Auzentech X-Meridian and game support

@Per, Have you considered changing your Opamps? I tried three different type this week. I will have a mini chip review for the X-Meridian guys. It is really hard to judge what you hear becasue sound is subjective. So I hesitate to use words like "warm" "tight" "bright" etc. I personally am sticking with the 2107's but I may do another test with the 2227's they were nice also.
Not trying to get off topic, you didn't answer the question though

 

Donnie27; FYI, here is a premade search link for you, it searches for SCP which is an acronym the Creative customers have come up with "Snap Crackle Pop."
The other word is Intel, which is a company that happens to have quite a bit of say in the PCI spec... Now see what happens when you search for them on the Creative forums? You get hits! Oops! (If you leave out the Intel part and only search for SCP you get 866 hits. Please read all those and then tell me the issue is with nVidia, SIS, VIA, Intel and AMD. And not Creative...

http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/search?submitted=true&q=intel+AND+scp

 

Since my DTT3500 speakers do not have 5.1 analog input but only 4.0 I don't want to try analog...

There is more issues, my DTT3500 speakers are old and sound like crap when connected via analog (to both my Audigy2 or the X-Meridian...) lots of crackle and ****... Probably Cambridge used some crap capacitor brand and they have now vented, might take a look some day when I'm bored... And also mod it with another analog input so I can get 5.1 analog...

I did kinda write this in a post above on this page, but it got lost in the flamewar

 

I don't think that you need the addon board, if you are can, the connector for the board is there, take some time to learn the pin configuration and I think you can make an adaptor yourself.

 

I know what SCP is LOL! Look, if post more to you about it, it will sound like a flame. Since the mod already stepped in, I'll not bother I visit the Creative forums, was just reading about Problems with CoH (Company of Heros). So if some guy runs 15 games and one causes problems, is it Creative's fault, right?

Let's see, I have

Antec 550W True Power 2.0 SLI
Lian Li 7B Case Black
Gigabyte GA-965P DS3---
Creative X-Fi sound card
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600@3GHz with Scythe Ninja Plus Cooler
GSkill DDR2-800 F2-6400CL4D-2GBPK 2GB of course.
ATI Radeon X1800XT 256MB version
Lite-On Combo SHC 52S7K SATA
Lite-On DVDRW LH-20A-1H 1A Lightscribe ATAPI-IDE
2 X WD2500KS 16MB HDD
WindowsXP SP-2
MS Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 MS Lazer Mouse 6000
Pioneer VSX-D711
Infinity SM-120 front
Bose 301 rear
Sony Center
10" 200W Custom Sub

So the drivers worked right out the box for me. I installed about 10 since Christmas, no hangs on any of the systems. Even on a nForce 2 with a A-XP 1700+.

Do you understand how many of these cards have been sold? I had Zero problems on my A8N SLI but it is not overclocked.

 

I've already bought the components needed to mod it (a relay, some resistors and the connector itself )

But as I said above I'm lazy too

 

Donnie27; well, I don't think the people on Creative forums or these forums that have SCP issues are very helped by your comment that your system works fine

That was pretty much my point with starting this discusstion with you fom the beginning; there are allot of people with issues, more than what would be considered normal. Yet you are saying there are no problems, that was what I and most others here had a problem with

 

Why not look at who's NOT having problems and try to figure out why? Yet you have folks here pissed when I talked about Weak platforms. Hell, high Overclocking might look cool, but it kills PCI cards and computers. I've been overclocking since I ran a 100MH at 133MHz, when it died I didn't blame anyone but myself. Saw two others kill X-Fis with extreme overclocks and one not locking the FSB! Want to bet who they blamed?

Your problem has just as much to do with your Chipset than your sound card.
XMeridian may be a better fit since it has much less hardware to start with. Install all of the Motherboard's software if you want to see bad drivers?

You told the other guy something like, pulled card and the problems stopped. I switched the card from one Asus 939 board to another Asus 939 and the problem stopped. I saw it as the motherboard.

 

People who don't like Creative cards and/or drivers. Probably have very good reason for it. People don't just say I will hate Creative Labs today. There are specific reason for it. Your not gonna change anybody's mind by saying well if you had this mobo or when I was using this I changed to this and the issue went away see it's not the card. It just won't work. You have your opinion and others have theirs. Everybody has a opinion. Why do you care if people don't like Creative labs or not? it is their opinion based on experience. Not trying to start a argument, I am just curious?

 

The problem don't exist with other sound cards on the same "weak" platforms. I know that you would say that this is because other sound cards don't use a hardware processor, only Creative's cards have it. This might be true but think this way, would someone who is going to buy a new PC choose a sound card first? I think about a CPU first, then mobo, ram, GPU and sound cards are normally the last thing people would choose because most mobo today already have an onboard sound, if Creative's cards can't play nice with all platforms, I don't think that it is a good thing to them. Did you buy your system because you want to use it for X-Fi or did you buy your X-Fi to use it on your system?

 

*1. Not my opinion but a fact.

I research ALL the parts of my computers before I build them=P I'm sorry I don't or can't go alone with what I see as Bull-spit. But as you saw I tend to agree and disagree honestly as I can. I agreed with you when it wasn't POPULAR to do on the [H]. I too am sick of being misquoted. Where in the hell did I say X-Fi played back music better?

I had the X-Fi before I bought my C2D. It was installed without problems on my Asus A8N SLI as I already said. I didn't keep the A8N 32 SLI because it had other glitches besides the sound card. NONE of nVidia's Software worked with that board was hell getting the ATI video cards, RAID, NIC-software, Sound, IDE drivers all sucked. My other system is using MS Drivers, sheesh! VIA and nVidia motherboard users bitching about drivers?

So I read stuff like what folks are saying here and think what a Crock of Scheisse! I have 5 computers in my Home. I tested another X-Fi in an old HP 744v with AM37 Sc-462/2100+ and the damed thing worked. The others it ran in is a Gigabyte i850E, IC7-G, and my i965. So the card sucks and the it has bad drivers why again? Hell, I installed it on the AM37 to try and show that that motherboard sucked LOL! I was wrong.

Being called the crap I was called, is why others don't post here! They warned me this would happen two weeks ago

 

If that specific reason wrong or misplaced, it should be corrected. Not just blindly followed.

I have complaints about the size of the driver install of all Creative Cards. But the Drivers work. They work on 20 different chipsets (more if you count revisions) and I saw problems with nVidia's Newer 16X SLI that shipped AFTER X-Fi. I've seen these or they were rare with the 8X SLI, not just mine, many. So no, I can't agree with anyone, not just you, talking about bad drivers.

If the other guy is even talking about a combination of the X-Fi and the 16X SLI, then I more than likely agree. But trying to say the card alone is the problem is not right, opinion or not.

Audigy #1 has terrible drivers, the unified Audigy 2 through 4 dated Oct-9-06 work and are running on the A64 on the other side of my computer room right not. BTW, my DAD died almost 47 years ago.

 

What would you call this? A perfect driver or a strong platform? I don't like playing the blaming games, if my X-Fi couldn't play nice on my system, I would throw it away, I'm not desperate to use a Creative's card, Creative like to make people think that they desperately need a Creative's product so if the product doesn't work on a platform, people need to change their platform. Now you could say that you changed to C2D because of your X-Fi but if Intel doesn't came out with C2D yet, would you dump your AMD+nVidia system and get a Pentium D system just for your X-Fi? I would rather have a better CPU than having a hyped "sound hardware processor", if their "hardware processor" couldn't play nice, they should just use a software based EAX, not like their "hardware processor" will help much in real world either. When a review shows a real world situation, you will bash the review and you like to see an exagerated performance from the "hardware processor" more right?:flip: I've had enough with Creative's marketing.

 

I'd rather have better hardware as well. IMHO, i965 and C2D AKA Conroe, is better hardware than anything AMD and nVidia ships=P I don't have to have X-Fi, it just fits what I've used in the past. You of all folks know as I told you, I liked my MX-300 better than the AWE, the SQ-2500 better than the SBLive and my TB Santa Cruz better than Audigy 1, that I still think sucks.

Like the guy that started the thread, if X-Fi or any Creative card had given me problems, I'd have dumped it=P Band loyalty not only sucks, it's pretty stupid. All marketing sucks FWIW!

 

If it means anything to ya', I only installed the whole "Creative Bloatware" to show a buddy with a system similar to yours that it worked. He ended up getting a b-Enspirer. But two other buds admitted that that was the first time they'd seen all the software work. They were surprised at how fast it ran. Too bad most of the reviewers are using antiquated AMD based systems. Even my 3500+ runs it pretty well, the software loves Conroe If there were a glitch with this chipset and processor, I quickly dump the sound card. Fortunately that's not the case.

 

You didn't answer my question yet Donnie27.

 

There's recently a newer patch for World of Warcraft, 2.03 (January the 9th, 2007):

EU 2.03 patch: http://www.gamershell.com/news/35469.html

US 2.03 patch: http://www.gamershell.com/news/35465.html

.

edit: now also 2.04 patch for World of Warcraft is available: World of Warcraft patch version 2.0.4 is here! Players can simply log into the World of Warcraft game client to obtain the latest patch. (nothing mentioned about fixing sound problem).


Good luck!

 

CTman; I'm already running it...

And it didn't fix the issue... I was really hoping it would when I read the changelog a week ago... But I'm not alone, read Blizzards "support" forums and you will understand

 

By the way, your onboard sound (Realtek 850) does't have the sound problems with World of Warcraft? Or is it the same?

You can try to install the realtek 850 sound onboard and use it as a secondary soundcard; it sounds terrible (and mine even lost the front speaker) when comparing it to the X-Meridian. But if it works, then you got at least surround sound in the game, despite the decrease in sound quality (well, as last resort).

Any way, can you use the dolby prologic II feature of the X-Meridian for games like World of Warcraft? If it's possible, it will not be 'real' , but 'fake' surround sound?


Good luck!

 

Back on Topic, Remeber you could always use your old CL card as effects procesor. If you could only get stereo from this game. Switch out to headphones and use Dolby Headphone. Try that out. I would think it would be better then plain stereo.

I agree with CT, you can have more then one card working in your rig. I run Two, AGL runs two quite a few of us have dual soundcards running. You can hook one card to the other if you have the right cards. Then there is no need to swap out speakers or headphones.