DrLucienSanchez wrote on 2025-08-26, 19:50:

I recently tried original Mass Effect in Windows 10, Daniel K Drivers, everything appeared to work fine, but some dialougue sound cut off here and there

If you're using a PCIe X-Fi Titanium, there is an issue with newer Creative drivers and OpenAL games. I think DanielK fixed it in his very latest X-Fi support pack, but I haven't tested that extensively. For WinXP and Win7, it might be best to stick with older drivers as per this guide of mine.

No idea if that was causing the audio cutouts that you mentioned though. Could be something unrelated.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-08-26, 19:56:

DrLucienSanchez wrote on 2025-08-26, 19:50:

I recently tried original Mass Effect in Windows 10, Daniel K Drivers, everything appeared to work fine, but some dialougue sound cut off here and there

If you're using a PCIe X-Fi Titanium, there is an issue with newer Creative drivers and OpenAL games. I think DanielK fixed it in his very latest X-Fi support pack, but I haven't tested that extensively. For WinXP and Win7, it might be best to stick with older drivers as per this guide of mine.

No idea if that was causing the audio cutouts that you mentioned though. Could be something unrelated.

Danielk drivers doesn't fixed problem with openal and xfi titanium because daniel pack use creative officiel drivers. I have the last danielk pack since some years and bugs stills exist.

What do Daniel’s drivers do, then, if they don’t fix bugs with Creative’s?

AndreaColombo86 wrote on 2025-08-27, 20:33:

What do Daniel’s drivers do, then, if they don’t fix bugs with Creative’s?

DanielK’s packs are not new drivers. If you read his blog https://danielkawakami.blogspot.com/ you’ll see that the drivers included in his packs are the official ones. What DanielK mainly did was restore a lot of software that Creative had removed over the years, add some extra features, and fix a few issues that weren’t problems with the driver itself. There’s been a long-standing belief that DanielK made alternative drivers, but if you read his blog carefully, that has never been the case. That’s why the bugs in Creative’s drivers, like the issue with OpenAL and the X-Fi Titanium, were never fixed by DanielK.

for example, last xfi danielK pack
https://danielkawakami.blogspot.com/2020/08/s … rt-pack-50.html

Aug 2, 2020 SB X-Fi Series Support Pack 5.0 This software/driver pack is unofficial, not supported by Creative Labs. Use it at y […]
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Aug 2, 2020
SB X-Fi Series Support Pack 5.0
This software/driver pack is unofficial, not supported by Creative Labs.
Use it at your own risk.

Items that will be installed, depending on the detected card: […]
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Items that will be installed, depending on the detected card:

- Creative SB X-Fi / SB077x series driver 2.30.0011
- Creative SB X-Fi / SB077x series driver 2.30.0012 WHQL for Windows 10
- Creative SB X-Fi Titanium series driver 2.40.0015
- Creative SB X-Fi Titanium series driver 2.40.0026 WHQL for Windows 10
- Creative SB X-Fi Titanium HD driver 3.00.2021
- Creative SB X-Fi Titanium HD driver 3.00.2022 WHQL for Windows 10
- Creative SB X-Fi Titanium OEM HP/Fujitsu 2.16.0001.63 WHQL
- Auzentech X-Fi Prelude driver 2.14.0001.28 RefCD5
- Auzentech X-Fi Forte driver 2.20.0000.34
- Auzentech X-Fi HomeTheater HD driver 2.20.0000.34
- Gigabyte SB X-Fi Titanium driver 2.16.0004.46 WHQL
- Onkyo Wavio SE-300PCIE (R2) driver 2.16.0004.42

they are official drivers in his packs.

What is the best driver to use for an X-Fi Fatal1ty on Windows 7 x64?

AndreaColombo86 wrote on 2025-09-08, 15:56:

What is the best driver to use for an X-Fi Fatal1ty on Windows 7 x64?

If you mean PCI X-Fi Fatal1ty card, then latest web-driver for Win8/7/Vista/XP works fine. Well, or I haven't noticed any problems yet.

SBXF_PCDRV_L11_2_30_0004.exe (still available on the official site)

AndreaColombo86 wrote on 2025-09-08, 15:56:

What is the best driver to use for an X-Fi Fatal1ty on Windows 7 x64?

Hard to say, as anything above 2.17.0008 likely has issues with OpenAL on PCIe X-Fi cards. And I haven't tested that particular version thoroughly on Win7, as I rarely use EAX on anything newer than WinXP. I think using the official X-Fi Titanium installation CD from 2009 and then updating the driver to 2.17.0008 might work, but your mileage may vary.

This is if you're talking about a PCIe X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty of course. The older (non-Titanium) PCI versions of the X-Fi Fatal1ty should be unaffected by the OpenAL issue, so they are probably less picky about the drivers.