ott wrote on 2025-08-23, 07:56:
What are advantages of kX driver on Audigy 2ZS? As far as I understand, it about additional audio effects and routing?
Yes. It gives you total access to the DSP to route signals as you see fit, and put any effect (as long as it fits the DSP) in between, to any or all parts of the signal. It also allows for real time monitoring of the input, and "what you ear"-like recording, both of which are far from guaranteed in motherboard chipsets nowadays.
It also generates several virtual output devices in Windows, which allows you to assign different software to different outputs, which will then enter the DSP from different ends, allowing you to route and process them separately.
For example, you could have:
- Winamp goes to Windows device WaveOut 0/1
- VLC goes to Windows device WaveOut 4/5
- Game you're playing goes to Windows device WaveOut 6/7
In the DSP, you can then:
- Take WaveOut 0/1 as your input, add an AGC to it, and route it to a mixer plugin
- Take WaveOut 6/7, route it to the mixer plugin, no processing
- Take WaveOut 4/5, route it directly to one of the physical outputs (say: front left/right)
- Take your mixer plugin, which now has the sound from Winamp and your game, and route it to another physical output (say: rear left/right).
Now you have two distinct sources of audio, which you can route to different inputs of a real mixer console, allowing you to adjust the volume of VLC and your game/winamp separately, directly from your deck.
You add a microphone to your mixer console, and send everything back to the Audigy's line in.
Then from the DSP again, you take the line in, you may add a final processor plugin (e.g. a limiter) for the complete signal if you wish, and send it both to "Recording Mixer" (WASAPI/MME recording device, to be used by software such as Discord, OBS or whatever), ASIO in (for your DAW if you have one, or for further sound processing), and finally, to the last available physical output on the Audigy (center/sw), to which you will plug your headphones for monitoring, allowing you to monitor the signal at its very last stage, exactly as it is sent to OBS, with zero delay.
Have a change of heart? You can make a completely different workflow.
Say you want to be able to send someone your voice and music via Discord, hear them back, but make sure they don't hear themselves in echo:
- Send Discord to WaveOut 0/1
- Send Music to WaveOut 4/5
- Send your microphone through line in or mic in
In the DSP, mix together your microphone with WaveOut 4/5, but not WaveOut 0/1 (Discord) and send it to the WASAPI/MME recording device. Because WaveOut 0/1 is not part of the signal sent to the WASAPI device, your friend won't hear himself back.
Then make a second, parallel mix in the DSP, mixing together all three sources and send the result to whatever physical output you have your headphones plugged in: you hear everything, including your friend.
Lots of other things you can do (e.g. take a signal, split-band it, add a compressor to each band, then mix everything back together to create a real time, hardware-accelerated multiband compressor). It really is an audio nerd dream.
You can, of course, save and load your various DSP workflows depending on your needs of the moment, it's basically a single click thing, no need to reset the driver or anything.
Three important caveats however:
- No EAX (I think there's very partial support for EAX2.0? But I'm not even sure).
- No MIDI synth compatibility on x64 Windows due to a bug in the driver
- kX is compatible with the p16v chip (Audigy 2, Audigy 2ZS) for up to 24bit/192KHz playback/recording, but not with p17v (Audigy 2 Value, Audigy 4/4Pro, Audigy Rx). So these later models are limited to 48KHz/24bits under kX.
