Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi series Driver 2.18.0004 - 7/30/08

well these look & sound great drivers on my 64 bit xp pro sp2 ;-)

cheers for the links folks....

 

finaly can attach my ps3 with spdif dolby digital decoding xD.
got tired off switching optical cable each time just when i wanted to use headset

 

Up until now I haven't found any bugs in the drivers except for the volume reset. These drivers are pretty good and so is the console launcher.
I'm on xp32. So I would say you should give these drivers a try

 

Is this new X-Fi driver WHQL for XP?

 

new console launcher is a piece of fcking ****..

none of your settings save when you reboot your computer. everything defaults back.. includign volume. speaker settings, etc.

vista x64

 

thats issue when you try install the DDL from daniel K.
use driver cleaner.
then install 2.18.0004
nothing to do with new console least i dont got that issue ;>

 

Well, after much hassle, I just decided to drop the damned X-Fi Fatality FPS/Plat. under Vista 64...

I ordered the Auzentech X-Fi Prelude 7.1...Man, it was, and is, a more than worthy investment, considering I paid $300 for the damn X-Fi when it came out, the Auzen costed me $200...

First, DDL. I don't know where everyone comes off talking about DDL, Creative has never officially enabled or supported DDL under Vista 64, or any other OS's that I've seen. Dan-K be f*cked for the total chaos he created, hang that Will-Hung pile of rubber dog s*it out of Hong Kong, by his balls, then leave him that way for a month while everyone publicly flogs him, then slowly dismember him, starting with the fingernails and toenails, and slowly rip out each and every strand of hair, then slowly continue from there...Yessss....:evil:

Auzen is the only 'official' user of DDL or the DTS version of DDL, and for reasons that escape me, Creative has never supported those awesome features.

I have two stereos, a relatively weak-kneed Creative Inspire 5500 Digital, and a very high-end Kenwood amp with JBL stadium-model speakers...Without DDL on either, well, things would SUCK.

It was a huge difference between running that damned Creative-branded X-Fi on the Inspires, and running the Auzen X-Fi with DDL. Now I can get full 5.1 WITHOUT needing EAX or f*cked-in-the-F8cking-head Alchemy wrappers for Vista 64.

Alchemy is the worst tossed-off pile of gobs*itte since the AWE32 back in the DOS era. Alchemy has sound pauses, sounds routinely cut-out for no reason, and try using Alchemy with headphones, it sounds like someone is scratch-rapping a damned disc-megaphone

Yes, I know DanK tried to overcome Creative's shortsightedness, but in the end, all he did was cause Auzentech customers to register their emails just to download new drivers, and in turn, Creative got just as pissed off at the same time.

After being forced to only use Creative-branded audio boards since the damned 1980's, I'm just damned glad that Auzen came along to fix the huge-assed oversights that Creative routinely makes.

I don't doubt these drivers fixed some issues, but until we can use DDL to entirely by-pass f*cked-up Alchemy in Vista 64, well, Creative can suck, swallow, choke, and die. Very. Slowly.

I know M$ forced Creative to use some half-baked pile of crap like Alchemy, but the least they could do is FIX Alchemy's screwed-up audio conversion rates and so on, and stop trying to mess so much with the driver files, and FIX ALCHEMY. That way people who do not HAVE Auzen boards, can actually get reasonable 5.1 support in non-OpenAL games/apps!

Sorry for the rant, but I'm tired of seeing Creative making mistakes that they could easily avoid if they pulled their collective heads' out once in a decade

 

I never installed the stuff from Daniel K

 

Ok, never been overly happy with my card,
Hope in entertainment mode crackles are now gone (doubt it).

Wanted to try spdif and use ddl etc, but it appears the only real benefit maybe so we can use single lead... I have a decent amp and it does seem to do a better job at decoding than the soundcards decoder,

Cant do any harm to try it i suppose.

I disconected my front bay though to try to fault find crackling and havent reconnected it yet though... So maybe now is the time to reconnect the spdif?

Downloading now.

 

hm strange mine says its dated 15.7.08 and its not whql (its - 6.0.1.1361 version; windows xp32), that's the first thing i noticed when i installed them. I did test beta drivers but they suck as hell, so reverted back to march drivers (completely uninstalled everything).


edit: lol they're whql alright it was the midi WDM bus that ain't whql.

really good set of drivers!

 

Now they come out with 1.2 of Alchemy...

Yet, it STILL has the same problems as it's always had from the start...What an amazing shock ....

DDL/DTS Interactive (or whatever the DTS version of DDL is called, ugh), is where it's at.

If you have a $200+ sound board, it's likely you have some fairly decent Dolby Digital speakers (coax or optical), or a good set of headphones (I have some Sennheiser's back from the '80's that were like $1500 back then, and they still sound better than any of the new products I've tested out from Sennheiser today, hehe)...

Look at it this way: If you spent $200~ on a board, why gimp yourself with cheapass speakers/phones?

I wish Creative would stop trying to make software run-arounds like Alchemy. If M$ is unwilling or unable to make Vista 64's sound layer programming compatible to what XP uses, then they should just stop playing by M$'s rules and buy DDL.

Auzen is really gimping Creative these days, at least if you are an enthusiast or an audio creation/editing/mixing addict

When Auzen offers boards that are $100 less than the last Creative-branded board I bought, and they don't need half-assed software tricks to get proper 5.1, well, I'd consider that a huge step forward. Creative keeps taking steps backwards.

Ah, hell, someday Auzen will be like Firefox, the enthusiasts and people who know something about what they are buying, will buy Auzen than buy Creative...

 

Tested these (2.18.0004) out for a while now. And I can say finally that Creative have released a driver worthy of not being called an alpha. Sound quality is good, about as good as the 2.18.0000s and above all previous drivers. Unlike the 2.18.0000 these drivers don't throw a hissy fit and crash games or refuse to play some sound while playing other fine.

Only gripe I have is that volume control on each mode seem independent. Meaning that if I accidentally leave the volume high when switching from say gamer mode and drop the volume in entertainment mode. After switching back the volume will again be high and sometimes cause the neighbours to curse in the early hours of the morning. Ironically I didn't have this problem on the 2.18.0000s but did on the 2.14.0001s.

Still, this driver gets my thumbs up. Did make the treble a little too revealing (due to LM4562s) but nothing a little EQ adjustment couldn't fix.

 

Ok had a little play with them last night.

Vistas speech synethesiser software, now works again.
My hauupauge tv cards sound works properley again now.

However still some crackling in entertainment mode....

So for me keepers as the + points just about outweigh the - points.

Old equipment i also believe in some cases is far superior to newer. It appears gone are the days when equipment was built to a quality not a cost.

My old A and R Cambridge amp i had 20 years ago (wish i hadnt sold it) whilst not 6.1 like my current one, on sound quality kicked ass compared to my current 6.1 Sony one.....

 

Installed on Vista 64. Good drivers, work fine. Beta was crashing my system and no sound after reboot, these work fine. Recommended.

 

try driver cleaning drivers and reinstall.
well least i dont got those issues ;>

 

Crap, new ALchemy doesn't seem to work with CS:S. I just get garbled sounds with echo like distortion.

 

Uhm. You still need alchemy with the Auzen Prelude if you want eax in games.

DTS/DDL just encodes it for the spdif output, doesn't do DDL/DTS, I don't see how alchemy would do that for the Creative X-Fis.

 

Anyone else getting strange distorted sounds when you alt+tab down games?

 

If I'm playing games, while running WMP or MP Classic in the backgrounds, yes.

I alt-tab to change album or something and the game's audio will distort -like the squeal from the 2.18.000x betas. Restart will fix. :3eyes:

EDIT: Oh and I don't play CS:S but new ALchemy doesn't work properly in Team Fortress 2 for me either!

 

alchemey doesnt work becuase its not supposed to work with that game

Go read up about alchemey and the reason to use it