Did Creative foul up the Vista Audigy drivers?

[AmberClad]

I just made the switch over to Vista, and I'm noticing a distinct drop in audio quality with my Audigy 2 ZS. The sound is tinny and slightly muffled. (yes, I have the latest drivers installed)

I tried the Realtek HD Audio with Winamp and DVD movies, and that actually sounds noticeably better, essentially the same quality as the Audigy in XP.

Should I just ditch the Audigy? Is this a known issue with a workaround?

 

[Schadenfroh]

Disable CMSS in your control panel.

 

[AmberClad]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
Disable CMSS in your control panel.

Wow...that actually worked...

No more tinny, craptastic sound. What can I say? I'm not used to having to disable features to get things working . Any info on what CMSS is and why it actually degrades the audio quality?

Thanks for the help, btw :thumbsup:.

EDIT: I did a little bit of Googling -- it sounds like it's supposed to enhance/create a 3D audio effect. But for whatever reason, it makes my ~$90 headphones sound like a pair of dollar store headphones and actually lowers the surround sound quality :frown:. Probably disabled by default in XP.

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
Disable CMSS in your control panel.

..that kills rear channels for 4+ speaker systems (music-wise)

 

[Nothinman]

Creative fouls up just about everything that they touch...

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: AmberClad

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
Disable CMSS in your control panel.

Wow...that actually worked...

No more tinny, craptastic sound. What can I say? I'm not used to having to disable features to get things working . Any info on what CMSS is and why it actually degrades the audio quality?

Thanks for the help, btw :thumbsup:.

EDIT: I did a little bit of Googling -- it sounds like it's supposed to enhance/create a 3D audio effect. But for whatever reason, it makes my ~$90 headphones sound like a pair of dollar store headphones and actually lowers the surround sound quality :frown:. Probably disabled by default in XP.

Unfortunately without CMSS you won't get spatialization; personally I find that without it, it becomes hard to listen to anything with cans since the audio sounds like it's coming from the wrong place and I'm not hearing any sound from one channel in the opposite ear and vice-versa. As you stated, you also lose all 3D audio/surround sound unless you're using another processor such as Dolby Headphone (I'm assuming you're using something like this to get surround sound in the first place since you complain that CMSS reduces the surround sound quality).

And no, it's enabled by default in XP too.

 

[Mem]

Personally I leave CMSS on,try adjusting bass and treble via Sounds Icon in Control Panel,can also change it to 24 bit there,think default setting is 16 bit,I bumped mine up to 24 bit studio quality(worth doing if you got a 24 bit sound card).

I also use the free universal Creative Audigy Alchemy wrapper for my older games like Icewind Dale ,KOTOR/KOTOR 2 etc... which works great.

Alchemy is good for getting back surround sound /EAX in the older Direct Sound games,also with Vista x64 you probably need to enter the details in Alchemy game folder for the game in question ,since you have a Program Files x68 folder ... ie (C:\Program Files (x86)\LucasArts\SWKotOR2) so you would just enter add that in Alchemy game path box for a default install of KOTOR2 unless you installed it somewhere else.

Free Universal Audigy/Live Alchemy wrapper.

 

[jonmcc33]

I personally find CMSS to be disturbing to listen to and always disable it.

 

[AmberClad]

Originally posted by: Mem
Personally I leave CMSS on,try adjusting bass and treble via Sounds Icon in Control Panel,can also change it to 24 bit there,think default setting is 16 bit,I bumped mine up to 24 bit studio quality(worth doing if you got a 24 bit sound card).

I also use the free universal Creative Audigy Alchemy wrapper for my older games like Icewind Dale ,KOTOR/KOTOR 2 etc... which works great.

Alchemy is good for getting back surround sound /EAX in the older Direct Sound games,also with Vista x64 you probably need to enter the details in Alchemy game folder for the game in question ,since you have a Program Files x68 folder ... ie (C:\Program Files (x86)\LucasArts\SWKotOR2) so you would just enter add that in Alchemy game path box for a default install of KOTOR2 unless you installed it somewhere else.

Free Universal Audigy/Live Alchemy wrapper.

For whatever reason, my system just doesn't seem to jive well with either CMSS or ALchemy. I tried them with both of my headphones (pretty decent quality stuff), so it's not an isolated issue. This morning, I started up Oblivion, both with and without ALchemy. With ALchemy enabled, all the sound except the lowest frequencies were nearly inaudible, so all I could hear was heavy bass sounds. With ALchemy disabled, it sounded like it should and positional audio still seemed to work fine. Haven't tried any other games yet (just got Oblivion GOTYe, so I've been spending a fair amount of time with it ).

 

[Tarrant64]

Since my upgrade to Vista my Audigy card has never worked right.

Disabling CMSS did work though, but I no longer could use everything I wanted. I ended up putting it into another system still running XP.

 

[jonmcc33]

Originally posted by: Tarrant64
Since my upgrade to Vista my Audigy card has never worked right.

It never will either. Turns a $200 Audigy2 ZS Platinum into a non-functioning $20 sound card.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: AmberClad

Originally posted by: Mem
Personally I leave CMSS on,try adjusting bass and treble via Sounds Icon in Control Panel,can also change it to 24 bit there,think default setting is 16 bit,I bumped mine up to 24 bit studio quality(worth doing if you got a 24 bit sound card).

I also use the free universal Creative Audigy Alchemy wrapper for my older games like Icewind Dale ,KOTOR/KOTOR 2 etc... which works great.

Alchemy is good for getting back surround sound /EAX in the older Direct Sound games,also with Vista x64 you probably need to enter the details in Alchemy game folder for the game in question ,since you have a Program Files x68 folder ... ie (C:\Program Files (x86)\LucasArts\SWKotOR2) so you would just enter add that in Alchemy game path box for a default install of KOTOR2 unless you installed it somewhere else.

Free Universal Audigy/Live Alchemy wrapper.

For whatever reason, my system just doesn't seem to jive well with either CMSS or ALchemy. I tried them with both of my headphones (pretty decent quality stuff), so it's not an isolated issue. This morning, I started up Oblivion, both with and without ALchemy. With ALchemy enabled, all the sound except the lowest frequencies were nearly inaudible, so all I could hear was heavy bass sounds. With ALchemy disabled, it sounded like it should and positional audio still seemed to work fine. Haven't tried any other games yet (just got Oblivion GOTYe, so I've been spending a fair amount of time with it ).

I'm pretty sure Oblivion loses all of its 3D sound abilities under Vista without Alchemy due to the DirectSound rewrite. That may be all in your head.

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: jonmcc33

Originally posted by: Tarrant64
Since my upgrade to Vista my Audigy card has never worked right.

It never will either. Turns a $200 Audigy2 ZS Platinum into a non-functioning $20 sound card.

Audigy 2 has poor vista drivers, yes, but look what nvidia did with nforce3, they totally dropped the support.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
Audigy 2 has poor vista drivers, yes, but look what nvidia did with nforce3, they totally dropped the support.

I have both

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
Audigy 2 has poor vista drivers, yes, but look what nvidia did with nforce3, they totally dropped the support.

I have both

me too on same second rig

 

[nerp]

I'm really beginning to believe that the days of consumer add-in sound cards are quickly coming to an end.

For pro audio production, there will always be a market, but for consumer cards, bad customer experience and the increasing quality of onboard solutions spells doom for Creative.

It's a long time coming, if you ask me.

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: nerp
I'm really beginning to believe that the days of consumer add-in sound cards are quickly coming to an end.

For pro audio production, there will always be a market, but for consumer cards, bad customer experience and the increasing quality of onboard solutions spells doom for Creative.

It's a long time coming, if you ask me.

Creative is already operating at loss - no surprises there.

However, cheap solutions based on software is not the way I want to go. The onboard sound cost is in few dollars range, for that much you can't get decent hardware. Even if company has issues, their hardware is much better than onboard in every single way.

 

[Nothinman]

However, cheap solutions based on software is not the way I want to go. The onboard sound cost is in few dollars range, for that much you can't get decent hardware. Even if company has issues, their hardware is much better than onboard in every single way.

The problem is that for most people, including myself, don't give a rat's ass about sound hardware and the onboard crap is good enough.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: nerp
I'm really beginning to believe that the days of consumer add-in sound cards are quickly coming to an end.

For pro audio production, there will always be a market, but for consumer cards, bad customer experience and the increasing quality of onboard solutions spells doom for Creative.

It's a long time coming, if you ask me.

Yep, and its almost as if creative is trying as hard as possible to make sound blaster irrelevant as fast as possible with crap drivers.

I sold my X-fi the other day, and can't say I miss it.

Considering the way they've held back gaming audio for the past 10 years or so, I'd love to see nothing more than the entire company crash and burn. Without that sue happy, over patented waste of space around, and with a zillion CPU cores around the corner, I'm hoping to hear some good things in software very soon.

 

[jonmcc33]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

However, cheap solutions based on software is not the way I want to go. The onboard sound cost is in few dollars range, for that much you can't get decent hardware. Even if company has issues, their hardware is much better than onboard in every single way.

The problem is that for most people, including myself, don't give a rat's ass about sound hardware and the onboard crap is good enough.

No way is onboard even acceptable. Too much interference so the sound quality sucks. Everything I've heard from onboard has been quite bad. Only if the sound is on a daughterboard does it begin to sound decent.

 

[AmberClad]

Originally posted by: jonmcc33
No way is onboard even acceptable. Too much interference so the sound quality sucks. Everything I've heard from onboard has been quite bad. Only if the sound is on a daughterboard does it begin to sound decent.

Methinks someone said something similar about onboard LAN vs NIC cards, once upon a time .

CPUs and GPUs, there will be room for growth for a long time to come. We haven't even come close to the point where even a discrete GPU can deliver photo-realism at human eye resolution and framerates. CPUs -- there's always going to be that demand for more and more computing power.

Now sound, on the other hand, I just don't really see where the future lies as far as innovation in that area. You're going to get to the point where human hearing is going to be the limiting factor, kind of like how connection speed is now the limiting factor for network speed, not LAN hardware.

Anyways, I think we're going to get to the point where you'll find premium sound chipsets on motherboards that will rival today's X-Fi. Might not be all the far off, if the lack of innovation from Creative is any indication.

 

[Nothinman]

No way is onboard even acceptable. Too much interference so the sound quality sucks. Everything I've heard from onboard has been quite bad. Only if the sound is on a daughterboard does it begin to sound decent.

For the little bit that I use sound for I can't tell the difference so yes, on-board is more than acceptable.

 

[jonmcc33]

Originally posted by: AmberClad
Methinks someone said something similar about onboard LAN vs NIC cards, once upon a time .

CPUs and GPUs, there will be room for growth for a long time to come. We haven't even come close to the point where even a discrete GPU can deliver photo-realism at human eye resolution and framerates. CPUs -- there's always going to be that demand for more and more computing power.

Now sound, on the other hand, I just don't really see where the future lies as far as innovation in that area. You're going to get to the point where human hearing is going to be the limiting factor, kind of like how connection speed is now the limiting factor for network speed, not LAN hardware.

Anyways, I think we're going to get to the point where you'll find premium sound chipsets on motherboards that will rival today's X-Fi. Might not be all the far off, if the lack of innovation from Creative is any indication.

Um, there's a HUGE difference when talking about LAN vs audio. With onboard audio you have distortion from being on the motherboard. It's on every single onboard audio I have ever heard. Usually takes wearing headphones to hear it though. Like I said, the better option is to put it on a daughterboard.

We're not talking about performance, we're talking audio distortion.

 

[jonmcc33]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

No way is onboard even acceptable. Too much interference so the sound quality sucks. Everything I've heard from onboard has been quite bad. Only if the sound is on a daughterboard does it begin to sound decent.

For the little bit that I use sound for I can't tell the difference so yes, on-board is more than acceptable.

Then get your ears checked because there is a difference.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: jonmcc33

Originally posted by: Nothinman

No way is onboard even acceptable. Too much interference so the sound quality sucks. Everything I've heard from onboard has been quite bad. Only if the sound is on a daughterboard does it begin to sound decent.

For the little bit that I use sound for I can't tell the difference so yes, on-board is more than acceptable.

Then get your ears checked because there is a difference.

I think it depends on what onboard sound you are listening to and speakers etc...onboard sound has come a long way over the years, the high end onboard sound is good enough for most people,I remember being quite happy with my nforce 2 onboard sound (which now sounds dated compared to a lot of high end onboard sound motherboards).