Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic

[Jofaba]

Re: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic

I'll know if that's true tomorrow. Tossing a 2.2ghz 3700+ in my computer, yet my 3200 is running at 2.5ghz right now. I think the difference is in stability and overclockability. So sure, I'm running at a higher frequency currently, but am suffering peformance drops because of it. And I'm having a problem going above 2.5 for multiple reasons, most of which I understand, some that I don't. However a 3700+ or 4000+ should overclock fairly easily to the 2.7+ range. I'm more familiar with processors than sound cards and mobos.

I'm almost hoping that you're right though, and that it doesn't fix my problem. Because if it doesnt, then I know that the issue somehow resides in my mobo or it's just ME. Worse case senario, I've learned a lot from this computer, and if my processor doesn't turn out to be the bottleneck, then maybe my next computer will go more smoothly (and make more sense!).

=P

[Jofaba]

Re: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic

Plumpkins! I decided to give the X-FI another try but after 45 minutes it sounds like crap again. I've done everything. I guess I'll just have to wait until Monday and call Creative, see what's up, or just give up on the concept of a sound card. This is almost as bad as getting BF2 to run at top peformance!

[Lanserschrek]

Re: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic

Plumpkins! I decided to give the X-FI another try but after 45 minutes it sounds like crap again. I've done everything. I guess I'll just have to wait until Monday and call Creative, see what's up, or just give up on the concept of a sound card. This is almost as bad as getting BF2 to run at top peformance!

Sorry to hear it's causing a whole new flavour of issues for you.

As for myself I decided to re-enable the card, it seems that if I leave the Audio settings on "High" only, sacificing the awesome sounding "Ultra-High" settings the performance degradation isn't as awful and it's pretty bearable and thus playable. However if I wanted just "High" audio settings I'd stick back in my old Audigy 2 card.

Unfortunately the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Driver 2.07.0004 driver resolved nothing from me as I was using it from the moment it came out in November on my previous pc and used it straight away on the new pc.

The thread on the Creative forums about X-Fi and BF2 performance issues is still active and some good news appears to be that Creative are releasing a new patch update within a month or so. I'll eagerly await this and see if it allows me to use "Ultra-High" settings again without making my framerate worthless.

[Jofaba]

Re: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic

My framerates are actually fine. It's sound quality. It sounds like heavy electrical interferance or non-music data being read by a music player. Have you ever had your computer try to play a text file in a music program? That's what it sounds like sometimes. It's horrible.

The weird thing is that it resets everytime I reboot or change some setting. So it'll go back to sounding fine and then get steadily worse after about an hour of playing. Last night I went into my BIOS and turned off "Power Management" (which sucks because I used to use my keyboard to turn on my computer), dropped pci latency down to 32 (have since upped it back up), and turned off Windows Plug N Play. But what's seemed to do the most good has been copying the open32.dll file from the Creative to the Battlefield 2 directory and renaming it to "BF2open32.dll", as well as putting the soundcard's software volume setting at less than 100% and using my manual volume control wheel.

My plan is to figure this out and then return both of these cards and get the Xtreme music version. For $115 at Newegg it seems like the best deal since I don't need this I/O bay. Guy at Best Buy says the actual card is the exact same, so the Xtreme is the Platinum without that bay device. However I've read conflicting reports on whether all X-FI devices have Xram or not. Everywhere says "nope", yet Creative.com DEFINES X-FI as meaning XRAM.

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edit: And something strange happened last night after I made some of those changes. I exited out of BF2. I still heard stuff happening, and it went on for a couple of minutes. It was unique, as in not a sound loop. I thought "there really MUST be xram in this because it's got a sound cache it's trying to purge. Nope, I had a Firefox window minimized that was playing a BF2 movie that had frozen a couple hours earlier and suddenly loaded lol. Turns out that movie file was also the source of the "static" noise I thought was still happening. This only affects the last changes though. The previous noises were real. I just haven't tested out the newest changes yet to see if the sound degrades. Just thought it'd be a funny story to share.

EDIT #2: screw it. I want to be able to actually play games today and this $200 card sounds like shiite. I'll give Creative a chance to help me fix it tomorrow, but after that I'm sticking with onboard sound. It may not sound as good but at least the only sounds I hear from my speakers are sounds that are supposed to be there.

EDIT #3: After going back to onboard sound, BF2 sound no longer worked. Said my hardware was incompatible regardless of the setting. Had to uninstall and reinstall. Unfortunately, I can definately notice a huge difference now that all is working again. I wish it had just worked because now I miss it, but as l ong as I can play now... =(

EDIT #4: This is a two part edit. 1) Maybe my BF2 sound problem was due to that .dll file. Roomie reminded me that I did that. It makes perfect sense. So a reinstall probably wasn't necissary. 2) I refuse to give up, regardless of how much frustration it'll cause me. I'm putting all planned upgrades on hold until I can figure out how to get a quality sound card to work properly. I'll probably order the Xtreme Music tomorrow from Newegg after talking to Creative about the problems I've had so far with the Platinum.

[N2K]

Re: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic

Man i want my card already! If i knew it was going to take this long i would of payed the $50 to get it from newegg

Creative hasnt even charged me, they said it was going to charge before it shipped.

[DieFledermaus]

Re: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic

I own the same card and ill never go back to older sound cards.

[Jofaba]

Re: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic

Well I called Creative yesterday and they suggested I uninstall BF2 (& SF), then reinstall and repatch. This also required reinstalling the card of course. They said that something in BF2 triggers a degrading process for some people.

It actually worked, for the most part. After about 2 hours of play, there was some crackling. I'm starting to think that, like everything else, there's gotta be a "sweet spot", and I'm determined to figure it out.

Some things worth noting:

1) The Xtrme Music, X-FI Platinum, and X-FI Fatal1ty are all the same card. Differences are in the front bay, some board connections, and XRAM. The Fatal1ty has 64mb, while the others (not including the Elite/Pro), have 8mb. The actual card however, is the same. I do not know if the software package is different though.

2) After playing with onboard sound for 2 days, I realized that the same crackling noise was there. It wasn't as noticable and only came out on 20+ servers with lots of action, but I was most suprised about it. I knew it was there when I was Commander (with onboard sound) when I had low FPS and an arty strike was taking place (which also sometimes led to my system restarting), so now I'm starting to think that maybe I was blaming the card a little too much.

I'm fairly comfortable with the idea of buying the Xtreme Music from Newegg this week (and returning the Platinum and Audigy 4 of course).

And last but not least, sorry for effectively turning this thread into a blog. I just figure anyone else having my problems might find what I'm going through right now to be helpful. Toodles

[Dogness]

Re: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic

And last but not least, sorry for effectively turning this thread into a blog. I just figure anyone else having my problems might find what I'm going through right now to be helpful. Toodles

I have been mulling over upgrading my Audigy2 to a Xi-Fi and your "blog" has been a great read. Thanks. :)

[Berrern]

Re: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic

I've had the X-Fi Fatal1ty for a few months now, and I still get massively impressed when I put on an old MP3 that I haven't heard since the X-Fi purchase. The music, the sounds in-game, well basically all output sounds so beautiful on this card! I could never go back to an older soundcard.

Jofaba, no worries about turning this into your own blog, I find the information useful and interesting - just as I've always found your posts :)
One piece of advice for you.. You said you copied the Openal file from windows/system32, however, it doesn't seem like you downloaded the most recent OpenAL drivers - for even better performance.

The latest OpenAL drivers fixed performance issues for a lot of people, including FPS drops, stuttering and crackling/popping noises from the speakers.
Here's the link to the executable: http://developer.creative.com/articl...&top=38&aid=46

After applying it, copy the openal.dll file to your BF2 root directory, and rename it.

I also noted a performance hit after installing my X-Fi. It decreased my FPS by around 30 on average, however updating to the newest drivers, plus updating the openAL helped a lot. I'm still not getting even close to the maximum performance from my computer, but that's due to the faulty 1.12 patch - not the X-Fi.

I'd also like to add that Creative's support has been unbelievably bad in this case. Not only do they not help the users in the 82-page long thread entitled "X-fi performance drop with battlefield2" - but they wont even acknowledge that there is a problem. Reading a few posts up though, someone mentions that they're releasing a new set of drivers or a patch soon - so I guess they've acknowledged the problem now (I havent paid much attention to the Creative forums last few weeks).
Furthermore, they still haven't released drivers for Windows x64! I upgraded to x64 about a week ago, and assumed they had drivers for it - seeing as you can select x64 as your operating system on their Downloads page. However, the drivers in there are the exact same as if you select Windows XP as your OS.

[JCFast]

Re: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic

Yeah the Creative Support sucks, they don't seem to care about this problem with BF2, thou they've worked with Dice to get full X-FI support? :)

But does everyone get this crackling sometimes when Artillery strike is nearby or if you fire the miniguns on Blackhawk? It's annoying if your volume is up and then you're firing the miniguns and the crackling nearly kills your ears?

[Jofaba]

Re: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic

Actually I commend Creative's customer support to date from personal experience. I understand what you're saying about them not responding in the forums or posting some sort of community update, but, and I hate to say this, not recognizing any problems publicly is standard buisness practice and simply good buisness. They, and if it was my company I'd do this as well, would rather have hundreds if not thousands of angry customers with problems, then appologize and tell everyone to just return the hardware and warn prospective customers that the product sucks.

Anywho, I called Creative again today. The advice they gave yesterday about reinstalling BF2 actually did help. But I attribute some of the fix to additional changes I made yesterday. As far as my limited knowledge in the field of IRQ assignment goes; I'm pretty sure ACPI resets them with each reboot, but currently both my videocard and sound card have dedicated IRQ's. That's really good. What I don't understand is why customer service still suggested turning ACPI off. All that'd do is get me dedicated slots which I already... nevermind.

But they have given tons of suggestions and it appears that the problem is getting better and better. By the time I finished last night, I had to strain to hear the crackling. It was there, but just barely. I'm pretty sure that soon I can kill it all together.

Another interesting thing I learned is that, at least the people I talked to last night and today, Creative is aware of two things:

1) There are problems with BF2.
2) There are problems with NForce-based motherboards.

Also, I got the impression that they're not too thrilled about the BF2 XFI settings. I was told to try using lower settings (of course I, like everyone else who got it for BF2, bought my XFI BECAUSE of those settings).

What I'm supposed to test now: Once the problem starts in BF2, try my headphones. Maybe it's my speakers acting up (not the case, won't waste the time explaining why except to say "speakers just suddenly went screwy round the time I got this new sound card..."

Also, play something else without opening BF2 after a fresh reboot to see if only BF2 initiates the problem. Problem is, I just got a new job but kept the morning one for a couple of weeks, so I'm running 13+ hour days. I'm just not in the mood for anything other than BF2 or GTA, and BF2 doesn't aggrivate me =P (I love GTA, just don't want to do mission based gaming when I get home right now).

I'm glad to hear that this thread is being read and helping some of you. I haven't lost faith in Creative yet. I'm actually waiting for Best Buy to get th eXteme Music edition in and after I trade these two in for refunds, I'm buying that one for keeps, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, to death do us part.

Interesting when you realize that there really is no other option. At least not for a quality computer system. Who is Creative's competition? Turtle whatever? *sigh*

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Edit #1: The two times I called Creative this week, I dialed them as I drove out of my work's parking lot and listened to the hold music on the drive home. Being on hold for the whole trip home, instead of while AT home getting restless as I wait for salvation, is probably the only reason why I've been taking Creative customer service so calmly. Average hold time is about 20 minutes.

[Jofaba]

Re: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic

Awesome news! Awesome news!

Well... for the most part. I called Best Buy and Circuit City and both said the Xtreme Music was out of stock. So I decided to try another Platinum seeing as they're supposably the same card (with all intent of returning the second one as well) and lo and behold, there were two Xtreme cards behind the Platinums!!!

So, I've got the card that I originally wanted, and $80 cash back to line my pockets. Since it's the same card, I'm keeping the software and drivers that are already installed. I haven't tested it out yet. I'll get to that tomorrow.

And BTW, not only is the Xtreme the same EXACT card, it even has the connection for the front I/O panel of the Platinum/Fatal1ty. The only difference is that the capcitor next to the heatsink on this card is leaning AWAY from the heatsink istead of towards it, like the previous card =P

The adventure begins anew tomorrow. Or, more than likely, absolutely nothing will change. (In which case Creative will probably tell me that I should install the Xtreme software and drivers even though they're the same =P)
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edit #1) Okay... sounds WORSE. Maybe I'm wrong about the software or drivers. For sheeets and giiiigles I'm going to uninstall and reinstall. Blah. Doesn't make sense but whatever.

[Jofaba]

Re: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic

Nope. Still Shyte. I uninstalled BF2 and SF, uninstalled the Platinum software and drivers, and installed and patched with the new disk even though it's all the same stuff. Windows theme crackled when computer turned on just now. I guess I'll go through the creative suggestions again, and I'll even turn off the ACPI even though it's not necissary and might destabilize my computer. Turning down my graphics hardware acceleration made my CURSER unstable when in gaming menus. I won't call Creative today though. And I won't install BF2 for a little while. Tonight I'll clean my registry of anything BF2 related I guess, and test to see how music sounds. I'll also play with my pci latency and reset all my hardware clocks (get rid of overclocking on everything). Also, I'll play around with disconnecting some hardware just for the hell of it. Maybe it's a psu problem.

I'm not at all surprised that changing the card didn't fix the problem, but don't get me wrong; I am very happy to have the card now. It's just a troubleshooting problem. Hell, even if it doesn't ever work in this computer, it probably will work fine in my next rig and when it isn't crackling, it sounds awesome. This card is a keeper unless I somehow discover an actual hardware issue.

Check back for updates, but also, if you're reading this please leave a bump message so I know I'm not writing for writing's sake only, or send me a quick IM. Thanks

[socalcaz]

Re: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic

Has anyone figured out how to connect the front headphone and mic jacks on a computer case to the X-Fi card?

[N2K]

Re: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic

Woot if finaly shipped