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XeNo
27 Jan 2013, 10:03pm
Tech Support Help TicketWhat general section does your problem fall under
Sound Issues What is your Operating System (OS)
Windows 7 If you use linux, post the build and any other pertinent info (kde/gnome etc)
- Have you tried the latest stable drivers for your product if any exist? If so please list the number/name of them in the box here.
Trying to Do you understand complex tech explanations
No Would you prefer more personalized and simpler help?
Yes Do you have antivirus or anti-malware installed?
Yes What is the name of your Antivirus/anti malware?
Avast/Malware bytes Who made your PC? (Company name or you)
Custom built What is the model number of the part or PC you are having issues with?
No idea Please state your problem here
My sound card randomly took a shit and is updating the fuck out of itself and I have no idea why.

Tweezy
28 Jan 2013, 03:02am
Holy shit. Have you tried disconnecting it from the motherboard, starting your computer up using onboard sound, let it figure its shit out and then switch it off and plug it in / try again?

XeNo
28 Jan 2013, 11:46am
Holy shit. Have you tried disconnecting it from the motherboard, starting your computer up using onboard sound, let it figure its shit out and then switch it off and plug it in / try again?
I haven't yet, no.

The auto updating has stopped, but now I just have this sitting in my device manager:
http://i.imgur.com/VpGw1Tf.jpg

Also as you can see, windows update claims I still have an update for it, yet every time to install it, it says it failed to install.

Mcbride
28 Jan 2013, 12:56pm
what is the model for the card? from typing in google SB audigy i got this.

Creative Worldwide Support > Sound Blaster Audigy (http://support.creative.com/Products/ProductDetails.aspx?catID=1&prodID=4847&prodName=Sound%20Blaster%20Audigy&CatName=Sound+Blaster)

if that happens to be the right drivers, uninstall the sound card drives and application, then restart computer, then try reinstalling the drivers

XeNo
28 Jan 2013, 02:11pm
I'm fairly certain it's a SB Audigy SE. If I uninstall the drivers, as soon as I try to install new ones, they all start installing themselves again like it was before.

Tweezy
28 Jan 2013, 03:04pm
I'm fairly certain it's a SB Audigy SE. If I uninstall the drivers, as soon as I try to install new ones, they all start installing themselves again like it was before.

Have you tried my suggestion yet? If that doesn't work you could take out all the USB ports, start computer up, turn it off and plug them back in again.

Shadowex3
29 Jan 2013, 07:20am
How old is that soundcard?

XeNo
29 Jan 2013, 09:34am
How old is that soundcard?
Pretty old, over a few years old.

For right now the sound and everything works with all those drivers repeatedly installed, and it doesn't install itself anymore. I'm going to try Tweezy's idea later, but if that doesn't work I'll just probably buy a new sound card.

Shadowex3
31 Jan 2013, 11:14am
if you have any remotely recent motherboard it'll be at least as good as an Audigy level soundcard, just in case the audigy gets too problematic. It's only the hardware X-Fi level cards and above that are actually any real difference.

XeNo
6 Feb 2013, 01:07am
May as well put this as fixed/resolved. I'm just going to leave it. It's not causing anymore issues even though I still have tons of those in my device manager.

As far as using the motherboard onboard sound, I doubt it's better because my motherboard is ancient.

Dirk
6 Feb 2013, 03:21pm
Well you could always try uninstalling the devices using the device manager untill they are all gone and then installing the latest driver from scratch.

Danthrax
14 Feb 2013, 05:01pm
That soundcard is still better than integrated sound if you use the 3d audio processing software with it. But I would definitely get a new one that isn't made by Creative, they have the worst driver support in the industry.

Dirk
15 Feb 2013, 12:30am
That soundcard is still better than integrated sound if you use the 3d audio processing software with it. But I would definitely get a new one that isn't made by Creative, they have the worst driver support in the industry.


eh, get a better set of headphones long before you get a new soundcard. The weakest point on an audio system is almost always the speakers/ headphones. I doubt you can tell a decent sound card from a great one with anything less than $400 headphones through a tube amp.

Danthrax
15 Feb 2013, 10:24pm
eh, get a better set of headphones long before you get a new soundcard. The weakest point on an audio system is almost always the speakers/ headphones. I doubt you can tell a decent sound card from a great one with anything less than $400 headphones through a tube amp.

AKG k701/k702/q701 scale well with equipment and are generally less than $300. But other than that you are pretty much right. Although I found that "gaming" soundcards make a difference with cheaper headphones due to the audio processing which makes the sound more 3D.

Shadowex3
17 Feb 2013, 06:12pm
That soundcard is still better than integrated sound if you use the 3d audio processing software with it. But I would definitely get a new one that isn't made by Creative, they have the worst driver support in the industry.

Audigy era soundcards only go up to EAX 4, IF they had any actual hardware processing in the first place, many of Creative's lower level cards don't actually have the chips to do hardware processing and run software emulation instead. Realtek can go up to EAX Advanced HD iirc (EAX 3.0), which is probably what Xeno's card can do if it's an Audigy and not an Audigy 2.

All of this is pointless however for at least two reasons: EAX has nothing to do with 3d processing, it's just precanned libraries for reverb and other similar sound effects and actual 3d audio processing is almost always handled ingame using Directsound3d or OpenAL, which are almost always run on the CPU. What a soundcard WILL do for you, ONLY if the game supports it, is take raw sound output from the game and process that using HRTFs to give you binaural audio through headphones. If the game doesn't natively support that you've got to kludge it by setting the game and windows to output 5.1 while telling your soundcard to process that output for headphones.

Of course the best soundcards to do that are still X-fi's. Creative may have abysmal driver support but their headphone processing is still some of the best out there. It will get you accused of wallhacking if you know what you're doing.

Danthrax
21 Feb 2013, 04:49pm
That is because Creative uses CMSS 3D to create 5.1 emulation, but this has been around for a while. Dolby headphone will get you similar, or better results (opinion of this varies). That's why if you are going to get a soundcard I would probably get this: Mixamp Pro | 7.1 Dolby Digital Mixamp | AstroGaming.com (http://www.astrogaming.com/mixamp-pro-2013-edition) especially if you have an xbox and ps3.

Shadowex3
22 Feb 2013, 04:49am
CMSS-3d isn't 5.1 "emulation", nor can it reasonably be said to have been around for a while anymore than Shaders can because DirectX is over a decade old.

CMSS-3D is Creative's 100% marketspeak name for different forms of DSP that they've used mainly to refer to (pretty ugly) upmixing of stereo sound to actual multiple speakers in CMSS1 and 2, which is why it earned a lot of hate over the years. CMSS-3D Headphone has the same name but is an entirely different system working in exactly the opposite direction; this time using Head Related Transfer Functions to create full 3d sound based on calculations and studies of how the brain interprets 3d locations from sounds heard using only 2 ears.

Whether Creative or other soundcards are better at it is entirely subjective. Objectively there IS one third party manufacturer of X-fi series cards that blows everyone out of the water, but only by virtue of using high quality components and carefully insulating as much as they can.

Dirk
24 Feb 2013, 11:57am
CMSS-3d isn't 5.1 "emulation", nor can it reasonably be said to have been around for a while anymore than Shaders can because DirectX is over a decade old.

CMSS-3D is Creative's 100% marketspeak name for different forms of DSP that they've used mainly to refer to (pretty ugly) upmixing of stereo sound to actual multiple speakers in CMSS1 and 2, which is why it earned a lot of hate over the years. CMSS-3D Headphone has the same name but is an entirely different system working in exactly the opposite direction; this time using Head Related Transfer Functions to create full 3d sound based on calculations and studies of how the brain interprets 3d locations from sounds heard using only 2 ears.

Whether Creative or other soundcards are better at it is entirely subjective. Objectively there IS one third party manufacturer of X-fi series cards that blows everyone out of the water, but only by virtue of using high quality components and carefully insulating as much as they can.

Don't forget that even with a very nice sound card you should still use a discrete headphone amp, especially if you have high impedance headphones. A high end sound card might be able to put out extremely clean audio but they still lack in the amplification department. It is my understanding that the DACs they use were not designed for high impedance headphones (150-200 ohms and up). I highly doubt there is any sound card that can properly drive 300ohm Sennheisers. If you want the best quality possible you are probably going to have to match an amp to your specific headphones.

Shadowex3
25 Feb 2013, 04:31am
300? My 595 and 598's are both 50ohm nominal impedance.

Dirk
25 Feb 2013, 05:37am
300? My 595 and 598's are both 50ohm nominal impedance.

The HD 800s HD 600s 650s are 300ohms. the HD 565 were 150 I believe (those are great for gaming btw). Beyerdynamic headphones are almost all high impedance as I recall. There are great amps for low impedance headphones as well but as far as I can tell they aren't as necessary because soundcards deal with them better to begin with. Of course there is also a loss from using low impedance headphones with a high output impedance amp.