|
|
 |
Review-
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy
Review by Konrad
Moszczynski, call sign: Omega X
May 10, 2002
Installation:
Minimum
System Requirements
- Genuine
Intel® Pentium® 266MHz, AMD® K6 300MHz or faster processor
- Intel®,
AMD or 100% compatible motherboard chipset
- 64MB
system RAM (128MB Highly Recommended)
- 600
MB of free hard disk space
- Windows®
98, 98SE, Windows NT® 4.0, Windows® 2000 or Windows® Millennium Edition
(Windows XP and other future driver releases will be available from
www.soundblaster.com)
- Available
half-length PCI 2.1 compliant slot for Sound Blaster® Audigy™ card
- Available
adjacent slot for Audigy extension card
- Headphones
or amplified speakers (available separately)
- CD-ROM
drive required for software installation
- Available
5 1/4" PC drive bay (for Sound Blaster Audigy drive)
Additional
Requirements
- CPU:
Genuine Intel® Pentium® II 350 MHz / MMX or AMD® 450 MHz / 3Dnow! for
SB1394 applications or games
- SB1394:
Works only on Windows® 98 SE, Windows® 2000 or Windows® Millennium
Edition.
- DV
Editing: 128MB recommended for Digital Video (DV) capture and editing. Ultra
DMA hard disk with 1GB workspace (ATA-100, 7,200rpm with 6GB recommended.
- Games:
128MB system memory recommended, a 3D accelerator with at least 8MB of
texture RAM, available 300-500MB disk space. Games may not work optimally
under Windows 2000. Check out latest updates from www.soundblaster.com.
- DVD:
At least a 2nd generation DVD-ROM drive with these recommended soft-DVD
players: Intervideo's WinDVD 2000 or CyberLink's PowerDVD 3.0 and above
- Internet
Radio: Requires at least a 56Kbps modem and an active Internet connection
before running the application.
The
install was done on Windows XP. Windows quickly detected that the multimedia
card was present. The FireWire link was instantly installed, but I was prompted
for drivers which are contained on the Audigy CD. On the CD there are many
bundled utilities and applications to use along with the Audigy Gamer. You may
customize your install by choosing from the menu of programs to be installed
·
FireNet
2.0 – This is primarily for
non-Windows XP system to allow for the creation of a FireWire network.
·
Goldmine
Demo – This is only to see Creative
show off their new technologies incorporated with the card.
·
Play
Center 3.0- Is included to replace
most of your multimedia software used for playing, ripping and burning mp3s/wma’s.
If you like an all in one application this is for you.
·
Oozic
Player – Creates a 3D environment
that responds to the music tempos, rhythms, and frequencies as it is played.
·
SonicBox
Tuner – Is a free streaming audio
application to listen to radio and mp3’s online.
Some of
the Creative utilities included are:
·
Creative
TaskBar – It is basically what they
call it, a taskbar that floats atop your screen to give you quick access to
utilities and programs associated to the Audigy Gamer
·
AudioHQ
– Allows you to configure your
Audigy Gamer. If you are going for a slim install I recommend including this in
it.
·
Surround
Mixer – Is a Creative replacement
for the windows play control.
·
Creative
Recorder 2 – Records Wav. Media.
·
Creative
MiniDisc 2 – Records media to
Minidisc. It makes MiniDisc recording easier by allowing your MiniDisc to
distinguish between tracks.
·
Creative
Diagnostics – A Handy utility to be
sure you have your sound card configured properly and that your speakers are
plugged in to the correct channels.
·
Creative
WaveStudio – A basic Wav editor. It
won’t keep up with professional media editing but can occasionally be useful
to do some sound editing.
·
SoundFont
Banks – An assorted collection of
instruments for the creation of MIDI media.
Creative also recommends that
Windows XP drivers be obtained via their website.
A problem that KT7, KT7a, KG7,
KR7, KR7a (RAID) users may experience is crackling during heavy load on the PCI
bus. This can be resolved by following theses tips provided by Paul’s
Unofficial Abit FAQ. For the KR7/KG7 family of motherboards potential solutions include:
- Under
Windows XP, ensure you apply the correct Windows XP patch for the Audigy.
Note that the initial release of this patch does not support Creative's
"RemoteCenter" (infrared control software) or the "Creative
Recorder". Creative also warn that the Creative Taskbar is not
currently XP compatible. These incompatibilities will be fixed in a
subsequent upgrade. The driver update is called ADGXPDrvUpdate.exe.
- Crackling
can often be caused by the master volume on the sound mixer being set at
100%. Try reducing it to 80% or so and using your hardware volume control
instead. Note that there are some reports that the initial driver releases
may cause the volume control to occasionally get reset to 100%.
- Disabling
ACPI can resolve crackling by changing the means by which interrupts are
shared on the computer
- Installing
the latest VIA
IDE miniport driver may resolve the problem by improving the use of bus
mastering by hard disks on the PCI bus.
- Update
your Highpoint drivers to the latest version
- Try
running the "Creative Restore Defaults" program found in the
Soundblaster Audigy directory
- Are
you using a PS/2 mouse? Try changing to a USB mouse - this resolved all
crackling issues on my machine. Presumably a USB mouse places different
demands on the PCI bus compared with a PS/2 mouse.
- If
you have a RAID motherboard, try disabling either the VIA
IDE controller or the Highpoint controller by moving all your disks onto one
or other of the controllers. This reduces the load on the PCI bus.
- Try
installing the 4in1 drivers both before and after installing the Audigy
drivers. One user found that v4.35 of the drivers resolved crackling.
- Try
unzipping the driver installation file by hand, then running the setup.exe
program with the /w parameter (ie. "setup /w").
- If
during driver installation under WindowsXP the computer claims it cannot
find the Audigy card, try the following. First, make sure all previous
drivers are removed. Go through the following steps to do so:
- Open
My Computer, Properties, Hardware tab. Click on Driver Signing.
- Select
the option: "IGNORE - INSTALL THE SOFTWARE ANYWAY AND DON'T ASK FOR
MY APPROVAL". Click OK.
- Click
Start, Control Panel, then "Add or Remove Programs" and remove
all Creative applications relating to the sound card.
- Insert
the sound card's installation CD.
- Go
to Start then Run... and type: X:\AUDIO\ENGLISH\DRIVERS\CTZAPXX.EXE
where X is your CDROM drive letter.
- Click
OK and follow the instructions to remove the drivers.
- Reboot
when prompted.
- The
sound card will be detected by Windows as a "PCI multimedia audio
device" and prompt the "Add New Hardware Wizard".
- Cancel
the "Add New Hardware Wizard".
- Click
Start then Run... and type: X:\AUDIO\ENGLISH\DRIVERS\CTZAPXX.EXE
where X is your CDROM drive letter.
- Download
the Windows XP compatible Audigy drivers. Select "Save to disk"
and download the update to "My desktop" or
"C:\WINDOWS\DESKTOP".
- When
the file has completed the phase of being transferred to your computer,
locate the file AUDRVWDM.EXE on your desktop and double-click the file.
- The
driver update utility will initialize and begin the phase of updating your
sound board drivers. Follow the instructions carefully.
If
it is still telling you that it can't detect the Audigy, try the following
steps:
- Verify
the file name of the download is AUDRVWDM.EXE.
o
Extract
the file into a temporary directory; the update can be extracted with WinZIP,
WinRAR, or WinACE. Once the file is extracted, update the drivers with the
"Update Device Driver wizard" in the Device Manager; the drivers are
located in the DRIVERS folder
- If
you have problems installing the drivers under Windows 9x/Me try the
following:
- Starting
from a clean install of Windows, let the OS detect the card. If the card
shows up under "other device" with a question mark in Device
Manager remove the device and reboot. It is important for Windows to
properly detect the card as a Sound device.
- Once
the OS has detected the card and the install wizard pops up, cancel the
wizard.
- Reboot
into Safe Mode. Use Ctzapxx to install the vxd drivers. If Safe Mode does
not offer CD support you may need to first copy the drivers from the CD
onto the hard disk.
- Reboot.
You should hear the Windows sound as your machine boots.
- Install
the software (and drivers unfortunately!) from the CD.
- Reboot
- KR7A(-RAID)
only:
Disable APIC in the BIOS (this is the default)
- KR7A(-RAID)
only:
Install the VIA PCI latency patch and update to BIOS 6N or later
- KR7A(-RAID)
only:
Several people are reporting severe problems with the Audigy series of cards
and the KR7A(-RAID) when running WindowsXP. Typically the drivers appear
unable to install correctly resulting in the card being unrecognized by the
system. There is no known solution at present although it should be pointed
out that it is possible to get this combination working - I am using this
combination on my system without difficulty or any special modifications.
However, it is currently not clear what the difference between a working and
non-working setup is. There is some evidence that this may be due to a bad
batch of Audigy cards as some users have resolved this by replacing the card
with another identical one. Apparently Creative Support in France are
telling customers that "It has nothing to do with IRQs. Lots of
customers have the same problem with the Audigy on KR7A motherboards.
Neither ABIT nor us have any viable solution for now ; it seems KR7A boards
damage Audigy ones. We are currently working with ABIT to solve this
problem; unfortunately, we
haven't been able to reproduce it yet."
- KR7A(-RAID)
only:
One report that the combination of an older 3COM network interface card (NIC)
and Audigy can result in problems, including damage to Audigy cards. Use of
other NIC brands apparently resolves this problem. However, this is
certainly not universally true: I have an Audigy, KR7A-RAID and 3COM 3C905C
NIC with no problems at all and several users have emailed to say that they
too have no problems with this combination.
- KG7(-RAID)
only:
There are several AMD761 chipset options that affect the behaviour of the
PCI bus that ABIT have chosen not to make available to the user through the
BIOS. Of particular interest here are PCI Delay Transaction, PCI Ordering
Rules and Target Latency Rules. By default ABIT disable these three options,
resulting in a PCI bus that is not fully PCI 2.2 compliant - although
potentially marginally faster. By enabling these three options we can force
the PCI bus to be fully PCI 2.2 compliant and this can help resolve
crackling problems. As we cannot do this through the BIOS we must use
WPCREDIT and WPCRSET to modify the registers from within Windows. These are
available on the downloads
page. You must modify two registers: 4C and 84. Using WPCREDIT, modify bits
1 and 2 of register 4C to be set (to 1) and bit 2 of register 84 to be set.
Leave the other bits unchanged. In hex this means setting register 4C to 07h
and 84 to 9Eh. WPCREDIT only makes this change until the next reboot. If
this appears to resolve the crackling problem, then you may wish to make
this a permanent change, in which case you need to use WPCRSET to modify
these two registers automatically each time Windows boots.
Many
of the same fixes apply to the KT7 series. For both my KT7A-Raid and KR7A-RAID
motherboards a combination of the latest VIA drivers and version 0.19 of George’s
Latency Patch fixed the problem.
|
|
|
