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Which Audigy for EAX?

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First post, by Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman

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I always want an EAX-capable sound card for my (soon would be) retro XP system. About a year ago I tried to install Creative official driver for my Audigy 2, but experienced "Setup could not detect any Sound Blaster Audigy 2 on your System". However, Daniel K drivers installed fine.

Recently I reformatted my computer; I didn't change anything, merely reformatted and reinstalled Windows from scratch. This time, Daniel K drivers didn't even work. I get a message saying it can't detect any supported product.

I guess I have to accept the fact that Creative Audigy 2 is a problematic model.

However, I still want EAX. Which card should I use? How about Audigy 4? Is it as glitchy as Audigy 2? Me, I'm not really picky: as long as it runs on XP, and it can be detected properly, then I'm fine. It doesn't matter if it's PCI or PCIe, because this is for my future XP system (instead of the "XP test" system I'm currently using), so I could still have the freedom to choose the right motherboard.

Many thanks.

Never thought this thread would be that long, but now, for something different.....
Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman.

Reply 1 of 20, by cyclone3d

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Audigy 2 should be fine. The Audigy 2 ZS is the best of the series IMO.

Maybe you just have a flaky card.

I would try:
1. Make sure motherboard chipset drivers are installed.
2. Clean the Audigy 2 card's edge connectors. A Pencil eraser works great.
3. Try a different PCI slot.

What is the exact model number of your Audigy 2 card?

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Reply 3 of 20, by Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman

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Just like I said on that other thread, I have tried everything ad nauseam. The only thing I couldn't (and still cannot) do is trying another PCI slot, because my GPU is dual slot, and it blocks the only remaining PCI slot.

My card serial number is M1SB0350462013388N, if it helps. It is an Audigy 2 ZS, by the way.

However....

DracoNihil wrote:

I guess you can't place the card on the FIRST logical PCI slot? I know Creative really doesn't like when it's not located as the first PCI device in the system... because you know they can't do anything right.

If the problem described above only happens with PCI Creative sound cards, would I be better off with PCIe Creative sound cards? Is Audigy 4 PCIe?

Never thought this thread would be that long, but now, for something different.....
Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman.

Reply 4 of 20, by DracoNihil

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That's usually dependent on how well the bridge chip acts to make the soundcard look like a PCI device.

In the case of my chineese clone CMI8738, I've had great luck with bridge chips...

I've also had luck with a X-Fi TitaniumHD which is also PCIe behind a bridge chip with the supposedly "EMU20k2" chipset. Infact that was my primary soundcard for many, many years until it decided to give up.

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Reply 6 of 20, by chinny22

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I used my ZS in XP with just fine with XP, It's not even in the 1st slot. Doesn't help you I know, just wanted to show off 😜
Seriously though, Sometimes the card it doesn't mind installing during setup, sometimes its only detected after inserting the card after installing windows, you just never know and this is in any version of windows!

But for an XP PCIe system I'd go with a X-Fi as well, ideally one with the EMU20K2 chip as its the final card with WinXP support.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Blaster_X … the_X-Fi_Family

I'll admit I got sucked in and went all out and got the SB X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion but just using the drivers off Creative web site. No real need for the CD

Reply 7 of 20, by cyclone3d

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0kool wrote:

I used to have Audigy SE in 2002 (only software EAX) - a questionable upgrade from Live 5.1. Audigy 2 ZS seems to be overhyped on Vogons, but for my current P3 machine I decided to go with something simple and familiar, so I installed the first-gen Audigy SB0160 (AKA Audigy ES). The card was cheap and easy to find, it is EMU10K2-based and fully supports EAX 3.

Ehhh.. I've had Creative cards for years in my main system. Maybe it is overhyped, but I don't think so. Then again, the ones I have gotten have been pretty cheap to acquire.

The reason I would choose the ZS over lower cards is because of the higher SNR.

Other than that, if you have a Live, you can install the Audigy drivers on it and it does make it much better, but still not quite as good as a ZS.

Some boards do have issues with some Creative cards though so it could very well be incompatibility rearing it's ugly head.

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Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 8 of 20, by Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman

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DracoNihil wrote:

That's usually dependent on how well the bridge chip acts to make the soundcard look like a PCI device.

So, at least in theory, does it make Audigy 4 and/or Titanium less prone than Audigy 2 to such detection problem?

cyclone3d wrote:

The reason I would choose the ZS over lower cards is because of the higher SNR.

Other than that, if you have a Live, you can install the Audigy drivers on it and it does make it much better, but still not quite as good as a ZS.

If only the ZS was easily detected on the first time.... Even Daniel K driver fails, so at this point, I don't know what to do.

cyclone3d wrote:

Some boards do have issues with some Creative cards though so it could very well be incompatibility rearing it's ugly head.

How about other Audigy models?

Never thought this thread would be that long, but now, for something different.....
Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman.

Reply 9 of 20, by DracoNihil

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Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

So, at least in theory, does it make Audigy 4 and/or Titanium less prone than Audigy 2 to such detection problem?

On the contrary, it can make things much worse. It very much depends where the BIOS\OS will place the IO resources for the card. And some bridge chips like to not do a good job of handling that or just outright skimp out on important IO.

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Reply 10 of 20, by dr_st

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cyclone3d wrote:

Ehhh.. I've had Creative cards for years in my main system. Maybe it is overhyped, but I don't think so. Then again, the ones I have gotten have been pretty cheap to acquire.

The reason I would choose the ZS over lower cards is because of the higher SNR.

Overhyped or not, the Audigy 2 ZS is still clearly the best in the Audigy line, both in terms of SNR and in terms of features. The Audigy 4 Pro is basically a rebranded 2 ZS, AFAIK.

What may be a little overhyped (or overpriced) is the "Platinum" variants with the extra breakout box.

cyclone3d wrote:

Some boards do have issues with some Creative cards though so it could very well be incompatibility rearing it's ugly head.

This is probably true in this case. Most folks run Audigy 2 cards without such issues as the OP describes.

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Reply 11 of 20, by appiah4

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Doesn X-Fi have even better EAX support than Audigy 2 ZS? It should also have WinXp drivers.

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Reply 13 of 20, by chinny22

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appiah4 wrote:

Doesn X-Fi have even better EAX support than Audigy 2 ZS? It should also have WinXp drivers.

It does, EAX 5 vs EAX 4 with the Audigy line, Not that many games supported EAX 5,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_EAX_support

Good XP support and PCIe made the decision pretty easy for me.

Reply 14 of 20, by F2bnp

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That EAX5 list on Wiki is probably off. For example, it lists Enter the Matrix as supporting EAX5, but that game came out in 2003 and X-Fi cards came out in 2005.

In general, EAX5 did not gain a lot of support and since X-Fi models are a little confusing and because a lot of people have claimed that they are kind of troublesome in general, most people tend to prefer and recommend Audigy 2 and Audigy 2 ZS cards since they can do up to EAX4.

Reply 15 of 20, by Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman

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It seems X-Fi isn't any better: X-Fi Elite Pro getting Infamous Unable to Detect. And no, Daniel K drivers doesn't help either.

dr_st wrote:
cyclone3d wrote:

Some boards do have issues with some Creative cards though so it could very well be incompatibility rearing it's ugly head.

This is probably true in this case. Most folks run Audigy 2 cards without such issues as the OP describes.

How about Audigy 1? Is it less prone to the "unable to detect" issue, or is it actually worse? Yes, I knew Audigy 2 has better SNR and features, but at this point, I just want to have the card detected and installed.

Or perhaps I should drop genuine Creative cards and use two cards instead: Diamond MX400 for EAX 2.0 and below, and Asus Xonar DX 7.1 PCIe for EAX 3 and above.

EDIT: it seems Audigy 1 also suffers from the same problem.
Audigy sound card not detected.
Sound Card-Creative Audigy (Not Detected)

Found this though:

The issue: for some reason only known to Creative, in certain cases the hardware id substring (a number used to identify the model number of your card) on the original Audigy sound cards becomes corrupted. This is described in more detail here: http://bottorff.net/Audigy/Audigy%20Project.htm. The driver setup program will then no longer allow you to install the drivers since 'a supported product can't be found'.

Now, let me point out that in my opinion
1. Creative ought to let you install any of their drivers for any pci card YOU decide, instead of forcing the installer to exit if a supported product supposedly can't be found.
2. Should take their responsibility and fix/replace the Audigy cards exhibiting this issue, or release drivers with a solution. The fact that this an older sound card is no excuse, since this is clearly an issue experienced by quite a number of people (search google).

However, there is one simple solution:
1. Install the excellent freeware Kxproject drivers (located at http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/). They will actually identify your card correctly, and also give better sound quality and many additional features Creative never bothered to make available (but which are supported by the chip on the card). This is the preferred solution since it's not to hard to install & configure these drivers.

If, however, you use Vista x64 (like I do), you're out of luck. Kxproject does not support x64 os-es. But, oh joy, I've found a solution!
Of course, on XP you could install the original drivers. But this option is more to my liking.

1. Download the driver package for the Audigy card from Creatives website
2. Open the .exe file in an archiving utility (eg. PowerArchiver), and extract the files somewhere
3. Open the extraction dir and go to the Drivers\wdm\ subdirectory
4. Open wdma_emu.inf in notepad
5. Press ctrl+F and do a search for "; Audigy, Audigy 2" (without the " of course)
6. Once you've found it, press enter, and on the next line paste
"%Audigy.DeviceDesc%=Audigy_Device,PCI\VEN_1102&DE V_0004&SUBSYS_00401102" (without " )

-- This adds the corrupted hardware id to the list of allowed model numbers for the driver installation, enabling you to install the drivers anyway. If your corrupted id is different (look for the Details > Hardware ids tab in Device manager where your card is listed) copy the line "%Audigy.DeviceDesc%=Audigy_Device,PCI\VEN_1102&DE V_0004&SUBSYS_00xxxxxx" (where xxxxxx is the number specific to your situation) instead. --

7. Repeat for the next "; Audigy, Audigy 2" line, and again, and again (so a total of 4 times). Smart people only need to do this step once, since it's only necessary for the section which applies to you ([Creative.NTX86.6] for x84 systems, [Creative.NTIA64.6] for itanium, [Creative.NTAMD64.6] for x64)
8. Save the file
9. Manually search for drivers in the device manager 'update driver' option, select the Drivers\wdm subdir and presto. Your drivers will finally install!
10. Run setup.exe located in the \Drivers subdir to tie up loose ends and complete the install.

You won't get all the creative bloatware this way (I haven't been able to fix the actual setup.exe program), but everything else will work fine and you'll be able to use your precious Audigy you paid good money for. If you want the FireWire/Gameport to work I fear you're out of luck too.. but vista wouldn't detect them for me anyway.

Good luck! You can reply or mail me (through the forum) if anything is unclear. And, in closing: shame on you, Creative.

Never thought this thread would be that long, but now, for something different.....
Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman.

Reply 16 of 20, by Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman

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So I have unknown (yellow question mark) Audio Device on High Definition Audio Bus, with the following hardware IDs.

HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_1002&DEV_AA01&SUBSYS_00AA0100&REV1003
HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_1002&DEV_AA01&SUBSYS_00AA0100

Doesn't look like Creative audio device, does it?

Never thought this thread would be that long, but now, for something different.....
Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman.

Reply 18 of 20, by Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman

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Darn. So the Audigy doesn't even appear in Device Manager.

Never thought this thread would be that long, but now, for something different.....
Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman.