Auzentech Prelude : Drivers w/ DDL support coming very soon.

I got this email from them, but no file or link :confused: :confused: :confused: :confused:

Dear Customer,
We appreciate your phone call today.
We sent the driver with Dolby Digital Live feature.

Please download it > driver folder > Audio folder > setup folder > use the setup.exe file to install the driver.
Sincerely,
Support Team

AuzenTech, Inc. (www.auzentech.com)
USA tel 408.727.6212/ fax 408.727.6275/

KOREA tel +82-31-259-7461 /

fax +82-31-259-7463 /mobile +010-6257-4423

*Any information transmitted by means of this e-mail (and any of its attachments) is intended exclusively for the addressee or addressees and for those authorized by the addressee or addressees to read this message. Any use by a party other than the addressee or addressees is prohibited. The information contained in this e-mail (or any of its attachments) may be confidential in nature and fall under a duty of non-disclosure and the attorney-client
 
ashmelev75 said:
There are Vista, XP, 32bit, 64bit drivers lumped together. It's a full CD image, basically.
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AdmiralFlameberg said:
it comes with the updated Console launcher, the Switcher the volume system try thing and yes it has all of the drivers in one package. It just 150mb, that nothing when compare to how much room games take. 150MB isnt nothing.
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Right, but they don't need 150MB for all of that. The binary driver itself that gets loaded into the kernel is realistically no greater than 5MB, probably closer to about 2MB. And that is for each OS, and there needs to be four of them, so no greater than 20MB just for the binary drivers themselves. The rest of the stuff, which if it was slimmed down enough, wouldn't be more than another 20MB and those libraries could be shared across all OSes so you don't need four different instances of them, needlessly consuming another 60MB.

Take HP for example, most of their printer drivers are 720MB. At least, that is the driver that they issue to customers anyways. Most of that space is used up by stuff that I can't describe as anything other than crap. For example, it comes with a service that pulls up an HP page to buy more ink when yours is low, a bunch of stock art that most people won't ever touch, and some other services for some scanning and faxing crap that most people also won't touch because the functions are already built into windows and the windows functions don't need an active service running.

HP's corporate customers don't put up with this crap though. They want their drivers "crap free." Thus to meet that demand lest hey move to HP's competitors, they provide corporate drivers that are 24MB and still have all of the same features as the consumer driver, minus all of the crap that simply isn't needed, but HP loves to throw out there anyways just for the "wow" factor.

Creative can easily take similar measures if they were so inclined. For example, you don't need a big graphic image of a radio dial to select between gaming, listening, and creation mode. A simple radio select switch would work just fine, and is about 1MB smaller. And likewise, you don't need a ton of services running to be able to change these features, you could just put up a desktop link or something like that to a control panel that isn't memory resident 24/7. You also don't need a ton of sound samples and clips, as I don't think you really need to demo the sound card to yourself after you have already bought it. One test clip would do just fine.

This is the approach most sound card manufacturers take anyways, or any IHV with a competent driver team for that matter, namely because it is a hell of a lot more practical.
 
ashmelev75 said:
emule, server Razorback 3.0. File: RC-2.zip 147.13MB
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When you put something on emule, you should post the size and (off)MD4 hash of it, that way finding the file is easier (or just post the ed2k link if the forums permit it, which some don't.) Since I already found that, I'll go ahead and do that for you:

Size: 154274774

ed2kMD4: 43FE6FB0ABAB5DC5F424C8FA69A35493

Though for this kind of temporary thing, better than emule is this:

http://www.uploading.com/
 
Ugh I just spent 45 minutes uploading the drivers to a site only to found out that I had to pay after it completed. :mad:

I'll try your upload site now.

And the breakdown of the drivers is this (uncompressed):

~50mb for XP drivers (both 32/64-bit)
~40mb for Vista drivers (both 32/64-bit)
~7mb for ALchemy
~4mb for Volume Panel
~5mb for "basic" audio console
~35mb for the three graphical consoles
~37mb for the setup application<----They have bitmaps for each language lol

Outside of the graphical setup program (the 37mb), there really isn't anything too bloatware. My Nvidia graphical drivers are 50mb just for Vista x64. Perhaps you don't "need" the graphical consoles, but they are a lot more user friendly than the basic console (I expect these to not be included with the offical release, so it's almost a moot point).
 
AlphaWolf said:
Has anybody yet confirmed that EAX and DDL work concurrently?
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Nope they don't work, all I get is static when I try to use both simultaneously. :(

Just kidding :D, of course they work (just tested), what did you expect? :confused:
 
So now with this card I could get 5.1 audio out of a game through a coax/optical output to my Z-5500 speakers?
 
JohnleMVP said:
So now with this card I could get 5.1 audio out of a game through a coax/optical output to my Z-5500 speakers?
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Yes, I just tried WoW under Vista.

Control Panel -> Sound -> Playback.
Speakers Auzen X-Fi Prelude 7.1 - enabled, default
SPDIF Out Auzen X-Fi Prelude 7.1 - enabled

Launch Auzentech Audio Console (not the console launcher)
Mode: Game
EAX: [X] EAX Effects
Encoder: [X] Enable Dolby Digital Live

works fine.
 
Moofasa~ said:
Nope they don't work, all I get is static when I try to use both simultaneously. :(

Just kidding :D, of course they work (just tested), what did you expect? :confused:
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Since this is such a small niche category, you never know. I've seen worse blunders from even more well known brands.
 
Looking around at the inf files, it looks like this card uses the exact same VEN/DEV hex codes as the X-fi extreme music.

I think that with some or possibly no modification, somebody could install these drivers on an x-fi extreme music and have full DDL support. Depends on whether there are any hardware checks in the PE binary, but those could be removed with the help of a proper debugger and some assembly knowledge (and I have neither.)

In the commenting section, this driver also claims support for 0008 0004 and 0002 which is the Audigy 2, Audigy 2 ZS, and SB Live 5.1 OEM respectively, though I only see actual entries for the 0005 which is the xtrememusic (not sure which revision.)

If you do use DDL on the x-fi xtreme music, then there would be no difference at all between that card and the Prelude in terms of audio quality (analog is a whole other story.)

I would try this myself but I don't own any creative cards (got rid of that crap a long time ago.)
 
AlphaWolf said:
Looking around at the inf files, it looks like this card uses the exact same VEN/DEV hex codes as the X-fi extreme music.

I think that with some or possibly no modification, somebody could install these drivers on an x-fi extreme music and have full DDL support. Depends on whether there are any hardware checks in the PE binary, but those could be removed with the help of a proper debugger and some assembly knowledge (and I have neither.)

In the commenting section, this driver also claims support for 0008 0004 and 0002 which is the Audigy 2, Audigy 2 ZS, and SB Live 5.1 OEM respectively, though I only see actual entries for the 0005 which is the xtrememusic (not sure which revision.)

If you do use DDL on the x-fi xtreme music, then there would be no difference at all between that card and the Prelude in terms of audio quality (analog is a whole other story.)

I would try this myself but I don't own any creative cards (got rid of that crap a long time ago.)
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Well I know when DanielK over at Creative's forums tried to modify the prelude drivers to work on regular X-Fi's all the channels were all switched and after several attempts he just gave up. So one can definitely install the drivers, but I don't know if DDL will work or if one could even get the channels set up correctly.
 
Moofasa~ said:
Well I know when DanielK over at Creative's forums tried to modify the prelude drivers to work on regular X-Fi's all the channels were all switched and after several attempts he just gave up. So one can definitely install the drivers, but I don't know if DDL will work or if one could even get the channels set up correctly.
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For analog that could be the case because the card is hardwired differently. Digital could be another story though.
 
Just sent the file to a guy I know who got some previous Prelude drivers running fine on normal Xfi's. He should be able to do the same to these. Ill keep you guys updated, this feature has been far too long coming.
 
AlphaWolf said:
For analog that could be the case because the card is hardwired differently. Digital could be another story though.
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Nope because it encodes what would have gone out to the analog (ie: you must have "Speakers" (analog) as your primary audio device in Vista in order for DDL to work).
 
Moofasa~ said:
Nope because it encodes what would have gone out to the analog (ie: you must have "Speakers" (analog) as your primary audio device in Vista in order for DDL to work).
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That is certainly an odd implementation. A normal soft DDL implementation would compress the sound on the fly from the dsound buffers as they are made, so the channels match whatever dsound sends out.

Creative's implementation sounds like it has to add latency somewhere since it would have to be using post processed audio if this is the case.
 
Moofasa~ said:
It was the same setup for my Mystique, so I imagine it's a pretty universal implementation.
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The odd part isn't how its configured in windows, but how it is dependent upon how the digital signals are wired. In a proper DDL setup the wiring shouldn't matter. See the edit I made to my post above.

I guess it could be necessary simply because of the way the x-fi is designed. That invariably introduces at least 8ms latency, the question is how much more, and is it perceivable?
 
AlphaWolf said:
The odd part isn't how its configured in windows, but how it is dependent upon how the digital signals are wired. In a proper DDL setup the wiring shouldn't matter. See the edit I made to my post above.

I guess it could be necessary simply because of the way the x-fi is designed. That invariably introduces at least 8ms latency, the question is how much more, and is it perceivable?
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Once again, my Mystique is the same exact way in Vista (dependent on analog). I don't see what your getting at here. There is no "proper" DDL setup. The DDL cards simply take what was going to be outputted on the analog and encodes it to Dolby Digital (what other solution where you thinking of?). The Prelude's DDL doesn't have any more latency than the Mystique's DDL (so it's not perceivable).
 
Moofasa~ said:
The DDL cards simply take what was going to be outputted on the analog and encodes it to Dolby Digital (what other solution where you thinking of?).
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There are two ways I know of that this can be done. One way, creative themselves described thusly:

Computer games written with support for 3D audio do not require a Dolby Digital Interactive Content Encoder (DICE) to output multichannel sound, with no exceptions. Sound devices that support the real time encoder technology from Dolby will simply receive the multichannel wave file output and encode it in real time to a somewhat modified Dolby Digital bitstream. Creative does not support the Dolby Digital Interactive Content Encoder on any of its sound cards.

The only difference between a Sound Blaster card and an audio card that has a real time encoder, is that you can make a one-wire, digital connection from your audio card to your home theater receiver and enjoy discrete multichannel sound from the game. However there will be a continuous, slight delay, known as "latency", as the encoder is creating and transmitting the bitstream, and of course the compression scheme being used is "lossy" (i.e. not bit-accurate).
Click to expand...

And they are right, doing it this way is going to add significant latency, because you are dealing with post-processed audio.

Or, you can encode the audio before it ever leaves the DSP, a la the way the Xbox, Xbox 360, and nvidia soundstorm implementations do it.
 
AlphaWolf said:
There are two ways I know of that this can be done. One way, creative themselves described thusly:



And they are right, doing it this way is going to add significant latency, because you are dealing with post-processed audio.

Or, you can encode the audio before it ever leaves the DSP, a la the way the Xbox, Xbox 360, and nvidia soundstorm implementations do it.
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Well first that's Creative's marketing speak to downplay the importance of DDL (since their cards don't support it). And of course there will always be added latency, but it hasn't been an issue in the past, it isn't an issue now, and probably won't be an issue in the future. You're raising an old argument that no one even believes in.

Btw, the 360 doesn't have a soundstorm, only the original Xbox, it uses the CPU IIRC.
 
very impressed with DDL, using z5500, was beginning to think it was vapourware, it was THE reason i switched from a creative X-fi Platinium, (and the opamps of corse :) )
 
Moofasa~ said:
Well first that's Creative's marketing speak to downplay the importance of DDL (since their cards don't support it). And of course there will always be added latency, but it hasn't been an issue in the past, it isn't an issue now, and probably won't be an issue in the future. You're raising an old argument that no one even believes in.
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I am not trying to argue anything, I am only trying to find out what means the prelude uses.

But people do believe in that argument, specifically the KX project who made a realtime AC3 encoder for x-fi cards that works with either the kx driver or the creative driver. The lowest latency they are able to obtain with it is 54ms, which is quite perceivably high.

Moofasa~ said:
Btw, the 360 doesn't have a soundstorm, only the original Xbox, it uses the CPU IIRC.
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I know this, but it uses a similar hardware based method (for intercepting sound that is, the encoding is still done in software, even on the soundstorm.)

It is moot anyways though, it sounds as though it is working fine for everybody who has tried it.
 
I'm so happy with these new drivers. Everything sounds like it should through my home theater setup. :p

Has anyone tried if they fixed the mic issue? I don't have a microphone available right now to try.
 
I haven't checked the mic out yet, but man do these drivers sound good! I have them connected to my Z5500's optically now and wow. COD4 sounds absolutely amazing.
 
verncat05 said:
I haven't checked the mic out yet, but man do these drivers sound good! I have them connected to my Z5500's optically now and wow. COD4 sounds absolutely amazing.
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How is the sound in direct comparison with your analog connections? In theory, the analog connections should sound significantly better due to the DACs and OPAMPs used on this card. Any input?
 
I think it sounds a little crisper with the optical, but that may just be my ears. What I really do like, though, is that all of the windows sounds work as they should. For example, when navigating the net, when you click on a link, you would here a "click" sound. I don't know what the nameof it was in the sound properties, but I am sure you know what I am refering to. In analog, that click is cut off before it finishes. It has always done this, on this card and the other X-FI's that I have. When I switch over to the optical, the sound is as it shoud be.

Yes this is a minor annoyance, but it is nice that is working properly now. Like I said before, to my ears, it sounds crisper, sharper.
 
I bought a new Rotel stereo amp, so these drivers couldn't have been better timed. Now I have my best floorstanding speakers connected to the stereo amp and analogue out on the Prelude while my old surround amp is connected to five bookshelf speakers, a sub and the digital out so I can just power on the surround amp and switch to DD Live if I want surround.

The only issue I have run into is that Crysis seems to run a lot slower with wierd physics bugs, but that could be because of something else, because I haven't tried it more than once. Kane and Lynch works just as it should with OpenAL.
 
RavenZero said:
How is the sound in direct comparison with your analog connections? In theory, the analog connections should sound significantly better due to the DACs and OPAMPs used on this card. Any input?
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I would have expected that too because from the sound of things, the prelude should have superior digital to analog hardware overall than the z5500's.

However, it could easily make sense in his case, namely because DDL's key advantage is that it avoids EMI problems entirely. Every fan, every hard disk, optical drive, your capacitors on your motherboard, video card, PSU, all create tons of EM noise, which while may or may not be audible through your speakers to you directly, it will still have a definite impact on the way things sound.

Plus as your cables run from your sound card to your amp, (especially the type of thin little cables you have to use with PC sound cards,) since they use line level audio, they are going to interfere with each other in what is called cross talk, which lessens the audible separation between channels.

Anything digital avoids this mess entirely, and as far as PC audio is concerned, that is a very good thing. While DDL is lossy, most people can't hear what data ends up getting thrown out, most of the time it ends up being some of the highs sound a bit muffled or distorted from what I can tell, but that is usually the worst.

The tradeoff for lossy DDL vs EMI riddled analog is worth it. Especially if you have even a half decent stereo receiver at the other end, which probably will have better digital to analog hardware than even the prelude would.
 
Well, for me the stereo sound is vastly superior with the rotel amp, so I would say that the quality of the reciever or amplifier itself has a much larger impact on the sound than the noise in the signal.

Who knows, maybe your reciever just handles a DD signal much better than analogue signals, so that makes it sound better.
 
I don't know, but on the z5500 the digital is exactly as the other guy said "crispier", and I also tried the other "BURR BROWN OPAMP CHIP OPA2134PA", and the bass has more punch too. I too would have thought that the opamps on the prelude would sound better than those on the z5500 but that's just my opinion, .. as long as we are all happy :)
 
I'd still say that it's the z5500 input box or something that might be ruining the analogue sound in some way, because the analogue out sounds very good here. When I was using a Denon 1801 reciver before I got my Rotel amp I also switched between optical and analogue just to check and the opamps on the Prelude sounded better there.
 
AlphaWolf said:
. That invariably introduces at least 8ms latency, the question is how much more, and is it perceivable?
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More than that for sure. I dl'ed the beta driver and got my Prelude working via optical to my HT surround. I still have the headphones next to me and notice a pronounced echo effect comparing the two. (both can play at the same time w/appropriate volume adjustment)

BTW...I got quite a bit of a skipping/static over the optical when I started to enable EAX effects in the entertainment mode. It went away then came back, so I rebooted which appears to have cleared that up for now (only running for 1/2 hour so far). Anyone else have this happen?

And finally, while poking around in my machine, I noticed the Prelude's heatsink was kinda hot...do I have to watercool the X-Fi also now? :p

All in all this is one nice sound solution IMO.
 
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