I'm not sure if I should post this here, but I figured there should be a decent amount of X-Fi Titanium owners in this thread. If it's the wrong place to post it, please let me know and I'll start my own thread asking for help.
So I managed to recently find a new old stock SB X-Fi Titanium SB0880 (non-HD) and am having some difficulty with it. My problem is not the gaming part (that works great), but the music playback with the X-Fi Ti. My setup is as follows:
Old:
onboard Realtek w/Dolby Headphone(SPDIF out) -> Audioengine D1 (RCA out) -> Schiit Asgard 2 -> headphones
New:
X-Fi (SPDIF out) -> Audioengine D1 (RCA out) -> Schiit Asgard 2 -> headphones
The issue I am having is when I try to use WASAPI mode/drivers in Foobar2000 and MediaMonkey my PC will hard lock/freeze and requires pressing the power button to reboot. After some searching it appears that apparently WASAPI drivers + X-Fi cards + SPDIF out is not a working combo. Most suggestions is to either use the DirectSound or ASIO drivers instead. So I installed the ASIO plug-ins for foobar2000 and MediaMonkey and used the default Creative ASIO drivers (I also tried the ASIO4ALL drivers) and it doesn't hard lock anymore, sometimes it will freeze for a few seconds but there's NO AUDIO output from SPDIF anymore. The D1 keeps clicking as if it's changing modes so the X-Fi is sending some sort of signal to it, but there's no audio. Some posts regarding the ASIO driver suggest switching to Audio Creation mode from Game mode in the X-Fi control panel, but that didn't change anything for me, still no audio. What I have ended up doing is remove the D1 from the chain and run it like this:
X-Fi (3.5mm out) -> (3.5mm to RCA cable) -> Asgard 2 -> headphones.
Now I have music and the WASAPI drivers work too (ASIO drivers work for a bit then it crashes Windows), except it sounded like crap compared to my old setup. After another hour of googling I found that I need to disable CMSS-3D (I was still in Game mode) during music playback in the X-Fi control panel and then it sounded good again. It still doesn't sound quite as good as when I use the D1 as the DAC, but better than before.
So currently for the best music and game audio I have it setup in a big mess like this:
X-Fi (3.5mm out) -> (3.5mm to RCA cable) -> (2-to-1 RCA splitter) -> Asgard 2 -> headphones.
motherboard (USB out) -> Audioengine D1 (RCA out) -> (2-to-1 RCA splitter) -> Asgard 2 -> headphones.
I have foobar2000 set to use the D1 WASAPI driver as default (Windows default audio playback device is X-Fi), but I have to power on the D1 and go into the X-Fi control panel and Untick CMSS-3D when I want to listen to music and re-tick it when I want to play games and watch movies/TV. When I was running the old DH setup I did not have to mess with any of this. It just worked without any of this fiddling. The virtual surround wasn't as good as CMSS-3D, but it was a lot less hassle.
So my question after all this is, has anyone been able to run an X-Fi card with SPDIF out working with WASAPI/ASIO drivers in Win7 x64? I'd really like to use the DAC on the D1 but with a cleaner wiring setup like my old DH setup than what I currently have working. This reminded me why I stopped buying Soundblaster cards after my dearly departed Soundblaster16 with Roland MIDI daughterboard... the driver headaches.