You Down with Audigy?
I love upgrades – especially when they work. Right now I'm listening to my MC Hawking MP3s on test hardware: Creative Inspire 6.1 6600 speakers plugged into a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum card. Physics has never sounded so good. Hell, even the little 'klack' that Windows spits back when I click a link sounds better. Yeah, it's like night and day compared to what I was using before (old Cambridge Soundworks 5.1 speakers and on-board SoundMax audio). At first, I couldn't even get my system to recognize the card – at all. See, I swapped out my FireWire card for this PCI upgrade (and put it in the same slot). Moving up one beige bay resulted in harmony. I installed the driver set and installed (pretty much) all the software on the installation CD. Four random lock-ups later, I realized that Creative's software is total crap. Yeah, it's all junk on XP. Hell, even their wimpy little volume control panel takes four seconds to load on a P4 3.06 GHz with 1GB of RAM. The UI is all over the map, too. Yikes. Solution: I'm avoiding their code at all costs. I wanted to listen to their DVD audio disc, but… even that doesn't work properly. Well, at least everything else sounds fantastic!
On a semi-unrelated note, I've been having issues with burning ISOs in Nero with my DRU-500A (even after flashing it to the latest firmware). It keeps telling me that there's an “Invalid field in parameter” (for the Sony drive) and that the device “Could not perform start of Disc-at-Once.” Uh… okay? So, what am I supposed to do about this? Use another computer until I figure out what's wrong, apparently. When technology works like it's supposed to, it's great. But when one niggling detail asserts itself, the entire day seems to be ruined. Perhaps things will be better after a cup of salvation. Yes, I'm talking about that which flows from the mouth of god himself – Peet's. Will the blend bring happiness back to my life? You betcha.
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10 Comments
Anonymous
March 23rd, 2003
at 11:31am
Did you try the Windows Media Audio 9 Pro 5.1 clips @ 192kbps? See link.
Anonymous
March 23rd, 2003
at 11:31am
I love my Audigy 2 and use the DVD-Audio player all the time! One can even see my puny stack of DVD-Audio discs sitting atop my case in my recent “desk” picture at my site… Queen, ELP, Foreigner, and The Eagles. Blue Man Group is hiding in the living room, scared to come out. :)
Hope you get the DVD-A player working, cause it's great!
Anonymous
March 23rd, 2003
at 12:58pm
Hey Chris,
The SB cards have this thing about only using certain interupts etc, which cause major problems with putting them in certain slots. I had the same problem with my Live! card, I switched some interupts with other hardware in the device manager and things ironed out. As far as Creative's software, it's really only good for people who like to play with the “effects” in their games or playing with a microphone, and not worth installing. heheh Course, you know that now, sorry you went through the grief ;o)
As far as your Sony drive problem, check their website (if you havnt already), sometimes they have their own drivers that sets up the device as a different piece of hardware on the system. I dont know why they do things like that but it couldnt hurt to check if you havnt already. ;o)
Hope ya get things working! :o)
Anonymous
March 23rd, 2003
at 1:19pm
Chris, I've found that slightly older versions of Nero (5.5.10) REALLY don't like the 1.0g firmware for the DRU500a. I tried upgrading to the latest Nero (5.5.10.15) and they began to work fine together again. Hope that helps.
Anonymous
March 23rd, 2003
at 3:11pm
Chris, I think Creative had a warning of some sort on their site for those running winXp regarding the Audigy 2. That's what pushed me towards the Extigy. The irritating thing is that there's some latency when seeking through music. Must be the USB interface, but I'll be d*mned if I choose my on-board for that.
Anonymous
March 23rd, 2003
at 11:15pm
http://dmzweb3.europe.creative.com/SRVS/CGI-BIN/WEBCGI.EXE/,/?St=29,E=0000000000024993735,K=2974,Sxi=14,Case=obj(6097),VARSET=centric:312,Kb=creative_cli_en
Have you checked Creative's knowledge base regarding your problems with DVD Audio w/ Audigy 2 Platinum?
Anonymous
March 23rd, 2003
at 11:55pm
I'm with Andrew – you might want to try upgrading Nero first. It's free, after all.
Anonymous
March 24th, 2003
at 9:34am
Here is a link to a set of alternate drivers that look promising. I haven't had the chance to try them out yet tho…
http://kxproject.spb.ru/faq.php?language=en
Anonymous
March 27th, 2003
at 9:35am
As far as I can tell, wBlogger doesn't have a place for Trackback pings, so I am pinging you here.
BTW, any chance you could darken the color of your side scrollbar background just a tad so the “slider” is visible?
Anonymous
March 30th, 2003
at 1:15pm
I had interrupt problems with all my Creative cards. I went with a Santa Cruz instead and have been very happy with it. Oh yeah, as you found out, NEVER install the extra software with a creative card. It's all crap. It's amazing they even get their drivers to work for an acceptable number of customers. I vowed never to buy a Creative card again after they yanked me around for over 6 months with Tech support! :-(