Sound Blaster Z - When the bass hits, the treble fades a bit

Discussion in 'Soundcards, Speakers HiFI & File formats' started by biglilsteve, Sep 1, 2014.

  1. biglilsteve

    biglilsteve Guest

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    Hello, everyone. This is my first post on this forum, nice to be here!

    My SBZ sounds nice and clear for the most part. However, I notice that when there is any amount of bass in a song that I am listening to, the mid and highs of the song get quieter. This makes the music as a whole just sound weaker when bass comes in.

    I had a PCI SB X-Fi Fatal1ty prior to this card that did not have this issue at all, using the same speakers. It pounded the bass out and everything else still sounded strong and clear.

    Please tell me someone here has experienced this before...
     
  2. applejack

    applejack Master Guru

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    I'd start by ruling out SBZ features, such as SBX Pro Studio, Equalizer, etc... just turn it all off, or set Stereo Direct in speakers configuration instead.
    if using digital/DTS, also disable DTS:Neo PC.

    test with lossless formats (e.g: FLAC, not MP3).
     
  3. biglilsteve

    biglilsteve Guest

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    That's one of the first things I did. I played with and disabled all features and the issue persisted.

    So I have an update...just completely uninstalled the Creative software and I'm running off of generic Windows drivers. The issue is gone. I'm going to try to install the latest 2014 driver/software and see if things improve.
     
  4. NAZ2222

    NAZ2222 Master Guru

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    I also have a SBZ and the creative drivers gave me a bad sound... so after a little search I found the PAX drivers for the SBZ and they never left :) Look for it on Hardware Heaven, at least I think that's were he post them ;)

    PS: I also had SBX disabled, but after recently using the Crystaliser for a while, I concluded that it makes things sound better. At this moment I use 22% Surround and 67% Crystaliser.
     
    Last edited: Sep 1, 2014

  5. biglilsteve

    biglilsteve Guest

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    Thank you!

    Yeah even besides the bass issue...the sound is just not quite right. I can't put it into words. I'll give these PAX drivers a shot now.
     
  6. biglilsteve

    biglilsteve Guest

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    I installed the latest v1.20 PAX driver, but when I open the control panel it says the device is not supported.

    I check Device Manager and it still shows the sound card as being a generic "High Definition Audio Device".
     
  7. NAZ2222

    NAZ2222 Master Guru

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    Do this. Go to the PAX driver folder>audio>program files>Creative>Sound Blater Z>Program, then run setup.exe and restart. PAX driver usualy needs the generic Creative driver to be installed first. ;)
     
  8. NAZ2222

    NAZ2222 Master Guru

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    After you install and restart you must confirm that the tweaks also have been installed. Go system32 folder in Windows and check if the .ini's are there( in the PAX driver in the same folder as the setup.exe that I indicated above, there is another folder named "driver" the .ini's come from there. Compare and see if they have all been installed), if not just copy them. SysWow64 also needs the .ini's. ;)
     

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