Center Speaker Stealing Audio from the Subwoofer | 5.1 Logitech | Creative X-Fi

When a deep bass note would be played, normally by the subwoofer alone, it is also played through the center speaker of my Logitech X-540 5.1 system. I wouldn't mind the center speaker playing bass if it knew how to play it. Instead what I hear is a crumbly sound. Simple solution? Unplug the center speaker. Well unfortunately the bass seems divided, whether or not the center speaker is plugged in or not. Songs with a usual bassiness are now not so bassy.

My sound card is Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum. Sound through my headphones when plugged into my PC's front headphone slot is fine. I have double checked all my speaker connections, making sure the right speakers are in the right plugs, and that the output and input is correct.

I've checked things like EAX, CMSS-3D, EQ, Crystalizer, etc. On or off doesn't seem to affect the problem.

It is a little frustrating. But to be quite honest it seems this problem only revolves around anything greater than 2.1 on my Creative X-Fi card. I have got to say I've never worked with such a screwed up problem. I have to believe it is always driver related. I'll install the original drivers that came on my CD (2006) and my rear right speaker wont work. I will install another semi-old driver and my center and rear speakers only play sound, I will install another driver and my center speaker will not play sound at all. Or I just go with this one where bass is reduced and divided between the center and sub leading to a sucky sound for song.

Creative Diagnostics comes out clear. When testing speaker polarity the center speaker receives all of the appropriate noise, only the subwoofer is shared by the center speaker.

I have tried switching the L/R cable with the Sub/Center and playing sound out of the left/right channels and either of those sounds came out of the center. Playing sound out the center channel came out left speaker. Playing the sub channel the only slight sound came out the sub. Although, left, center, right, rear right, or rear left, all of the sound also came out the sub. I did this to try to determine if the sound card or speakers had some problem. So I'm guessing by the results nothing is wrong with the speakers or sound card?

If anyone can help me with this please request info or post an idea. I think I'm about to go on another driver change rage.

Thanks in Advance
Jimmi G

Edit: I'm running Windows XP Media Center Edition SP3

Don't center and sub share a physical jack? I'd be looking at the jack and plug for physical problems personally. You could have a very slight short happening somewhere.

bigddybn said:

Don't center and sub share a physical jack? I'd be looking at the jack and plug for physical problems personally. You could have a very slight short happening somewhere.

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Yes that's correct. They both appear fine. And that is why I tried switching the L/R line with the Center/Sub. Since both L/R came out only of the center, and the center played only out the left, I take it that the lines are fine.


And just an update that I believe really points everything to the drivers. I went ahead and updated to the most recent driver hoping it would fix the problem, despite my better judgment. I did, and now sound is only played out the left speaker and right speaker (yes it is in 5.1, not 2.1, and yes, all of the lines are plugged in). The rear, center, and sub play no sounds. I'm trying to uninstall and reinstall some software that was provided with the Creative X-Fi and see if that gets me anywhere. I'm not being very hopeful though.

bigddybn said:

Don't center and sub share a physical jack? I'd be looking at the jack and plug for physical problems personally. You could have a very slight short happening somewhere.

Click to expand...

Yea, they are shared. And in 7.1, it is also shared with the Side Left speaker (3-in-1).Yeah, the Platinum is weird like that. So yeah, I'll check those cables too.

I would also check the THX Console, and click the Assignment button. That will fix the problem of the sound been send to the wrong channel. Also, go to the Bass Management tab, and switch all the speakers to Small. That will make all the bass to be sent to the LFE channel (sub) after a certain frequency, which you set by checking "Enable Bass Redirection".

However, to test, I will uncheck it first, play some music, and see if there is any sound from the subwoofer. Normally, there shouldn't, since music is 2.0. And No, CMSS-3D shouldn't matter, since that will convert 2.0 to 5.0, the .1 you actually get it from Bass Redirection. So yeah, I will try to get 5.0 working first. If it does, then you can enable it, and set the Crossover to 80hz THX, which is a good number to start tweaking, and won't make everything come out of the subwoofer.

Ok, lets us know, and good luck.

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EDIT:

Ok, so I just read your last post right now, seems we posted at the same time.
Well, have you tried different players? I know QuickTime won't upmix sound, so if you set it to 5.1, and play a 2.0 video, the remaining 4 channels will be silent. But that's about the only player with that problem. WMP11 and VLC play fine, and they use the Control Panel settings.
So I guess my question is, are you experiencing this problems with all your players?

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EDIT2:

Ok, I was just thinking, and now I wonder, are you using the cables that came with the X-Fi? I ask this because the Platinum comes with its own 3-in-1 cable. Using other mini-jack Stereo cables, while similar, might not do the trick, since those are 2-in-1 (stereo) cables. Just saying.

Odin75 said:

Yea, they are shared. And in 7.1, it is also shared with the Side Left speaker (3-in-1).Yeah, the Platinum is weird like that. So yeah, I'll check those cables too.

I would also check the THX Console, and click the Assignment button. That will fix the problem of the sound been send to the wrong channel. Also, go to the Bass Management tab, and switch all the speakers to Small. That will make all the bass to be sent to the LFE channel (sub) after a certain frequency, which you set by checking "Enable Bass Redirection".

However, to test, I will uncheck it first, play some music, and see if there is any sound from the subwoofer. Normally, there shouldn't, since music is 2.0. And No, CMSS-3D shouldn't matter, since that will convert 2.0 to 5.0, the .1 you actually get it from Bass Redirection. So yeah, I will try to get 5.0 working first. If it does, then you can enable it, and set the Crossover to 80hz THX, which is a good number to start tweaking, and won't make everything come out of the subwoofer.

Ok, lets us know, and good luck.

_____
EDIT:

Ok, so I just read your last post right now, seems we posted at the same time.
Well, have you tried different players? I know QuickTime won't upmix sound, so if you set it to 5.1, and play a 2.0 video, the remaining 4 channels will be silent. But that's about the only player with that problem. WMP11 and VLC play fine, and they use the Control Panel settings.
So I guess my question is, are you experiencing this problems with all your players?

Click to expand...

Thanks for the help! Sound is not being played out of the front center, sub, or rear at all. Music or checking polarity. I am about to rollback to the previous driver and I'll try what you have just said and post back briefly.

Odin75 said:

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EDIT2:

Ok, I was just thinking, and now I wonder, are you using the cables that came with the X-Fi? I ask this because the Platinum comes with its own 3-in-1 cable. Using other mini-jack Stereo cables, while similar, might not do the trick, since those are 2-in-1 (stereo) cables. Just saying.

Click to expand...

The only remaining parts of the X-Fi Platinum is the sound card itself. I do not have any of the other parts. Right now what is connected between the sound card and the sub (all the wires connect to the sub as is common) are the cords that came with my speaker. Once upon a time in the past I never had this problem, and was running the same setup. It just seems to happen with no significant event. I cannot recall when this started happening again.

In any case. I am back to the original problem with the sound being shared between the sub and the center.
And for the life of me the X-Fi Creative console is different. I've now got Dolby and DTS menu options (tabs) which I have never had before. But I don't imagine that it is time to start messing around with it.


The assignment is all good except that as usual the sub channel is also played through the center. All the speakers are set on small. I have noticed that I get a different bass tone, perhaps nicer, when I set the left and right speakers to large, however it leads to them being static/pop-like (or whatever you want to call that crunchy sound when it tries to play bass) so I leave it on small.

When I uncheck "Enable Bass Redirection" and play any song that has noticeable bass tones, the sub does produce sound, greater than that of when it is checked. However also all the other speakers, left and right, also try to produce bass (along with the center as usual). Which more-or-less leads to cupping the treble and distorted music/sound from the speakers. But you said normally the sub should stay quite yes? So what might this mean? Also the CMSS-3D option is no longer available in console. And if it matters, for whatever reason, Creative Audio Control Panel is not installed (which usually installs with the driver).

Although the problem is back to start and there is some strange things with the console, should I try another uninstall/reinstall of the driver to get it looking the same? Although I'm not sure if it will change the problem much or not. I'm not sure where to go from here.

Oh man, it sure looks like you have a driver problems all over the place. At this point I would recommend you try uninstalling the drivers and features, and then clean the left overs. Use Driver Sweeper 2.0.5 for that. So uninstall the drivers, restart, run DS (in safe-mode if you encounter problems), and then you can install the drivers again. That's what I always used for my own X-Fi in XP Home SP3, and it worked great, it actually fixed an extreme distortion problem I had in the past.

About the features, the DD and DTS tabs should always be there btw. Just make sure to keep Bit-Streaming to "Off" since you are using analog cables, and you should be fine.

Tell me what you get after that.

I did exactly as you said. Uninstall, and then used Drive Sweeper to get any remaining pieces out. Went ahead and ran it again to make sure it was all gone and it the analysis was came back blank (good). Well, I reinstalled with everything that came on the original CD (from 2006). Sound was still out the center. So I immediately updated to the most recent driver, and with the auto-update provided I had all the software updated. Well, sound is coming out the center, whereas before it would just plainly remove sound from the center. But still it's playing the bass through the center, like before.

I don't know if this means that I've got a defect sound card or speakers. But I've emailed Creative about the problem. Anything I get back from them I'll post on here if it's useful. I'll try to do some other tests like hooking my sub and center to another computer and see if bass comes out of both speakers. If so, then I'll take it that it's a problem with the speakers (which are new since June). If it pulls through (which I expect it will) then could that mean the sound card has become defected?

Ok, here's what I would do. You have onboard sound too right? Well, try to test the speakers using that.
I don't remember if you told me what type of cables you were using. If you are using a Creative one, then use the Green one, which I think is the only regular one (2 markings, instead of 3) out of the three cables, and test your onboard sound. So yeah, test, swap connectors, test, swap, and so forth. I'm not saying regular cables won't work, because you are only doing 5.1 instead of 7.1, but you can try my method was well just to be sure. You can try playing a 5.1 movie, Speaker Test, or even try a Pixar movie since those have the THX test demo. See if the sound still gets mixed.

If you come out with positive results doing that, then it's probably the sound card. I mean, you have tried pretty much everything, but that's still a very strange way to die.

BTW, are you still getting driver inconsistencies, or are you now getting the DD, DTS, and CMSS-3D tabs where they should be?

Note:
Why were you using the 2006 drivers first, and not use the new ones from their website right away? That kind of defeats the purpose of you cleaning the left overs, lol.
What you have to do actually, is only install the one from the website. That already includes the Audio Control Panel, so you can do most tweaking using that. Later on, once you have everything working, you can download the Console Launcher from their website too, just to have a fancier interface. The only 2 things left you would need, are the THX Console, and the Volume Panel, which are only in the CD. So yeah, do a CUSTOM installation, and uncheck everything, including drivers, except those 2. I personally like doing it like this manually, but that's just me. The rest of the software it comes with is complete garbage, you can access all the settings the sound card with what I told you.

Good Luck.

Odin75 said:

Ok, here's what I would do. You have onboard sound too right? Well, try to test the speakers using that.
I don't remember if you told me what type of cables you were using. If you are using a Creative one, then use the Green one, which I think is the only regular one (2 markings, instead of 3) out of the three cables, and test your onboard sound. So yeah, test, swap connectors, test, swap, and so forth. I'm not saying regular cables won't work, because you are only doing 5.1 instead of 7.1, but you can try my method was well just to be sure. You can try playing a 5.1 movie, Speaker Test, or even try a Pixar movie since those have the THX test demo. See if the sound still gets mixed.

If you come out with positive results doing that, then it's probably the sound card. I mean, you have tried pretty much everything, but that's still a very strange way to die.

BTW, are you still getting driver inconsistencies, or are you now getting the DD, DTS, and CMSS-3D tabs where they should be?

Note:
Why were you using the 2006 drivers first, and not use the new ones from their website right away? That kind of defeats the purpose of you cleaning the left overs, lol.
What you have to do actually, is only install the one from the website. That already includes the Audio Control Panel, so you can do most tweaking using that. Later on, once you have everything working, you can download the Console Launcher from their website too, just to have a fancier interface. The only 2 things left you would need, are the THX Console, and the Volume Panel, which are only in the CD. So yeah, do a CUSTOM installation, and uncheck everything, including drivers, except those 2. I personally like doing it like this manually, but that's just me. The rest of the software it comes with is complete garbage, you can access all the settings the sound card with what I told you.

Good Luck.

Click to expand...

It was actually my mistake to install the driver. I had meant to just install all the software and then the driver. I'll try all as you mentioned and post tomorrow (including uninstall/reinstall software/driver).

Uninstalled and reinstalled with the files from the website. Installed the THX and Volume Panel only from the CD. Still got the problem. Now this is strange. Use my onboard audio, enabled in bios, installed the drivers from the Dell site. The audio is extremely quite. I mean the logitech volume knob is all the way up and I hear this nasty fuzz sound along with the appropriate sound, softly. Made sure all the settings in Sounds and Audio Devices were all the way up and set appropriately. My Philips skype phone is louder. I tried searching but there was really nothing there. My Creative driver's are disabled in device manager so that shouldn't be any problem.

I'm using the cables that came with the logitech. Green in green. Orange in orange. Black in black. Still nothing. Just for the heck of it I switched them around in-case something magical happened. Nothing.

I'm not sure what to do about onboard. Any ideas? Doesn't matter if it is broken to me but it doesn't help me determine the problem exactly.

However I might have the problem identified right here.
I used an audio splitter with my netbook to split the sound for sub/center and left/right channels. Even with just the center/sub channel plugged in I do not have any bass problems with the center. And just to make sure I turned the volume way loud. No distortion.

So I guess this means sound card/driver problems then.

Update: Apparently adjusting the bass crossover frequency to something like 10-25Hz makes the center speaker stop all the bass. The bass from the subwoofer isn't as sweet, a bit loud but I can't work with it now because people are sleeping in the house. Although I might be able to adjust some settings to get it going normal, just by lowering the Hz crossover frequency. Strange though...

Jimmi G said:

Now this is strange. Use my onboard audio, enabled in bios, installed the drivers from the Dell site. The audio is extremely quite. I mean the logitech volume knob is all the way up and I hear this nasty fuzz sound along with the appropriate sound, softly. Made sure all the settings in Sounds and Audio Devices were all the way up and set appropriately. My Philips skype phone is louder. I tried searching but there was really nothing there. My Creative driver's are disabled in device manager so that shouldn't be any problem.

Click to expand...

That buzzing sound is very common in cheap speakers when you turn the volume to the maximum, but that's normal, since it's you're not suppose to play it at 100% anyways. To fix the volume problem, double-click the speaker icon next to the clock (the corner) to open the Volume Control (aka the Mixer). Ok, here you want to raise the "WAVE" to 100%, and the Master one to 85% of so. Don't worry, my Wave and Master sometimes change by themselves too, so is somewhat normal. If that worked properly, you should have louder volume now, so you can lower the volume in the actual knob, so to reduce the buzzing sound.

Jimmi G said:

I'm not sure what to do about onboard. Any ideas? Doesn't matter if it is broken to me but it doesn't help me determine the problem exactly.

Click to expand...

Ok, I just told you above how to fix it. If it works, then you should try some movies like I said before, and tell me if the Center And Sub channels get mixed using onboard.

Jimmi G said:

However I might have the problem identified right here.
I used an audio splitter with my netbook to split the sound for sub/center and left/right channels. Even with just the center/sub channel plugged in I do not have any bass problems with the center. And just to make sure I turned the volume way loud. No distortion.

So I guess this means sound card/driver problems then.

Click to expand...

I didn't understood this last part, could you please rephrase it?

Jimmi G said:

Update: Apparently adjusting the bass crossover frequency to something like 10-25Hz makes the center speaker stop all the bass. The bass from the subwoofer isn't as sweet, a bit loud but I can't work with it now because people are sleeping in the house. Although I might be able to adjust some settings to get it going normal, just by lowering the Hz crossover frequency. Strange though...

Click to expand...

Ok, there is something very strange here. I know for a fact 10-20Hz Crossover would be completely inaudible with your speakers, so we must have some type for confusion here. Those frequencies can only be reproduced with proper subwoofers, which probably cost more then your entire 5.1 setup, and you would feel more than actually hear it.
So yeah, you are pretty much telling me that you told the speakers to play anything until 10-25Hz, and anything lower than that to be sent to the subwoofer. Nobody uses such a low crossover, so there's something going on here.

Odin75 said:

That buzzing sound is very common in cheap speakers when you turn the volume to the maximum, but that's normal, since it's you're not suppose to play it at 100% anyways. To fix the volume problem, double-click the speaker icon next to the clock (the corner) to open the Volume Control (aka the Mixer). Ok, here you want to raise the "WAVE" to 100%, and the Master one to 85% of so. Don't worry, my Wave and Master sometimes change by themselves too, so is somewhat normal. If that worked properly, you should have louder volume now, so you can lower the volume in the actual knob, so to reduce the buzzing sound.

Click to expand...

Yes, most of the time it is never above 40% on the dial and 90% in the master volume. Well the problem is that the on-board sound is not audible at all until the speakers are turned up to 85%-100% (via the knob). Even at 100% the sound is still quite. I tried doing 100% and 85% but it just made it quieter. Installing the sound card driver again did not work either.

Odin75 said:

Ok, I just told you above how to fix it. If it works, then you should try some movies like I said before, and tell me if the Center And Sub channels get mixed using onboard.

Click to expand...

Forgot to do that. It's hard to tell if they are mixed because I cannot hear the movie unless my volume knob (on the logitech) is somewhere at and around% 100. However having my ear close enough to the center speaker, I can still hear the familiar bass mixing with center speaker sound, so even if the on-board sound functioned properly, the bass would still be mixed.

Odin75 said:

I didn't understood this last part, could you please rephrase it?

Click to expand...

I believe I wasn't very clear. On my laptop, I hooked up the center/sub line to the headphone line (connecting the speakers to the laptop via center/sub cord). So basically all the sound produced from music in my laptop, would come into the center and the sub. If there was a problem with the line, then I would still hear bass coming out the center, which would indicate speaker problems I assume. However, at whatever volume the center speaker did the treble as it should, and left the bass to the subwoofer.

Odin75 said:

Ok, there is something very strange here. I know for a fact 10-20Hz Crossover would be completely inaudible with your speakers, so we must have some type for confusion here. Those frequencies can only be reproduced with proper subwoofers, which probably cost more then your entire 5.1 setup, and you would feel more than actually hear it.
So yeah, you are pretty much telling me that you told the speakers to play anything until 10-25Hz, and anything lower than that to be sent to the subwoofer. Nobody uses such a low crossover, so there's something going on here.

Click to expand...

Yes. And I am quite sure that the sub is not just producing sounds at below 10Hz. Don't even believe it's possible on a 5.1 speaker set costing around $70. But just to see what I'm seeing.

I've adjusted the EQ and the Bass Knobs on the console to make it sound good. I'd almost say that the sound card has mixed the sub with the center. And limiting the center to 10Hz and everything else to the sub, except that the center is playing treble as it should.

Still no email from creative. But at least I've got a temporary solution to the problem. But I'm guess that this points all to the sound card/drivers right?

Yeah, after reading that it sure looks like the sound card. From what you say, and the picture, I more or less have an idea of what is going on. It seems the Crossover is messed up at the firmware level, if that makes any sense. Looks like your 10hz, is everyone else 80hz, but in your case more like ~150hz. That explains why Bass Redirection works for you, since you are forcing the Crossover to change to a new value. Otherwise, if left unchecked it will be stuck at ~150hz and mix the bass with the tremble.

Yeah, if you think about it that way, it kinda makes perfect sense. The Crossover is stuck.

However, that still doesn't explain why your onboard doesn't sound loud enough. I mean, It's suppose to work at a reasonable level. This kind of consistent problems suggests that the speakers might have problems too, but the moment you said if works perfect with your laptop it blew the possibility out of the water.

So yeah, I'd say is the soundcard.

Odin75 said:

Yeah, after reading that it sure looks like the sound card. From what you say, and the picture, I more or less have an idea of what is going on. It seems the Crossover is messed up at the firmware level, if that makes any sense. Looks like your 10hz, is everyone else 80hz, but in your case more like ~150hz. That explains why Bass Redirection works for you, since you are forcing the Crossover to change to a new value. Otherwise, if left unchecked it will be stuck at ~150hz and mix the bass with the tremble.

Yeah, if you think about it that way, it kinda makes perfect sense. The Crossover is stuck.

However, that still doesn't explain why your onboard doesn't sound loud enough. I mean, It's suppose to work at a reasonable level. This kind of consistent problems suggests that the speakers might have problems too, but the moment you said if works perfect with your laptop it blew the possibility out of the water.

So yeah, I'd say is the soundcard.

Click to expand...

Motherboard is 3 years old, I don't know if they ever get bad but I had the original one replaced something like 6 months after I had gotten the PC. Not sure if the sound card and mobo are both going bad, but it is strange how things like this happen, at least I was able to somewhat pinpoint the problem. Not sure if the on-board was bad because I still had creative things going even though the driver was disabled. I'll just plan on riding the card out as is until it dies completely.

Lots of props to you for helping me out with this. Thanks

Jimmi G said:

Motherboard is 3 years old, I don't know if they ever get bad but I had the original one replaced something like 6 months after I had gotten the PC. Not sure if the sound card and mobo are both going bad, but it is strange how things like this happen, at least I was able to somewhat pinpoint the problem. Not sure if the on-board was bad because I still had creative things going even though the driver was disabled. I'll just plan on riding the card out as is until it dies completely.

Lots of props to you for helping me out with this. Thanks

Click to expand...

No Problem man. I'm not professional, but I like helping in what I can.

BTW, no, there won't be any problem if you use multiple soundcard. Trust me, I use 3 on mine, at the same time.

I just put my X-Fi Plantinum Pro into a Denon AV receiver for surround sound.

In the speaker setup I can hear output to ALL speakers including the SW. Then when I play any music file it only uses the Front stereo and centre speakers!

What is VERY interesting is that on playing a MS surround demo audio file, ALL the speakers including SW play!

Thus the problem seems to be with the stereo files and bass output. Is it a Windows or an X-Fi problem???

I'm gonna try Battlefield 2 for surround gaming to see if the SW will work. I'll let ya know...

Great news - We're in business, definately!

Download the Creative Console Launcher (from their site) and check the "Enable Bass Redirection" box in the speaker tab - thats it!

Hope it works for you also.

Take care.