and on 7.

I had to pay extra bucks to get the DTS/DDL pack just to get the 5.1 to work with the sound card, because someone at Creative decided that putting microphone in instead of rear channels that where there in digital mini DIN was a bloody brilliant idea. And of course, the fact I payed a good money for their friggin high end card was not enough, they needed more.

It fixed the missing 5.1. But it still has interruptions during playback (dts/ddl light goes out on the external decoder). The glich usually appears after prolonged use (15 mins), and is very annoying!!!!! And NO I don't have NFORCE anymore, I switched to Intel like Creative recommended, but it's not Nforce that sucks, it's Creative.

Then the card looses it's sound completely after reboot if you don't switch modes gamer<->entertainment.

And then, not a long time ago, I had to reinstall drivers because sound simply disappeared completely, and none of the settings could bring it back. Reinstall magically fixed the missing sound thing, but none of the others.

[steelcity_ballin]

Almost perfect, the only thing that makes me hesitant is that some reviews on more than 1 site (granted they are user reviews) state possible hissing issues with win7... And of course the lack of a face plate. Otherwise this looks like it might be the solution.

[steelcity_ballin]

Creative driver are the suckiest......

From what research I've done, at least on win7 (which I assume is affecting vista as well) is that the 64bit edition when you have 4+Gb of ram, it runs into addressing issues which leads to the crackling mic issues. What I don't get is why it's random, you'd think it would affect things or not affect things, not some of each. I'll be perfectly clear in wow and 5 seconds later, no one can understand me.

[Madman]

Creative driver are the suckiest......

From what research I've done, at least on win7 (which I assume is affecting vista as well) is that the 64bit edition when you have 4+Gb of ram, it runs into addressing issues which leads to the crackling mic issues. What I don't get is why it's random, you'd think it would affect things or not affect things, not some of each. I'll be perfectly clear in wow and 5 seconds later, no one can understand me.

I found that sound interrupts on my PC mostly appear after after some HDD/Processor/Graphic intensive scenes in games, but it appears when I use Winamp as well, so I have no idea.

The bottom line is that the card is pretty much broken and, although the features and sound quality is awesome, being interrupted for 1-5 sec during cutscenes in games is incredibly annoying. Same goes when you listen to music or watch DVDs.

And no one at Creative even bothers. They should have made their drivers open source if they don't have developers

[JustAnEngineer]

The vast majority of gamers are getting by with whatever Realtek solution is provided on their motherboards.

I didn't encounter any problems with the Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS Pt under Windows Vista 64-bit once the drivers were updated. My brother is running Windows 7 64-bit on the card now, but I don't believe that he's using the microphone.

$100 -25 code "EMCYRYW45" -25 MIR Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium PCIe
$80 Asus Xonar DX PCIe
$165 Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series PCIe

[Madman]

The vast majority of gamers are getting by with whatever Realtek solution is provided on their motherboards.

Once you listen to 5.1+ via DDL/DTS you don't ever want to hear about Realwhat.

But in the period of like 10 years (starting from Sound Blaster 16 or very first Live!) I have never had a trouble free period with creative cards. Audigy and X-Fi are especially crappy in that regard.

For 15 minutes you listen to awesomely processed music/video/games and then hissing/crackling/interrupts/no-sound/no rear chanels/switch to analog/BSOD/[insert 1000 more bugs here] surfaces.

Although I have X-Fi, I can't really recommend this card to people who are not ready to deal with tremendous amount of driver reinstalls and fiddling with drivers. And even then, don't expect it to work if you buy it, it probably wont. None of the Creative cards for the last 10 years have, all of them had annoying bugs.

P.S.: Sorry, I actually tried Audigy with ALSA on Linux and it worked without any problems whatsoever.

[kvndoom]

Another Xonar vote from me. I loved the card, all the way up until last week when I lost it to a storm. I went all out and dropped 200+ on an HT Omega Claro XT for replacement, but it's more than I really needed. Just not more than I really wanted. The headphone amp is wicked awesome. It's still CM8788 based though, and just sounds soooo good.

But I'd recommend the Xonar to anyone who's had it with Creative. The best hardware in the world doesn't mean squat if the software is garbage.

[Flying Fox]

The vast majority of gamers are getting by with whatever Realtek solution is provided on their motherboards.

Once you listen to 5.1+ via DDL/DTS you don't ever want to hear about Realwhat.

Assuming games can do this (are they now?), wouldn't 5.7 LPCM direct out through whatever Realtek and HDMI to a receiver be even better?

[Madman]

The vast majority of gamers are getting by with whatever Realtek solution is provided on their motherboards.

Once you listen to 5.1+ via DDL/DTS you don't ever want to hear about Realwhat.

Assuming games can do this (are they now?), wouldn't 5.7 LPCM direct out through whatever Realtek and HDMI to a receiver be even better?

Don't know much about Realtek, but on X-Fi I currently have some post processing enabled, and when I play back non DTS/DDL sound sources, I can upmix/equalize them on X-Fi, then encode to DTS, pass through optical[coax/minidin] to receiver, and receiver does the decoding.

There are no HDMI connectors or analog 5.1 on the receiver so that's best I can use.

[MaxTheLimit]

I have been very satisfied with my Diamond eXtreme Sound 7.1 DDL (60 bucks) in windows 7.
Doesn't come with a front plate though.
Some people complained the SPDIF in didn't work, but it seems to for me. I think it may have been an old driver issue that didn't effect me.

[l33t-g4m3r]

From what research I've done, at least on win7 (which I assume is affecting vista as well) is that the 64bit edition when you have 4+Gb of ram, it runs into addressing issues which leads to the crackling mic issues. What I don't get is why it's random, you'd think it would affect things or not affect things, not some of each. I'll be perfectly clear in wow and 5 seconds later, no one can understand me.

The older soundcards don't work with 4+ GB, while the x-fi is fine.
I believe it's in creative's faq somewhere.

the DTS/DDL pack

Was not originally part of the x-fi's features, and is implemented in software. (afaik.)
The older card's weren't designed for DDL, so you're probably experiencing bugs caused by those limitations.
If your speakers have analog inputs, you should have just used them instead, since DDL could add latency, and compress the sound quality, but If you actually need it, then you'd be better off with a card designed for DDL, creative or otherwise.
Creative cards can be finicky, excluding random hardware problems caused by low-quality systems or a faulty card, but they usually work fine if you follow the faq, read the forums, and use them as intended.

[Grape Flavor]

The Xonar DX is very highly thought of around here, but lacks a mic-in; could you get by on the motherboard's mic-in? It lacks a front bay plate, too

That's a very odd claim, not sure where you got that one. You can most certainly attach a microphone or headset to the Xonar DX. The Xonar DX can also be connected to the headphone/mic-in ports found on the front of many cases, you probably don't need a whole bulky front-bay addon to get those connections.

[grantmeaname]

That's a very odd claim, not sure where you got that one. You can most certainly attach a microphone or headset to the Xonar DX. The Xonar DX can also be connected to the headphone/mic-in ports found on the front of many cases, you probably don't need a whole bulky front-bay addon to get those connections.

My bad, the newegg specs didn't list mic-in. I thought that sounded a little odd.
I didn't say you couldn't attach the case's ports to the Xonar; as a rule, that's possible with modern sound cards. I said it didn't come with a plate, which it doesn't.

[MaxTheLimit]

I assumed this was a case without front mounted jacks ( some sort of desktop cube or something...I dunno ) hence the request for a front plate.

[Grape Flavor]

I assumed this was a case without front mounted jacks ( some sort of desktop cube or something...I dunno ) hence the request for a front plate.

Alternative form factors, huh? Kinky. Well, people have the right to put their parts in whatever case they please...

[steelcity_ballin]

I ended up going with the Directron Xonar - It listed having a front bay where the newegg did not, nor did it show any picture of one. For $80 and free shipping, I may do more business with Directron is all goes well. Thanks JAE for the links.

[steelcity_ballin]

Just an update: The card came yesterday. I popped it in, was a little surprised to see the need for a 4pin-molex power requirement but no big deal. I had already removed all traces of creative's junk software and downloaded the latest Xonar drivers for win7. I installed them, rebooted, and all, I mean *all* my issues disappeared. I am thoroughly pleased with the purchase. I haven't done my own listening test beyond some lossless electronic genre files, my gaming and vent session last night, but early indicators are a complete and total lack of static, crackles, pops, hissing. Without saying anything, everyone said I sounded vastly different and clearer on my mic, and I have to say they sounded better too.

My one complaint so far about the card is that it was advertised (unless I read incorrectly) to have a front panel hookup. It did not come with one. However, it does appear to have this expansion capability on the card so that I can purchase one in the future. Does anyone know where I can buy just that type of front bay connection? Ideally once plugged in, it would mute the speakers but I'm not sure that's more a function of the sound card than the bay unit.

thanks again for the solid advice on the xonar, I'm really quite pleased.

[bthylafh]

My one complaint so far about the card is that it was advertised (unless I read incorrectly) to have a front panel hookup. It did not come with one. However, it does appear to have this expansion capability on the card so that I can purchase one in the future.

Could the advertising have meant "this card can plug into your case's front-panel connectors" rather than "it comes with a jobbie that fits into the 5.25" bay"?

[just brew it!]

The power planes on the motherboard are typically going to be pretty noisy; they're using a Molex straight from the PSU to get cleaner power, for better S/N ratio.

Assuming that you bought this card, no it does not claim to come with front panel jacks. It has a front panel header, i.e. a place for you to connect the cable from your front panel jacks.

[Captain Ned]

You're looking for this:

http://www.cwc-group.com/1394panel.html