MattRocks wrote on 2026-01-25, 19:20:

I am feeling a bit numb right now because the summary of all online complaints about Vista audio collapses to users simply misco […]
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Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-01-25, 14:43:

Falcosoft wrote on 2026-01-25, 14:10:

As I said already I have only Audigy and Audigy2 ZS cards. I have found absolutely no evidence for such 2 faced behavior. The only relevant kernel drivers are ctaud2k.sys and ha10kx2k.sys. There is no trace of cthda.sys at all.

For reference, there is no cthda.sys on my Win10 system with an X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional (SB0886) either.

I am feeling a bit numb right now because the summary of all online complaints about Vista audio collapses to users simply misconfiguring their systems!

If you continue running the NT6 EAX test with hardware mixing, and in the middle of that test you play a Windows audio sound - does the Windows audio simply play on top of the EAX audio as it would on NT5?

The NT6 WASAPI cannot see anything of the OpenAL kernel-stream, so if that test works then NT5 style sound card mixing is fully functional on NT6. Does that rewrite history?

Yes, of course. Other audio/Windows sounds play on top of the OpenAL EAX audio. Test video:
https://youtu.be/SwoiDzsF27M

I have only expletives left. For decades I (and most commentary) believed NT5 audio pathways were dead on NT6.

And for a bigger sting,

"My last ALchemy release (1.00.08) was complately unlocked and could be used with any sound device from any vendor." - Daniel K
https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file … hemy-universal/

I am thinking about something not directly related to EAX so feel free to tell me if i'm off topic but i've had the X-Fi Titanium installed for a few months in my overpowered XP/7 build and only tried it under XP yesterday. I notice a lot of stuttering in Far Cry and Crysis. I'm not sure if maybe i didn't notice it before and these games just run smoother under Win7 or switching from the Audigy RX to the X-Fi caused this.

OM606 wrote on Yesterday, 18:30:

I am thinking about something not directly related to EAX so feel free to tell me if i'm off topic but i've had the X-Fi Titanium installed for a few months in my overpowered XP/7 build and only tried it under XP yesterday. I notice a lot of stuttering in Far Cry and Crysis. I'm not sure if maybe i didn't notice it before and these games just run smoother under Win7 or switching from the Audigy RX to the X-Fi caused this.

Which driver version are you using? I've seen some reports of this happening with both the latest official drivers from Creative, and with DanielK's last X-Fi pack under WinXP.

When using an X-Fi Titanium on WinXP, you generally want to use older drivers. Check my guide if you haven't already.

I've been using 2.17.0008 and 2.17.0009. i'm also having issues with occasional BSOD in some OpenAL games under 7 x64 since installing the X-Fi.

OM606 wrote on Yesterday, 18:42:

I've been using 2.17.0008 and 2.17.0009. i'm also having issues with occasional BSOD in some OpenAL games under 7 x64 since installing the X-Fi.

Might be related to having the Audigy in the system beforehand.

Creative's drivers don't uninstall completely from the Control Panel, and there are always some leftover files hanging around, which could potentially cause conflicts. A clean OS install might help, if that's indeed the cause of your issues. But it could also be something else entirely.

This is after a clean install of both OS. Yeah it could possibly be something different or me getting used to no stutter under Win7 and noticing it under XP. It seems that Audigy cards might be a slightly more trouble free if we take into consideration problems like the OpenAL BSOD issue under Vista+. I've heard that 2.17.0008c drom 2011 fixes this issue but i'm not sure.

OM606 wrote on Yesterday, 19:31:

It seems that Audigy cards might be a slightly more trouble free if we take into consideration problems like the OpenAL BSOD issue under Vista+.

For what it's worth, I've never encountered one of those on my X-Fi Titanium under Win7 or Win10.

OM606 wrote on Yesterday, 19:31:

This is after a clean install of both OS. Yeah it could possibly be something different or me getting used to no stutter under Win7 and noticing it under XP. It seems that Audigy cards might be a slightly more trouble free if we take into consideration problems like the OpenAL BSOD issue under Vista+. I've heard that 2.17.0008c drom 2011 fixes this issue but i'm not sure.

This is exactly the widely reported behaviour that led me to argue that for THD there are two mixing paths - one that is smooth, and one that stutters. And, the user isn’t choosing a path.

The demo shows windows mixer didn’t interfere with Audigy hardware mixing , and that completely stunned me.

Maybe this “research” needs to be done without Audigy cards because maybe there are architectural and strategic differences and what fixes one might not fix the other?

MattRocks wrote on Today, 06:59:

Maybe this “research” needs to be done without Audigy cards because maybe there are architectural and strategic differences and what fixes one might not fix the other?

I was able to reproduce Falcosoft's findings on my X-Fi Titanium under Win10 without any issues.

That said, X-Fi cards are now almost 20 years old, so it's possible that some of their capacitors have dried out, which could result in seemingly random BSODs. While brand new Audigy RX cards (which are still being sold) wouldn't suffer from that.