Sphere478 wrote on 2021-02-17, 01:55:

you guys know a bit more about soundcards than I do, so I figure I'd ask you all.

I used to have a auzentech prelude xfi and it was a good memory I was thinking of getting one for my build for nostalgia but the xfi ones don't have windows 98/ME support right?

Anyway, I was wanting to get one of their cards that does have 9x support and was wanting to go for the best model but I see several models and I really can't make heads or tails of which one is best for me. Also, I have no ideas which chips will give me the best compatibility I need it to work with ME and windows 7 which one of their non xfi chips gives the best game frame rates? has the best snr etc. 7.1 and optical would be preferred.

I am pretty sure that none of the sound cards that Auzentech released ever had Windows 9x drivers, either from Auzentech or from the chip manufacturer .
Auzentech started out in 2005, which was about a year or less before Windows 98 SE/ME stopped being supported by Microsoft, so that is not really surprising .

EDIT : Maybe some of the C-Media based cards had reference drivers for Windows 9x from C-Media, but Auzentech did not distribute them, AFAIK .

"auzentech prelude xfi" I used to have one of those, I really liked it. When I did my P5Q Pro Core 2 Duo upgrade in October of 2008, my Philips Acoustic Edge wouldn't work with that motherboard for some reason. So I used the onboard sound for a little while, then ordered one of those. Expensive, but I thought it was worth the money.

As your probably aware the Prelude basically an improved Creative xfi so no Win9x support but they are the last cards to support WinXP.
Creative side Audigy 2 ZS is end of the line for Win9x

Auzentech list Win98 in its system requirements for the following cards.
X-Mystique 7.1, CMI 8768
X-Plosion 7.1, CMI 8770
X-Meridian 7.1, CMI 8788

The final non XFi based cards 2 no longer list Win9x
X-Studio 5.1, VIA VT1723
X-Raider 7.1, CMI 8768

As Darry said these are all XP or later era cards so driver quality may be pretty average, Even when these cards were currant people were saying the generic C-Media drivers were less buggy then the official drivers.
So maybe if C-Media/via released Win9x drivers for the final 2 you may still be in luck? Same for Windows 7 I doubt official drivers were ever released, you'll have to see if you can find generic Win7 drivers for the chip

I finally got a X-Meridian 7.1. need a xp and ME driver. where can I get them? any after market driver packs that are good?

Sphere478 wrote on 2022-05-19, 23:24:

I finally got a X-Meridian 7.1. need a xp and ME driver. where can I get them? any after market driver packs that are good?

Assuming you have an Auzen X-Meridian 7.1 2g (2nd generation), based on the CMI CMI8788 chip:

This should work for XP
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https://web.archive.org/web/20131003211449/ht … HQL-26AUG11.zip

Based on this https://pdf1.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/v … IA/CMI8788.html , the CMI8788 seems to have had Windows 9x drivers, or at least it was planned to . A cursory search did not yield any, unfortunately .

Dang. I got it kinda counting on 9x support..

Yeah it’s a 2g