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Sound On Vista

sanzen07

sanzen07

Senior member
I'm getting ready to upgrade to Vista Ultimate in the next couple of days and need some advice/suggestions on which sound card I should use. I've got an Audigy2 ZS that I've been using for quite some time and am happy with in XP, but I've also heard bad things about Creative cards and Vista. My motherboard is an Intel D975XBX2 and has integrated 6.1 audio. Which one would be better to use?
 
At the moment creative vista drivers suck! To top that off creative wants to charge us for their vista drivers when they release them. No more free downloads from their website unless something changes. You should go over to the creative forums and check out the vista thread, it's long and there's a lot of angry people there. I'm among them as I spent $274 on my x-fi fatal1ty only to turn to a 3rd party, youpax, in order to get functional software in vista so I can use my card like I did in xp.
 
Your onboard audio should work great in Vista, not so much with your ZS. Sell it, and buy a new game with the $$ 🙂
 
Originally posted by: Puffnstuff
At the moment creative vista drivers suck!
Click to expand...

My Audigy2 is working fine on a Vista32 box.

To top that off creative wants to charge us for their vista drivers when they release them. No more free downloads from their website unless something changes.
Click to expand...

I believe your confusing drivers with their ALchemy project. They have discussed charging for ALchemy not drivers. BIG difference.
 
My on-board SoundMax driven system is working AOK in Vista. The line out feeds an external stereo amp, which drives a set of KLH speakers and subwoofer. Sounds very natural.
 
My Audigy 4 is working great in Vista x64,most of the problems seem to be with the X-FI series rather then the Audigy series.
 
I have an Audigy 2 Value (similar to the ZS without the firewire) and it works fine with Vista. Like all Creative cards, EAX is effectively broken thanks to the new sound libraries that Microsoft has implemented.

This driver (2.12.002) is the current Vista driver for most of the Audigy cards. Creative has indicated the following:

This download is a driver providing Microsoft® Windows® Vista 64-bit and Windows Vista 32-bit support for Creative Sound Blaster® Audigy® series audio devices. For more details, read the rest of this web release note.

This download supports the following audio devices only:

  • Creative Sound Blaster Audigy including Platinum and Platinum eX series
    Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 including Platinum, Platinum eX, and Value series
    Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS including Platinum and Platinum Pro series
    Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 4 Pro and Sound Blaster Audigy 4
    Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Notebook PCMCIA

Known issues:

  • Applications from the original Sound Blaster Audigy CD will not work with this download.
    Users are advised to use Audio Console included in this download to change speaker configurations.
    This driver does not support the following:
    o Decoding of Dolby® Digital and DTS? signals
    o DVD-Audio
    o DirectSound®-based EAX games
    o Gameports
    o 6.1 speaker mode.
    SPDIF passthrough is supported on Vista 32-bit only.
Click to expand...

The Alchemy driver is supposed to restore most of the "broken" features. Creative is expecting their users to pony up for ability to use their cards as they were intended. Ona side note, Asus is supposed to be creating a pci-e sound solution....
 
Originally posted by: Puffnstuff
At the moment creative vista drivers suck! To top that off creative wants to charge us for their vista drivers when they release them. No more free downloads from their website unless something changes. You should go over to the creative forums and check out the vista thread, it's long and there's a lot of angry people there. I'm among them as I spent $274 on my x-fi fatal1ty only to turn to a 3rd party, youpax, in order to get functional software in vista so I can use my card like I did in xp.
Click to expand...

They pulled that same nonsense with Windows 2000 which is why I have not bought a Creative card since that time.
 
I have no problems with Audigy 2 and vista x86. Replacing it with onboard crap is just a FUD.

Creative had few beta releases before vista release, most of them worked just fine for me.

What do you expect from onboard card? Better drivers? EAX support? ... yeah right.
 
Originally posted by: postmortemIA
I have no problems with Audigy 2 and vista x86. Replacing it with onboard crap is just a FUD.

Creative had few beta releases before vista release, most of them worked just fine for me.

What do you expect from onboard card? Better drivers? EAX support? ... yeah right.
Click to expand...

Did you miss the part where EAX got broken by Vista? 🙂

EDIT : Let me restate that. CREATIVE are lousy arseholes who have been too lazy/incompetent to write proper Vista drivers, and when they do, they want to cornhole you for more $$$ for something YOU ALREADY PAID FOR. This kind of disrespect to their own customers has resulted in me permanently blacklisting the companies products from my store. And I've probably owned 30-40 Creative cards over the years, culminating in my X-Fi XtremeMusic, which, while supported in Vista, doesn't excuse them from being jerks. F them.
 
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