Windows XP and SB Audigy - minor issues - anyone else?

[Garion2K]

I am running Windows XP Professional RC2. I just installed the Sound Blaster Audigy Platnum EX and am having a few minor problems. I installed the Windows 2000 drivers that shipped with the card, as well as Play Center, etc. I know XP drivers are supposed to be released in October, but I'm curious if anyone who has the Audigy and XP is having similar problems.

Here's a list:

1) Can't get SoundFonts working. AudioHQ reports an error when initalizing the SoundFont device. Vienna SoundFont Studio reports an error too.

2) The DREAM, time scaling, and audio cleanup tabs are disabled in Play Center no matter what audio source I select. EAX works fine.

3) The right speaker cuts out when using Play Center. When I load the mixer, the mute checkbox is checked on whatever audio source was playing (yet I still hear sound out of the left speaker). I unmute the source and my right speaker comes back.

Everything else seems to be working fine. No clicks or pops in audio, games work great, etc.

I originally had a Sound Blaster Live MP3+ installed. Before installing the Audigy, I went into Device Manager and uninstalled the SBLive WDM device and Game Controller. Then I removed the card and restarted Windows to make sure the device didn't show up. Then I installed the Audigy and all of the software off the installation CD.

I tried reinstalling the drivers and got a STOP error on the next boot. I rebooted again and my system works fine except the above problems didn't go away.

Any ideas? Similar experiences? Could it be RC2 vs. RTM? Windows 2000 drivers instead of XP drivers?

Thanks!

 

[JMorton10]

I recently installed an Audigy EX with XP RC2600 as a clean install.

The Audigy drivers & surround mixer installed fine & work great. Playcenter would not install at all for me. I get an eror & it exits everytime I try to install it.

Creative recorder installed, but gives an error when I try to run it.

 

[scottrico]

I also did a clean install win xp 2600. I did get everything working fine but it was tricky.
my right klipsch speaker would cut out when using playcenter but I fixed it by lowering the volume on the system and raising the volume on the speaker.
The only way everything installed for me is when I did a fresh install without the card installed. when all other systems were loaded, then I installed the audigy, and had no problems.
this card is real picky and does not like any other sound card installed befor it, even if you uninstall the drivers.
good luck

 

[Sully]

I installed the same card and I have a problem with the rear speakers. The klipsch ProMedia v.2 -400 work with the front speakers and subwoofer only. The surround mixer is set for four speakers and it only gets the front two. I checked all the speakers and they all work?
Is it a bad card??

 

[Garion2K]

Solution to SoundFont issue... found on http://listen.to/sblive message boards.


"I found a solution by reading the creative newsgroups. Randy posted a good instruction and a reason why it does not work in WinXP. There is nothing wrong with the Audigy drivers, its the system file protection of WinXP that makes it not to work.

Here are the original instructions, I just did it and it works. One thing that differs from these instructions is that I made a new driver.cab file (instead of renameing it) by replacing the sfman32.dll file contained in it with a Audigy sfman32.dll file.

Instructions (thanks to Randy for them):

The problem is: In WinXP sfman32.dll is not being updated properly.
Look in in your /system32 dir and notice the size of the sfman32.dll.
if it is around 50k, it's the wrong one. The one on the Audigy CD is
about 258k.

To fix this you need to put the right .dll in the system32 dir, BUT,
because of WinXP file protection, it will always change back to the
other one!. So, you must locate and replace to other
one(s) first.

I found 3 total.

WinXP/system32/sfman32.dll
WinXP/system32/dllcache/sfman32.dll
WinXP/Driver Cache/i386/driver.cab

The 3rd one listed is in a compressed .cab file 'driver.cab'
I could'nt de-compress, do I simply renamed it to driver.bak.
It can be renamed back if needed, and it is also on the
WinXP cd in the /i386 dir.

So, do this fix in the reverse order that I have listed above!
Windows file protection will not rename the driver.bak back to
the original filename, but it will attempt to keep the wrong
.dll in the system32 dir! You may have to copy both of the 1st
two dll's quickly to defeat the file protection.

You will know success when you see the file size in the
system32 dir remain at 258,048 for more than a few
seconds, and after re-boot."