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Well, I mean that it's my new computer, not that it's of the latest bleeding-edge tech.

But I wanna know if my Creative SoundBlaster Live! sound-card will work in it? It's first-generation EAX, but still that's better than no EAX hehe

Click the link in my sig to see my current computer's specs.

By this: What is the best, highest-level sound-card can I put in it, as I wanna upgrade later. I mean, as far as I can tell, there's now no sound-card in it of any kind at all!

Thanks!

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_ ... 5/P5KPLVM/

Asus wrote:

Audio: Realtek ALC662 6-Channel High-Definition Audio CODEC

Your motherboard manual and your audio drivers can be downloaded here:
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_ ... /#download

Your motherboard has an integrated sound chipset. As for using the old sound card, I don't see why it wouldn't work physically. It is just that I don't know if Windows 7 would like it or not. I know it is old but I would check their website for Win7 drivers before I tried it.

Why would you want Ye Olde Garbadge? Your integrated chip will likely carry the same quality, supports "first-generation" EAX all the same, and should have none of the driver worries either. Windows Update is almost certain to install it, and in most cases, you never have to look at it again afterwards.

Woah! Thanks! That sounds a GREAT improvement over the sound! Sounds f***in' EXCELLENT! I'm listening to several of my .MP3s from my music collection right now and they sound MUCH better than before and even much, MUCH better than my previous computer with the Live! card! hehehehe {insert headbanging smiley here}

But what EAX is this? EAX 2? EAX 3? Higher? I ask because many of my games that I play ask me that in their audio settings menus hehehe

But what is the best, most advanced sound-card that this computer can do? ???

And about the .PDF manuals on that download page: There were many different manuals, each for apparently some different version of the same motherboard model that I have. How do I know which is my version to get the right manual?

You guys are the bestest EVER! hehehe

throw it in the recycle bin....
that is if you are buying a new motherboard

all non creative cards run EAX2, your card might run EAX5, not sure
if there is an option showing up, probably it does EAX5, just depends on how old your card really is

potatochobit wrote:

throw it in the recycle bin....
that is if you are buying a new motherboard

all non creative cards run EAX2, your card might run EAX5, not sure
if there is an option showing up, probably it does EAX5, just depends on how old your card really is

Use the internet. Live! soundcards came out before EAX 3 existed.

EAX is dead. (It was deprecated by in 2006 in favor of EFX).

All current games support environmental audio regardless of the sound card. They don't even give you an option to enable/disable - the effects are always there processed by the CPU. This has been true for half a decade now - there's absolutely no point worrying about that stuff anymore.

The only reason you'd ever need to buy a discrete sound card would be sound quality on high-end analogue speakers/headphones - and even that is now dying with the advance of digital audio (via HDMI and/or USB).

The Lord of the Flies wrote:

But what is the best, most advanced sound-card that this computer can do? ???

For old-style gaming, some variation of the SoundBlaster X-Fi Titanium will fit into your PCIe X1 slot. However, you should find the on-board Realtek audio to be adequate.

The Lord of the Flies wrote:

And about the .PDF manuals on that download page: There were many different manuals, each for apparently some different version of the same motherboard model that I have. How do I know which is my version to get the right manual?

Choose the one that is in English (or your native language if that is other than English). The English version is the second-to-last option on the manual download list.

Live! on Win 7 doesn't work very well. You'll either need the kx drivers which don't do games well at all, or you need a special Creative driver pack that has problems with > 2GB RAM.

Audigy cards however work fine. In fact they work very well and Alchemy is supported for getting EAX out of old games. Avoid the Audigy-wannabes though that use the budget non-DSP.

Thanks! I got the manual and I'll get that Audigy sound-card as soon as I can. Many of the games I play, and will be playing, are older than five years old, some MUCH older than that! I guess that Audigy card will let me get greater sound out of like the early Call of Duty games, Tron 2.0, Doom³, Unreal Tournament 2004, and a myriad of others! hehehehehe It's gonna be great! hehehehe

X-Fi Titanium does everything that X-Fi Xtreme Gaming / Xtreme Music does, which does everything that Audigy 2 ZS does, and more. X-Fi Titanium is two generations newer than Audigy 2. X-Fi Titanium uses a PCIe X1 slot instead of an obsolete PCI slot (which doesn't appear on some new motherboards today and likely won't appear on most new motherboards in a couple of years). Unless you can get an Audigy 2 for less than half the cost of the $50 for the X-Fi Titanium that I linked, I see no reason to spend good money on such an old sound card.

Heh, AGAIN you are right! I got that card, put it in my computer, installed the latest drivers from Creative's site, and stuff sounds good hehehe

But I bet things still don't sound as good as it could yet. My speakers are kinda cheapo, see. Can anyone recommend a good pair of stereo (dual-channel) speakers and a good pair of earphones complete with microphone that is an excellent MATCH for this new sound-system? See, I mean "match", meaning not too much, nor too little for this sound-card.

Thanks! You rule, as always! hehehehe

{Moved to Echo Vale.}

Ooo! Thank you very much! I did not know about this sub-forum hehehehe

So what do you think would be good speakers and a good headset with microphone that would well match my new X-Fi Platinum sound-card?

Yeah, good, properly matched dual-channel stereo speakers (no sub-woofer needed at this time) and headphones with mic-attachment--what would be good to go with my new Creative X-Fi Platinum sound-card? hehehe

Yes, properly matched, meaning that will give me the fullness of the sound-quality of my sound-card's best output, and no more than that (as such might cost extra and is useless to me right now). What do you think? hehe

(And for all I know, BTW, getting a new mic might help with the mic-prob I'm currently having [listed in another thread]. Yes, I know the chances of that are quite slim, but maybe it might rectify the problem as well, effectively killing two birds with a single sound-system hehehehe)

Yeah, the card's not working, the SoundBlaster X-Fi Platinum for PCIe. And trying to get customer-/tech-support from Creative has been a counter-productive nightmare. Trying to get help via their website shortly after getting the card in early-June was a no-go--I shouldn't have bothered to try. I just about an hour ago got an opportunity to attempt to get the help I needed by phone. I was on hold for a half-hour, and then spoke with some guy with a thick accent of some kind that I could barely understand what he was saying for more than an hour after that. All he seemed to want to do was get off the phone and not deal with any tech-probs, then near the end after over an hour he wants to pass the buck to Realtek, and then onto some "tech-friends" of mine that I don't actually have because he just pulled that out of his ass.

Plainly that company doesn't want to be bothered with customers from which they've already gotten money from. I don't think I wanna buy any more products from Creative anymore. But I sure already bought this one!

So what's the problem? There doesn't seem to be any special sound at all that I didn't hear already before I got the card. And I have a LOT of programs, mostly games, that allow for the option of EAX. But none of them recognize that any EAX is present, nor that any sound-card at all is present, and shifts me right back down to the lowest, most basic software sound (or whatever it is) sometimes called Miles somethin' somethin'. The sole, solitary exception to that was Doom³. Switching on the EAX 4, it sounded mind-blowingly unbelievable--about the highest quality sounds I've ever heard hehehe Though I could tell that it would have sounded even much better than that if I had some rather better quality speakers. But that was only brief. It don't sound so good no more. Heh, hardly worth (so far?) the like $50US that I paid for that card!

Worse, the Creative AutoUpdate program is the stupidest, most whack program that maybe I've ever seen! When I installed it and ran it, it wanted to update a LOT of stuff, wanted to download and install from like 14 or something installers. Would have been no problem, even a breeze...except that it tried to install all of them at once, madly filling my screen with a myriad of error messages. I had to force a reset by physically pressing the Reset button on the front of my tower to get out of that, because all that *beep* froze my computer. It also killed the one good sounding program that I had: the aforementioned Doom³.

What can I do to get this thing working properly? I uninstalled all the Creative stuff from my computer and then re-d/led and installed the latest drivers from Creative's site. There's a volume-control icon in the system-tray right now that says: "Realtek Digital Output: 100%". The lazy, know-nothing bastard on the phone at Creative said that the next step could not be done until I first disabled the Realtek whatever-the-*beep*-it-is. But he wouldn't tell me how to do that, told me to contact Realtek for that. Well, hell! Why did I just be on the phone with him for The past hour-and-a-half!? What, just THAT!? ??? Yep!

How do I get this to work properly? If this can be gotten to work properly, then I'll make a donation to this Tech Report Forum via debit-card in the beginning of next month (Oct., 2011). Hey, why not? I sure won't be giving a penny to Creative anymore!

I think you need to go into your BIOS and disable the built-in sound on your motherboard. It may say something like "On-board Audio" or "Azalea".

Thanks, nerdrage. I did that. But I dunno if it sounds any better now (maybe?). Anyway, none of my games (except Doom³, as before) think that my system can support EAX, so I don't get any.

Hehe and it's not really nerdrage--more-like paying-customer rage LOL hehe

The problems you are now experiencing have been typical of every post-Live Creative product I've seen. This is why everyone in the thread was trying to dissuade you from doing this. The only thing that will make it work now is a lot of experimentation, tears, and blood - have fun.

Also, quit huffing the nitrous oxide and punctuating every sentence with "hehe."

TwistedKestrel wrote:

The problems you are now experiencing have been typical of every post-Live Creative product I've seen. This is why everyone in the thread was trying to dissuade you from doing this. The only thing that will make it work now is a lot of experimentation, tears, and blood - have fun.

Bah, ppl still go on about this??? Creative's drivers when the X-FI 1st come out were awful, but it's years old now and drivers have matured a LOT. I have an X-FI in my Win 7 box and it's always been fine. To the OP, it sounds like you have not properly disabled the on-board audio or removed all RealTek drivers. This can cause an X-FI to misbehave, so google Driver Sweeper and use that to clear out all the RealTek drivers. Finally, you do need to install something called "Creative Alchemy" that Creative provide for free, and add your EAX enabled games into it. It's NOT installed by default, but's the only way to get EAX working on Windows Vista and 7 for games that used it.

TwistedKestrel wrote:

Also, quit huffing the nitrous oxide and punctuating every sentence with "hehe."

hehe...

You were right about the Realtek stuff, which I uninstalled, and then I used Driver Cleaner Pro to clean up some crap that it left. Then I went to Creative's site to download the Creative ALchemy, which I did (ALMY_PCVTAPP_LB_1_41_02.exe) and then went to install it.

During the installation, I got this:

Strange, but I finally assumed that it meant the CD-ROM that came with the card. So I put that in, and then had to browse by hand to:

That seemed to work, all except for a little error that said that it was unable to create a shortcut on my desktop. No big deal, I guess. I'm told to reboot to complete the installation. And after returning to the Desktop, I find that it didn't create a folder or anything in the Start Menu either. So then I go browsing for it. And look what I find in 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Creative\ALchemy\', where it the installer said it was installing the program:

Gee! A program installer that installs nothing at all but a folder that contains only an empty folder! How unusual...which is all to ususal for me! Look at what God does! Ah, boy! The fun never ends!

Heh, well, what does that mean? Why is that happening? What do I do now? ???

1. Relax.

2. Go to the Creative Labs website and find the driver for your sound card.

3. Download the driver.

4. Download ALchemy.

5. Install the driver.

6. THEN install ALchemy.

Same thing happened with this ALchemy installer like the previous one: Empty folder, can't create shortcut,...

Okay, I got some help in a chat area and have the Alchemy now installed properly hehehe

It comes with some games' profiles already added into it and that seems to be working just nice! hehehe I'm having a bit of trouble with adding other games that don't have a ready-made profile hehehe