[NamelessPFG]

Believe me, if I knew of any AWE32 emulators that could handle Eradicator's AWE mode properly (which basically loads sound effects as a SoundFont that the EMU8000 can process), I wouldn't have to buy an actual AWE32 and then hunt down a reasonably modern motherboard with an ISA slot that it would work in.
 
I'd also like to see an ASP/CSP emulator, even if TFX is the only game ever known to actually use it.
 
As it stands, Creative is infamously secretive with important hardware details like registers and whatnot, enough so that things like Linux driver support was very lacking for many years. It's only in the last year or two that X-Fi cards even had out-of-the-box support in most Linux distros, and even then, it's just the basic sound card functions, no hardware OpenAL or anything fancy like that.
 
It doesn't help that there are few efforts really committed to making old PC games playable on modern systems. DOSBox is one of the most notable, along with more focused projects like ScummVM, but a lot of Win9x-era games are still left out in the cold because all the current virtual machine software focuses on 2000/XP and later to the point of not bothering with 3D acceleration for Win9x guests, let alone any form of hardware sound acceleration. (Aureal Vortex card emulation would totally make my day...)

 

[Roller]

For the most part, I've found DOSBox to run just about any games I throw at it, as well as 16-bit apps on the side. There were some issues during the 0.72 era, but since 0.74 was released, it was pretty much usable on all games, and I've found that I managed to run DOS games better than packages that came with both a DOS game and prepackaged DOSBox setup, not having nearly ideal settings, and making emulation slower than it should be. Also, DOSBox has full compatibility with Windows Vista and newer.
 
If memory serves right, I remember playing Outlaws through A3D on a first gen SB Live! quadrophonic model, and it was quite amazing.

 

[chewy4]

Man, I'm not sure that the gaming audio features of the HD are worth all of its flaws...
 
Terrible experience with this card so far, I might return it and put my STX back in.

 

[Roller]

Quote:

Man, I'm not sure that the gaming audio features of the HD are worth all of its flaws...
 
Terrible experience with this card so far, I might return it and put my STX back in.

 
What flaws?

 

[chewy4]

Quote:

 
What flaws?

 
There's an audible hiss when amping both the headphone out and line out. Starts at about 3:00 on my amps volume knob. I don't get this with my STX even when using headphone out. I don't understand why this is there if their specs are so similar to the STX.
 
Audio will sometimes just stop working on certain applications or just all together. Which is a pretty big problem for a soundcard to have.
 
And Steam has coincidentally stopped working right after I put the card in and I blame Creative 

 

[Roller]

Quote:

 
There's an audible hiss when amping both the headphone out and line out. Starts at about 3:00 on my amps volume knob. I don't get this with my STX even when using headphone out. I don't understand why this is there if their specs are so similar to the STX.
 
Audio will sometimes just stop working on certain applications or just all together. Which is a pretty big problem for a soundcard to have.
 
And Steam has coincidentally stopped working right after I put the card in and I blame Creative 

 
What gear are you using?
 
And how exactly have you installed the card?

 

[chewy4]

Quote:

 
What gear are you using?
 
And how exactly have you installed the card?

I'm using it hooked up to an Asgard.

Here is my install process:
1. Uninstall Asus's drivers.
2. Restart and shut down.
3. Replaced STX with HD.
4. Installed all the stuff I needed via the CD, restarted when prompted, and ran the updater to update the drivers.
5. Restarted a couple more times after running into some problems and messing around with sample rate and bit depth.

 

[Roller]

Quote:

I'm using it hooked up to an Asgard.

Here is my install process:
1. Uninstall Asus's drivers.
2. Restart and shut down.
3. Replaced STX with HD.
4. Installed all the stuff I needed via the CD, restarted when prompted, and ran the updater to update the drivers.
5. Restarted a couple more times after running into some problems and messing around with sample rate and bit depth.

 
Are you running audio through the RCA out to the Asgard?
 
Did you update the drivers alone or did you also update other Creative software? Also, are you running the original OpenAL libraries or the updated ones?
 
After you set the desired output format on the OS audio settings, everything else should be configured through the Creative software alone, be it on the Audio Control Panel, Console Launcher or ALchemy.
 
And which mode did you have your card on?

 

[PurpleAngel]

Quote:

Man, I'm not sure that the gaming audio features of the HD are worth all of its flaws...
 
Terrible experience with this card so far, I might return it and put my STX back in.

Did you disable on-board audio (in the bios)?
Have you tried deleting all Creative software and doing a fresh install?
Make sure the Titanium HD is well seated in is slot?

 

[chewy4]

Quote:

 
Are you running audio through the RCA out to the Asgard?
 
Did you update the drivers alone or did you also update other Creative software? Also, are you running the original OpenAL libraries or the updated ones?
 
After you set the desired output format on the OS audio settings, everything else should be configured through the Creative software alone, be it on the Audio Control Panel, Console Launcher or ALchemy.
 
And which mode did you have your card on?

Yeah I'm running audio from RCA, tried headphone out too and the hiss is at the same level.
 
I updated all Creative software. So I'm guessing that would include the OpenAL libraries although I'm not sure I recall seeing anything about them in the updater. Everything I've updated so far has been with their provided tool, drivers are at 3.0.2004.
 
And I've been using both modes. Switching back and forth between them seems to break/fix things sometimes...

 

[chewy4]

Quote:

Did you disable on-board audio (in the bios)?
Have you tried deleting all Creative software and doing a fresh install?
Make sure the Titanium HD is well seated in is slot?

I can try re-seating it and disabling on-board audio. I think my on-board audio is automatically disabled but worth a shot.
 
I'll try a re-install as a last resort.

 

[Roller]

Quote:

Yeah I'm running audio from RCA, tried headphone out too and the hiss is at the same level.
 
I updated all Creative software. So I'm guessing that would include the OpenAL libraries although I'm not sure I recall seeing anything about them in the updater. Everything I've updated so far has been with their provided tool, drivers are at 3.0.2004.
 
And I've been using both modes. Switching back and forth between them seems to break/fix things sometimes...

 
What headphones do you have?
 
It seems your card might be faulty as I've yet to see any sort of hissing on the Titanium HD, even with too easy to drive headphones that would be prone to hiss. Is it a Rev. A or a Rev. C card?
 
Which modes have you been using? The card has 3 modes, Audio Creation Mode, Game Mode and Entertainment Mode.
 
About OpenAL, can you check file versions of OpenAL32.dll present on your system?
 
EDIT: I didn't mention disabling the onboard audio chip because that's a given when installing.

 

[PurpleAngel]

Quote:

I can try re-seating it and disabling on-board audio. I think my on-board audio is automatically disabled but worth a shot.
 
I'll try a re-install as a last resort.

On-board audio does not automatically disable, you have to set it for "Disable" in the bios.
I think we found your problem

 

[chewy4]

Quote:

 
What headphones do you have?
 
It seems your card might be faulty as I've yet to see any sort of hissing on the Titanium HD, even with too easy to drive headphones that would be prone to hiss. Is it a Rev. A or a Rev. C card?
 
Which modes have you been using? The card has 3 modes, Audio Creation Mode, Game Mode and Entertainment Mode.
 
About OpenAL, can you check file versions of OpenAL32.dll present on your system?
 
EDIT: I didn't mention disabling the onboard audio chip because that's a given when installing.

The hissing isn't present when plugging my headphones directly into the sound card. It can't reach a high enough volume for it. Only when plugged into my Asgard, and the hissing goes away when I turn down Window's volume so the Asgard isn't the device generating the hiss. Headphones are the HE-400 though, and I have no idea what revision the card is but I just got it new.
 
The two modes I've been using are game and entertainment.
 
OpenAL version is 6.14.357.25 according to the DLL. Last modified today but created a couple months back.

On-board audio does not automatically disable, you have to set it for "Disable" in the bios.
I think we found your problem
 

That really depends on the mobo I believe. Mine has auto, enabled and disabled. I set it to disabled manually as well as re-installed everything, I'll see if it clears up some of the audio problems with time.

 

[PurpleAngel]

Quote:

The hissing isn't present when plugging my headphones directly into the sound card. It can't reach a high enough volume for it. Only when plugged into my Asgard, and the hissing goes away when I turn down Window's volume so the Asgard isn't the device generating the hiss. Headphones are the HE-400 though, and I have no idea what revision the card is but I just got it new.
The two modes I've been using are game and entertainment.
OpenAL version is 6.14.357.25 according to the DLL. Last modified today but created a couple months back.
That really depends on the mobo I believe. Mine has auto, enabled and disabled. I set it to disabled manually as well as re-installed everything, I'll see if it clears up some of the audio problems with time.

I'm making a wild guess that the "auto" features tells windows to use on-board audio only if no other audio hardware is detected (but may not be perfect).
But I think it's just safer to set it for disable.