Vista sound card

[justbob30]

O.K. I see some posts about having some having no sound in Vista, others
about the lousy driver Creative (your surprised?) puts out...my question is
does anyone make a sound card that is Vista compatible without make shift
crippled drivers. From a company that actually did their homework and got
it right?

 

[CJM]

O.K. I see some posts about having some having no sound in Vista, others
about the lousy driver Creative (your surprised?) puts out...my question
is does anyone make a sound card that is Vista compatible without make
shift crippled drivers. From a company that actually did their homework
and got it right?

Not yet.

Most modern Creative cards will world to the point at which they are useful
(eg. Audigy + X-Fi cards), but Creative have really been dragging their
heels.

I fully expect a new wave of 'Vista Compatible' hardware to be launched over
the next few months. And clearly, some manufacturers are putting more
emphasis on developing new kit rather than making existing kit work in
Vista.

If all else fails, stick with onboard sound.

 

[mbg]

Not yet.

Most modern Creative cards will world to the point at which they are useful
(eg. Audigy + X-Fi cards), but Creative have really been dragging their
heels.

I fully expect a new wave of 'Vista Compatible' hardware to be launched over
the next few months. And clearly, some manufacturers are putting more
emphasis on developing new kit rather than making existing kit work in
Vista.

If all else fails, stick with onboard sound.

Agreed. In my case, I have an Audigy 2 ZS and I went back to onboard audio
which had built-in Vista drivers (albeit WDM ones).. it sounds better than
the Audigy in Vista, too.

Matt.

 

[Adrian]

Hi Go to Google and type,
NGO Creative modded driver,it works for me on
SB-Live and Audigy 1

Adrian

 

[John]

O.K. I see some posts about having some having no sound in Vista, others
about the lousy driver Creative (your surprised?) puts out...my question is
does anyone make a sound card that is Vista compatible without make shift
crippled drivers. From a company that actually did their homework and got
it right?

Given that the problem seems to be more than just with Creative, I
submit that the problem is with Vista. Along that line I'm pasting a
note that I've been passing around in trying to find some answers.

I have two issues after a completely fresh reinstallation of Vista x64
so far that I really haven't been able to resolve. I have a fairly
decent system which I built myself with the following specifications :

AMD64 x2 4600+ processor
4GB Super Talent DDR-II 800 memory
Gigabyte GA-MA770-S3 motherboard
ATI 3870 Radeon video card

The motherboard has a RealTek 888 audio chip which is pretty good as
far as I can tell. I've also tried the Creative PCIE X-Fi Extreme
Audio (a Audigy 2 under the hood I'm told). Both devices have the
latest drivers available for them and the motherboard has the latest
BIOS revision available.

1) Vista is indicating a high amount of CPU utilization when playing
any audio. Foobar 2000 is using about 15~25% over the 2~10% that Vista
alone uses. WinAmp uses a little more generally speaking though this
could be due to the somewhat active graphics in that applications. Of
course Windows Media Player is just plumb pathetic using about 50%
more than WinAmp and frequently pings one of the cores over 75%
utilization while maintaining the secondary core above 35% on average.

2) Another problem I've had is getting 5.1 sound for my Logitech
Z5500's from either sound card via the SPDIF optical cable. It simply
won't work. I get 2 channels and that's it. And that's from both
cards.

Note that I'm not entirely incapable when it comes to computers and
I've optimized many Win95 ~ WinXP systems for end users. I've also
made a couple of tweaks to drop the CPU usage down slightly on this
system as well. Still, there is some reason for this high usage that I
simply can't figure out. Any recommendations short iof rolling back to
XP are most welcome.

P.S. I forgot to mention that the audio files are .wav's ripped
directly from CD's and stored on an internal hard drive though I found
no difference when I tried MP3's as well. Also there is no antivirus
installed as I don't bother with such things.

John