Creative SB Live! Series (WDM) output volume is too high

[Guest]

Creative SB Live! Series (WDM) output volume is too high. It's making me
nearly deaf when I wear my headphone on and it suddenly BOOM~~.

The sound volume outputted by this WDM driver is too high, even if I turn
the volume to 3 out of 100, it was loud enough to have the same output volume
as I was using Windows XP with Creative's driver, with volume bar set to half.

For now, creative don't have development plan for vista driver for my card
Live! 5.1 SE, I can just risk my ears for now to use the WDM driver, or use
the XP driver from creative (not working too well in Vista, with some sound
of echo, although the volume is at normal level).

Is there any solution for that? Can Microsoft fix that driver / provide
option to turn down the volume settings so I don't need to risk my ears
using Vista?

 

[Guest]

Creative SB Live! Series (WDM) output volume is too high. It's making me
nearly deaf when I wear my headphone on and it suddenly BOOM~~.

The sound volume outputted by this WDM driver is too high, even if I turn
the volume to 3 out of 100, it was loud enough to have the same output volume
as I was using Windows XP with Creative's driver, with volume bar set to half.

For now, creative don't have development plan for vista driver for my card
Live! 5.1 SE, I can just risk my ears for now to use the WDM driver, or use
the XP driver from creative (not working too well in Vista, with some sound
of echo, although the volume is at normal level).

Is there any solution for that? Can Microsoft fix that driver / provide
option to turn down the volume settings so I don't need to risk my ears
using Vista?

 

[Guest]

More updates...

Now even worse, Microsoft had just completely removed the Creative SB Live!
Series (WDM) driver from their windows update. That means once you need to
re-install Windows Vista for some reason, the driver for your sound card is
not available anymore, leaving your computer with no sound!!

Why microsoft is doing this.... I don't think they should remove the driver
and leaving a hardware totally unusable, instead of fixing the problem. Even
leaving the problem alone is better than a complete discontinue of support of
the hardware.

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi Lawrence,

Microsoft didn't remove support, Creative did. They declared an 'end of
life' for the Live! line and are pulling driver support for it. Microsoft
doesn't write these drivers, they only supply certified ones from the
manufacturer. If the maker tells them to pull the drivers as it is an
unsupported product, there's not much they can do.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Guest]

Hi, thanks for your explaination, however, I am in doubt that why there exist
original WDM drivers that worked?

If it worked before, that means creative indeed had supplied that driver for
Microsoft for putting to their windows update web site for Vista?

What Creative said "end of support" is they just will not develop any driver
for it for Windows Vista. If that's the case, then where the WDM drivers came
from?

If Microsoft wrote that driver, why don't they just leave it there.

And if Creative wrote that driver, why it appeared before in windows update,
and now say they are not developing driver for Vista? This seems very
confused.

Anyway, any solution now for me to use my old good sound card that worked
fine in Windows XP? I don't want to waste money and pollute the world by
throwing away a piece of good and working hardware to the landfill.

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi Lawrence,

The problem is that once a manufacturer "ends" a piece of hardware, it is
considered unsupported - even if it originally was and even if there is
currently no incompatibility problem. It could be that there is an upcoming
incompatibility with a future update or they found a problem that either
cannot or will not be fixed. Similar has happened in the past, and yeah it
stinks, but it is what it is.

If Microsoft wrote that driver, why don't they just leave it there.

They didn't write it, and they usually don't. While there a few drivers they
write themselves, more often than not they come from the device manufacturer
and Microsoft just offers them in the OS or as a downloadable update. Once
the manufacturer pulls support for a product, Microsoft is also obligated to
remove it as an offering. If the drivers are in the OS, you should be able
to continue using them (similar to the current situation with Nvidia's 5xxx
series). If not, you might try third party sites that will likely host them
"unofficially" for a time.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[dev]

/Lawrence Mok/ said:

More updates...

Now even worse, Microsoft had just completely removed the Creative SB Live!
Series (WDM) driver from their windows update. That means once you need to
re-install Windows Vista for some reason, the driver for your sound card is
not available anymore, leaving your computer with no sound!!

Why microsoft is doing this.... I don't think they should remove the driver
and leaving a hardware totally unusable, instead of fixing the problem. Even
leaving the problem alone is better than a complete discontinue of support of
the hardware.

An alternative to landfill would be to sell the card. That's what I did
via Craigslist - with my SBLive! Value. The recipient was delighted to
pick up a nice card at minimal expense for his (non-Vista) PC.

 

[Malke]

/Lawrence Mok/ said:

An alternative to landfill would be to sell the card. That's what I did
via Craigslist - with my SBLive! Value. The recipient was delighted to
pick up a nice card at minimal expense for his (non-Vista) PC.

I just read a workaround on another of the MS Vista newsgroups. Here it is:

Get SB Live! cards to work with Vista (from a post on the newsgroups):

****
You'll need the XP SB Live driver exe called LiveDrvUni-Pack(ENG).exe.
Googling for "LiveDrvUni-Pack(ENG).exe brought several links, including
one at a Creative site so d/l it from there. It is a 23.3MB file.
Here are the steps in his/her own words - follow them to the letter:

1. Get LiveDrvUni-Pack(ENG).exe from Creative's web site

2. Run the installer, it will display the checking CRC window

3. It will then tell you it can't find an SB card - oh yeah? Leave the
dialog alone, we need it there for the moment

4. Owing to the magic way the installer works it has already unpacked
all the driver files onto your hard disk, as soon as the installer exits
it will delete them - so don't let that installer exit yet

5. Open an Explorer window, navigate to %USER%\AppData\Local\Temp and
look for the most recently created directory (mine was called CRF000.
There will be an Audio\Drivers directory under it, navigate to this
directory. (BTW substitute %USER% with your user name)

6. Copy the path from the path bar at the top of your Explorer window.

7. Now open the Device Manager (Windows key+Break), select the 'unknown
audio' device, right click and then select 'Update Driver Software' and
then 'Browse my computer for software'.

8. Now paste the path to the driver into the text box and press next.
The driver should now install. That's it!
****

I haven't tried this so YMMV.


Malke