Audigy + WDM Drivers = Disaster?

Matt Pollard asks: "Help! I have an Audigy. I have tried it in Windows Millennium with three sets of WDM drivers. I have tried it in Windows XP with three different sets of WDM drivers. I sent the card back to NewEgg and got a new one. I tried it with a new set of drivers in XP. I tried it in my friend's box with the new drivers. I tried it in different PCI slots. every time, a hard freeze. Creative tech support has been...less than useful." Has anyone been able to get the Audigy to work under later versions of the Windows OS? If so, what was the trick?

Uhm....

[Julius X]

Is there a reason you aren't using Creative's regular drivers for Windows XP?

http://www.creative.com/support/winxp/ [creative.com]

Audigy Specific Drivers for XP are here [soundblaster.com].

Why you couldn't find these yourself is beyond me.

If the drivers still don't work after using these, I think there might be a problem with your installation or some other hardware....

W2K == No Problem

[highcaffeine]

At least with Win2K Pro, I put the card in, installed the drivers off the CD that came with it, and viola. Tears the Philips Acoustic Edge to pieces, but mainly because this card *works*. With the Philips, I was getting terrible clicking and popping every time a sound played. Didn't matter what the source was. MP3s and CDs that sounded beautiful under Linux were unlistenable with the AE.

But, the Audigy (I got the Audigy Platinum with the 5.25" bay thingy) is great. I've had it in there for about a week without a single problem. And I love the drive bay add-on. Not only does it have knobs and connectors (lots of them), but they actually do stuff. Good stuff.

I have problems

[Bodero]

I, too, have problems with the Audigy Platinum under Windows XP. I don't have sound in my rear speakers when using analog mode. I am using the latest update from the Creative website. A lot of people on news.creativelabs.com in products.sound_blaster.audigy reproduce my problem, but none can document a fix for it if they had experienced it. They say, however, that Creative is about to release new Audigy drivers on their website, so be patient.

Perfect timeing

[linuxbert]

i got an audigy tody at work, in a customers system running me. installs ok, but me complains of a corrupted registry on reboot..

well at least im not the only one pulling my hair out.

Re:Perfect timeing

[afidel]

hehe that old problem. The problem is that the SB Liveware drivers install so many keys to the registry that the max registry size is overflowed. On 2k you just tell it to use a larger max size for the registry, don't remember the fix for 9x though.

OK, enough!

[fm6]

I've been supportive of narrow-interest topics before. But there are too many "how do I use x with y Ask Slashdots. Unless there's a broader issue that will interest people who don't have the exact same problem, these belong on USENET or one of those mutual-help sites.

Use Linux

[duffbeer703]

I hear that Linux-Mandrake is a good distro for a beginning Linux user to use.

I think that moving to an all-Linux platform will make most of your headaches go away.

Even games are available now, since a company called Loki ports them to Linux.

Re:Use Linux

[Howie]

Indeed, you won't have a problem deciding which driver to use, because there aren't any.

(at least according to this [creative.com] and this [alsa-project.org])

Re:Use Linux

[Howie]

"So what, just code your own!"

OK, so the promised land as suggested by several previous posters is Linux, and either a 'basic' driver or coding your own, to be able to run 'some games' - in the case of native Linux games, few enough that you can list them all, and mostly ports of last years windows titles. I wonder why more people aren't interested in a deal like that?

Re:Use Linux

[kilrogg]

Your linking to a post in august! You can download an experimental driver from cvs at opensource.creative.com

export CVSROOT=:pserver:[e-mail]: /usr/local/cvsroot
cvs login
(password 'cvsguest')
cvs -z3 checkout -r audigy emu10k1

or here's a secret tarball:
http://opensource.creative.com/~dbertrand/audigy -s napshot-2001-11-14.tgz

So far, just the basic stuff is working (pcm, I/O, etc) so don't expect too much (and please subscribe to the mailing list and provide feedback)

Audigy's drivers suck, big time!

[billcopc]

I owned an Audigy for about a week, at which point I got pissed and returned it for a refund. It's just a friggin' SB Live with different firmware and a bunch of extra components on the board that serve useless things like enabling the bazillion ports on the AudigyDrive that basically costs an arm and does nothing.

I had purchased the Audigy because I was wetting myself over the prospect of having native ASIO drivers, since I have softsynths up the wazoo. It turns out that the ASIO support was flaky and unstable, and the card itself refused to function in 4.1 mode no matter what setting I gave it. It still ran in 5.1 mode so it was sending all the center sound to a speaker that didn't exist in my setup, hence I couldn't hear those things that were right in front of me.

It would appear as though it was rushed out the door much too early. Creative's support has never been too hot but this is just absurd. I'd rather plunk down thrice the price for a true pro audio card than this half-assed product.