New sound card/headphones and need help optimizing settings

[richruzz]

Well I just got my Sennheiser HD 350s and the X-Fi Xtremegamer today and finished installing them a little while ago and seem to be having trouble tinkering for the optimal settings for audio since I don't know much about doing so. I have a Vista 64bit OS and with the latest driver I only have the Creative Audio panel which I am not sure if I need anything else. So I am just looking for tips for optimizing my audio primarily for playing games but so far the settings seem to be way off and my headset and is always either too low or with the + dB is ends up echoing.

 

[richruzz]

Bumping to see if anyone could suggest any tips or link me somewhere that could help since I have been having problems with my own tweaking and can't seem to find the right settings.

 

[MrKazador]

How hard can it be?
Disable everything or enable things that you like the sound of.

 

[richruzz]

Well since I don't really know anything about audio and the quality of sound I am not sure which settings I should have on or off and was just asking for suggestions. As you said how hard could it be? How hard could it be not to be a dick and not post anything if you are not going to be helpful.

 

[chinesekiwi]

Anyway, go into 'Audio Creation Mode':

* Click on the 'Settings' button at the bottom left of the Audio Creation Mode GUI.

A new box will pop up with three tabs: 'Clock', 'Bit-Matched' and 'Encoder'

* In the 'Clock' tab, set the Master Sampling Rate to '44.1 kHz'.
Make sure from time to time, that it's set to 44.1 kHz because due to a bug in the Creative native X-fi (i.e. not including Prelude) software, it may revert to 48 kHz.

* In the 'Bit-Matched' tab, tick the 'Enable Bit-Matched Playback' box.

What is 'bit-matched' playback?

Bit-matched playback is a mode when the drivers will strictly playback what the music file and the music software such as Winamp or Foobar2000, instructs it to do and bypass any equaliser set and Windows sound settings and sound processing. This disables the horrid SVM, the X-fi Crystaliser and increases the playback volume (playback volume != master volume) to maximum.
Because of the chipset used in the X-fi cards, you cannot achieve, from an audio purist's view, true bit-perfect playback but it's the closest you can get to it with the X-fi chipsets.

* In the 'Encoder' tab, just double-check that the 'output selection' is that of your X-fi card and if it isn't, change to it from the dropdown menu.

That simple in Vista because the Vista sound processing = much better than XP thus no need for other steps (e.g. Kernel Streaming) like in XP

It's the essential snippet from my guide you need.
Guide needs to be revised but I don't have an X-Fi card atm to take screenies lols.
This is for the music.
Music will sound far better than in Entertainment Mode.

 

[richruzz]

Ah, thank you very much I appreciate this. But when I got the drivers I only got a small minimalist control panel. Do I have to download this from somewhere else?