[binkgle]

Right now i've the kx drivers installed for my sb live! 5.1 sound card (yeah, i know it sucks). is there really a sonic advantage to using the kx vs the creative drivers? i don't do any recording or anything, just listening to music, watching movies, and hopefully soon playing oblivion.

i've been thinking that for oblivion it would probably be better to go back and install the creative drivers for the eax, etc. should i bother doing this (is eax even used in oblivion?)?

just for reference, what are the latest creative drivers for the sb live?

 

[binkgle]

anyone?

 

[strid3r]

For the old SB Live! 5.1, the kx drivers uses the rear output instead of the fronts so that audio is routed through the superior I2S codec (instead of the AC97). As for gaming, EAX is not supported through hardware by the Live! anyways, so there may or may not be an improvement if you go back to Creative drivers.

 

[chelrob]

There's a big advantage with the Kx DSP in that you can make it as lean or complex as you like.

 

[]|[ GorE]

The live 5.1 IS hardware accelerated by the EMU10K1 DSP.Second strid3r.

 

[maarek99]

Quote:

Originally Posted by strid3r As for gaming, EAX is not supported through hardware by the Live!

Ofcourse it is.

 

[NiceCans]

Kx Project drivers were installed on my old system a few years back as my first step in the journey to decent quality PC audio. I immediately detected a noticable improvement in the SQ and never looked back.

If I did a DBT today, would I feel that to still be true? Dunno, never saw a need to try as I was satisfied that there was in fact an improvement.

IMO the Kx Drivers are worthwhile for music and do show a sonic improvement, but as someone who has never played PC games, I have no input there.

 

[strid3r]

My mistake, somehow I was mixing it up with the 24-bit card.

 

[jiiteepee]

CT Drivers are good enough for that you're doing with the card.

With http://www.tech-pc.co.uk/audigy-2.php trick I suppose you should get the native ASIO drivers for your card (if not already installed with original Live! driver bundle).
ASIO for audio (if there is this quality difference on Front/Rear outputs then just use an audio player that supports ASIO and rear output channel selection (BeatPort Player is one freeware player that can do this)) or use 4/4.1 output with speakers/Headphones set to Rear outs.

Here are your driver choices:

Creative original drivers for Live!
Creative Audigy 2 drivers + mod (the link above)
APS - http://come.to/sblive !! - Windows 98SE/ME
kX - http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/index.php?language=en
Asio4All http://www.asio4all.com
ASIO2KS - http://www.asio2ks.de
ASIOx - http://membres.lycos.fr/asiox/


jiitee

 

[binkgle]

i haven't had a chance to start a new game in oblivion yet, but with the opening videos the sound plays for a second, stops for a second, plays for a second, stops for a second, etc. either this is the fault of the kx drivers or the fact that as eax isn't supported by kx i turned on software audio. i'll turn off software audio (back to hardware acceleration) and report back with what happens.

 

[003]

Do these kx drivers work with the X-fi and do they increase sound quality?

 

[sgrossklass]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 003 Do these kx drivers work with the X-fi and do they increase sound quality?

No, they're limited to EMU10k1/2 based cards, but they do provide better audio quality at least on older models.

 

[003]

Ok one more thing, should I use audio creation mode with bit-matched recording enabled, and use the kernel streaming output plugin in winamp for best quality?