Just got an X-Fi and my 5.1 subwoofer is silent

[JRKIO]

Today I bought the Xtrememusic flavor of Creative's X-Fi line. I put in the card and downloaded the latest drivers which I proceded to install. Everything is working fine aside from my subwoofer speaker.
The sub makes no noise whatsoever. I have the speakers connected via analog on my home theatre amp's 5.1 setup. The Creative Audio Console is configured to a 5.1 speaker setup. The center/sub line is connected nice and tight; the center channel is even working fine. I've tried connecting the sub line directly to the sub and bypassing the amp but the speaker stays silent. Is there anything I need to configure to actually make my subwoofer active?

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

If your speaker system doesn't have a hardware crossover, you may need to enable the low frequency crossover in your X-Fi's settings.

 

[daniel49]

I see freys is selling that fot 99.00 how much you pay.

A lot of creative cards seem to have a secret box you tick somewhere to enable features like surround sound...just went through that swapping an old sb live 24 card.. took a few googles to find it.

 

[JRKIO]

i actually just got it from frys. The price was 129 before rebate. I'm looking around for a low frequency tick box right now but I see none in the "Creative Audio Console." I just installed the basic drivers and I'm hoping I don't need to install bloatware just for the woofer.

edit: this card is aggravating. it's behaving as if only 1 channel is being sent through the center/sub cable. When i manually switch the center channel rca connection to the sub rca input on my amp, I get some sort of result. When in Entertainment mode, the channel provides no bass and high sounds that are obviously not meant for the subwoofer. In game mode, this one channel provides adequate bass to the subwoofer which seems weird if the channel is supposed to be the center one. I'm assuming the one working channel is the center speaker signal. The nonworking channel won't produce any noise at all no matter what input it is connected to. There must be a low freq. tick box somewhere... My old onboard sound was much less of a hassel .

Edit 2: Ok I found this page that says line connections 2 and 3 on the X-Fi are 4 pole minijack connections, not the standard stereo minijack connections. Could these unusual minijack connections be the source of my woes? The article states that these cords are sold in stores as video camera to vcr adapters. I'm going to head to Radioshack to see if they have any of these 4 pole minijacks that output to 3 RCA connectors instead of two.
minipole page

 

[daniel49]

Originally posted by: JRKIO
i actually just got it from frys. The price was 129 before rebate. I'm looking around for a low frequency tick box right now but I see none in the "Creative Audio Console." I just installed the basic drivers and I'm hoping I don't need to install bloatware just for the woofer.

edit: this card is aggravating. it's behaving as if only 1 channel is being sent through the center/sub cable. When i manually switch the center channel rca connection to the sub rca input on my amp, I get some sort of result. When in Entertainment mode, the channel provides no bass and high sounds that are obviously not meant for the subwoofer. In game mode, this one channel provides adequate bass to the subwoofer which seems weird if the channel is supposed to be the center one. I'm assuming the one working channel is the center speaker signal. The nonworking channel won't produce any noise at all no matter what input it is connected to. There must be a low freq. tick box somewhere... My old onboard sound was much less of a hassel .

Edit 2: Ok I found this page that says line connections 2 and 3 on the X-Fi are 4 pole minijack connections, not the standard stereo minijack connections. Could these unusual minijack connections be the source of my woes? The article states that these cords are sold in stores as video camera to vcr adapters. I'm going to head to Radioshack to see if they have any of these 4 pole minijacks that output to 3 RCA connectors instead of two.
minipole page

yeah thats the same deal I saw . On the SB live 5.1 24 bit all speakers had sound on the test utility they provided, but when I would play music I would get 2.1.
Just installing drivers did not give me the 5.1 sound, I had to enable it in one of those bloatware progs.
I finally found it on the EAX console a little box that said : enable CMSS 3D.
Once I enabled that all speakers worked.

x-fi may be different but I notice creative likes to hide things like that?