My Creative X-fi titanium woes...

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Godmachine

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Apr 7, 2003
Messages
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Wow , I just cant convey my utter disappointment in this product and even after the constant forums posts , reviews and just overall dislike of creative products most information across the net will tell you , you might think creative bothered to listen to a little of it and try to improve.

Well I'm sad to say they haven't , today I bought this card cause I finally got some decent cans to listen with and I wanted a card with a pure clean sound and it was recommended to me by a few people and a decent review on extreme tech led me to believe it was truly a contender , trading blows well with the more expensive Asus Xonar D2X 7.1 card , so I figured why not give it a try.

Well from the moment I installed this I ran into problem after problem , I'll summerize them quickly so I don't drone on.. First off the biggest issue and a WTF to creative. Knowing you have a issue with a product 3+ months after the product has been released (guessing on the time it released I assume around april,may) not mention the many people (that a brief search on creatives own forums will reveal have also encountered) are effected by this issue.

Basicly if you have installed or enabled you're onboard sound in any shape or form before installing this card (effecting Vista users most of the time) you WILL not be able to get the X-fi driver working without a complete reinstall of your OS..even despite a complete wipe of previous drivers/deletion of registry entries .. it simply will not work.

No matter how many solutions I have tried , all have failed and the mods on creatives forums (people have also been told this on support phone calls with techs) all state the same thing "Clean install OS" ....??? seriously? That's not a solution in my eyes , I have 700+ gigs of data (backed up incase of failure and only failure) in many shapes and forms on my system that if erased would take many weeks to truly compile back togather in a similar fashion.

I do not have time to rearrange my entire system just so one piece of hardware , hardware that shouldn't be this defective to begin with , hardware that isn't by any means the most complicated item installed in a PC these days. While graphics cards come off the line with beta drivers , these drivers are held to higher standards than likely have passed through creatives doors in quite awhile. Graphic cards manufacturers atleast provide updated drivers in beta form and WHQL there after in a timely manner compaired to creative.

I realize that there are plenty of people out there that probably have this card and don't experience the issues I or many others are currently dealing with , people that likely don't mind reinstalling there OS's to make a single piece of hardware function properly, people that have more time on there hands then I do.

I guess I'm really just venting my years and years worth of frustration with creative and there complete lack of true driver support. Its seems as if all they care about is forcing you to be so unhappy with the driver support for there product that you will be driven to into buying a newer generation card that has even the smallest of cycle's of updated drivers.

I'm sick of creative's lack of care in this matter and I will be returning this card tomorrow and paying more money for the Asus Xonar D2X.

I'm sure there will be creative fan's here that this thread will rub the wrong way, you are of course welcome to post your own thoughts on this , I was once a pretty big creative fan my-self .. things certainly have changed though.
 
I am sorry you have had such bad luck with your install. I myself have never heard of this problem before.

I recently bought my sound card for one main reason, the front breakout drive. Although it is not a Platinum I still had heard alot of horror stories with this sound card and Windows Vista luckily I have not had any issues.

Your issue makes me wonder if it has more to do with your specific hardware setup, your MB and onboard Sound card. Otherwise I would think I would have heard of this before. However sense it is a known issue you would think Creative would have worked hard to get a fix out for it.

On a personal note I wonder if Creative is simply riding out this popularity wave and not really trying to put out quality products. Creative has had a monopoly for so long now and so many games feature there proprietory features that some people feel like the only way to get the best sound out of a game is to use there products, or at least enough people to keep Creative's head in the clouds.
 
Thanks for the reply :) , well to rule out it being my setup (MB,onboard sound and what not) I can plug back in my Audigy 2 and install it fine.. so I think if it was a conflict of some kind I would have encountered it on this card as well , but it works ..not well mind you , it still has static break up constantly and other very annoying issues that drive me nuts.

Creative sure does have a huge monopoly and for the most part its like many company's couldn't care less. Its sad that this kind of crappy driver support from creative has been going on for years. Hell even when someone went out of there way to fix the issues on his own time and dime , they tried to sue him, smart creative.
 
You may consider trying a third party driver cleaner - and remove any traces of both Creative and your onboard sound provider's software.

I'm sure you've read numerous posts about this already, but just in case, be sure to uninstall all Creative software from the Programs menu, and uninstall any X-Fi entry in the Device Manager (be sure to check the 'delete driver software' option.)

You can also open an elevated command prompt in order to find and uninstall Creative or onboard-sound 'hidden' entries in the device manager:

Set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1

Devmgmt.msc

Then when the device manager opens, click on the view options at top, and select the 'show hidden devices' option.

Now go through and try to find any devices or .dll files that are related to creative or your onboard sound provider and uninstall them. You'll find a number of them in the 'non plug and play devices' section, and possibly some under system devices or in the normal sound / game devices section. If in doubt, try to research the entry on the internet; if still in doubt, leave it.

I don't see how any onboard sound driver (or Creative's software) can make 'permanent' changes to your OS that would require an OS reinstall.

I think that is generally like hitting a fly with a hammer - and for Creative tech support (or any other tech company that recommends OS reinstalls) I think they bring out the 'hammer' of an OS reinstall simply because it is simpler than trying to find the fly in the ointment. (Is that mixing metaphors? Sorry.)

I personally hate OS reinstalls so try to avoid them if at all possible.
 
What were the other issues? You said you ran into "problem after problem" but you only mentioned the previous mb driver thing as far as I could see.

My old X-Fi packed up recently after nearly 3 years of mostly admirable service (except for the vista driver fiasco) and I've just replaced it... with a Xonar.

edit: never mind, saw in your reply about the static break-up, yeah that sounds familiar from my X-Fi/Vista experience.
 
Sounds odd. I have never had to disable onboard audio in bios for sound card to run
BUT if I run into troubles that would be the first thing to do, quite obviously.
ou bought a sound card so you can safely disable onboard audio in Bios.

As for Windows re-install that sounds improbable: you can't mess up Windows system files by just installing a sound card.
 
Balthazor said:
You may consider trying a third party driver cleaner - and remove any traces of both Creative and your onboard sound provider's software.

I'm sure you've read numerous posts about this already, but just in case, be sure to uninstall all Creative software from the Programs menu, and uninstall any X-Fi entry in the Device Manager (be sure to check the 'delete driver software' option.)

You can also open an elevated command prompt in order to find and uninstall Creative or onboard-sound 'hidden' entries in the device manager:

Set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1

Devmgmt.msc

Then when the device manager opens, click on the view options at top, and select the 'show hidden devices' option.

Now go through and try to find any devices or .dll files that are related to creative or your onboard sound provider and uninstall them. You'll find a number of them in the 'non plug and play devices' section, and possibly some under system devices or in the normal sound / game devices section. If in doubt, try to research the entry on the internet; if still in doubt, leave it.

I don't see how any onboard sound driver (or Creative's software) can make 'permanent' changes to your OS that would require an OS reinstall.

I think that is generally like hitting a fly with a hammer - and for Creative tech support (or any other tech company that recommends OS reinstalls) I think they bring out the 'hammer' of an OS reinstall simply because it is simpler than trying to find the fly in the ointment. (Is that mixing metaphors? Sorry.)

I personally hate OS reinstalls so try to avoid them if at all possible.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestion , I gave it a shot (had to unpack the card though heh) and of course it failed to work, I found a few entries worth deleting but nothing that would prevent the card from being identified as anything other than "High Def Audio Device" even though I found entries for that and deleted them , I even went into safe mode and used driver cleaner.. but it doesn't matter.

So for some weird reason it forces the previous realtek driver that was used for the onboard sound to process its commands since vista doesn't have a default sound driver for the X-fi series cards I believe. No matter what I do it still has the same issue. As I stated before I refuse to reinstall vista for one piece of hardware , I would rather try out a different vendor that has good drivers then wipe my drive.
 
you know a clean install of vista doesnt format anything right?
it moves all of your old files and settings into windows.old so even if you had a petabyte of data it wouldnt matter
 
sesnut said:
you know a clean install of vista doesnt format anything right?
it moves all of your old files and settings into windows.old so even if you had a petabyte of data it wouldnt matter
Click to expand...

I do but I've had a few of my friends do that to get past software bugs , bitrot and it didn't help them , they ran into more issues as well after installing it over another installation, so I'm not totally keen on doing that either.

I really don't think its much to ask creative to put out a solid set of drivers that work the first time, I mean seriously reinstalling an OS because a driver set refuses to be uninstalled? I call that downright lazy programming.
 
Just got home from work, tired.. So if you already posted this, I apologize.

After clearing out all the creative entries / data, did you disable the on-board sound? Granted, I have not made the transition to Vista yet, but I'm willing to guess if you have both sound devices enabled, there may be an IRQ conflict. I really don't see how its possible (the days of Win95/98) but who knows. IRQ sharing really shouldn't be an issue.

**I re-read your post, and I have not seen anything about disabling on-board sound. If you have not done that, I can see where Vista may take issues with it** If you installed Vista with 2 audio devices, in theory it should not be an issue, as you should be able to select which audio device you want to be primary, but there are too many stories of angst with regards to Vista + CL driver package.

Another option is to try to install PAX creative driver set. It's a modified driver for both XP + Vista. Link: http://www.youp-pax.org/index.php
 
I've heard of the static breakup issue, but not on the Titanium. You might want to do more research on the Xonar. I have one myself and had to deal with a couple issues pertaining to games that utilize DS3D. No biggie, just giving you a heads up.



edit:

On a sidenote, wasn't there an issue with nforce boards and X-FI? Not sure if this pertains to the Titanium or if they addressed the problem with it's release.
 
The Titanium doesn't suffer from the same issues as the PCI-based X-Fi cards and nforce chipsets.

With all Creative drivers stripped out, the Titanium should be detected by Vista as an HD Audio Device or something similar; it should detect it as such upon restarting after driver uninstallation. If you aren't seeing it get detected as such then you may have something up with your card.
 
HyperTension said:
Just got home from work, tired.. So if you already posted this, I apologize.

After clearing out all the creative entries / data, did you disable the on-board sound? Granted, I have not made the transition to Vista yet, but I'm willing to guess if you have both sound devices enabled, there may be an IRQ conflict. I really don't see how its possible (the days of Win95/98) but who knows. IRQ sharing really shouldn't be an issue.

**I re-read your post, and I have not seen anything about disabling on-board sound. If you have not done that, I can see where Vista may take issues with it** If you installed Vista with 2 audio devices, in theory it should not be an issue, as you should be able to select which audio device you want to be primary, but there are too many stories of angst with regards to Vista + CL driver package.

Another option is to try to install PAX creative driver set. It's a modified driver for both XP + Vista. Link: http://www.youp-pax.org/index.php
Click to expand...

Yep I've disabled my onboard sound , installed drivers after a fresh driver clean in safe mode , I've tried it with onboard sound enabled and just disabled the driver its-self .. none of it makes any difference.
 
Balthazor said:
The Titanium doesn't suffer from the same issues as the PCI-based X-Fi cards and nforce chipsets.

With all Creative drivers stripped out, the Titanium should be detected by Vista as an HD Audio Device or something similar; it should detect it as such upon restarting after driver uninstallation. If you aren't seeing it get detected as such then you may have something up with your card.
Click to expand...

It gets detected as a "HD audio device" but when I point it to update the driver from my CD and it does update , after a restart it disabled the card all togather for no reason. It says the device is not working properly at this time blah blah.
 
i setup a 40 or 50 gig partition for windows so the rest of the drive is its own partition. just a thought ;)
 
Godmachine said:
It gets detected as a "HD audio device" but when I point it to update the driver from my CD and it does update , after a restart it disabled the card all togather for no reason. It says the device is not working properly at this time blah blah.
Click to expand...

I apologize if you have done this already, but have you tried just installing the basic applications minus the driver from the CD? (ie THX & Creative console) and manually obtaining the newest drivers from Creative's site? I know this isn't what you want to hear, but you may have to start from scratch with drivercleaner and try again :eek:
 
.. never heard from this problem before, too. Easy XP installation here, removed all former creative drivers and applications over control panel deinstallation routines, installed titanium thereafter, everything works fine, in nice coexistence with realtek HD onboard sound. No problems in my dual boot configuration with vista 64 either.
Dont know what's wrong with your rig mate ..
 
Sixthsense said:
I apologize if you have done this already, but have you tried just installing the basic applications minus the driver from the CD? (ie THX & Creative console) and manually obtaining the newest drivers from Creative's site? I know this isn't what you want to hear, but you may have to start from scratch with drivercleaner and try again :eek:
Click to expand...

Well you would think that a company releasing a new product would put out new drivers during a period of +3 months ...well NOT creative , there are zero new driver updates for the X-Fi titanium ...
 
My XtremeGamer Fatality Pro dropped dead after less than 8 months. When I sought warranty service, I talked Creative into sending a Titanium instead of another XtremeGamer. The Titanium was DOA. My opinion of Creative is DOA.
 
this the first negative response I think i've read on this card so far. I've installed my card twice.

1st time:
amd x2 system that had onboard. First i uninstalled the Realtek drivers. Second I disabled the onboard sound in the bios. (It says that in the manual btw) Then I just followed the creative installation and it worked fine.

2nd time:
clean install of my new rig this week. worked fine again.

Both vista systems. This is the first time I've been happy with Creative since fighting with my old audigy 2zs and vista before.
 
Godmachine said:
Well you would think that a company releasing a new product would put out new drivers during a period of +3 months ...well NOT creative , there are zero new driver updates for the X-Fi titanium ...
Click to expand...


I am almost certain they just put out a new driver within the last couple of weeks... my titantium came with software that auto alerts me when there is an update, and it definitely updated mine at the very most 3 weeks ago.
 
I just recently installed xfi titanium after swapping out a Supreme FXII riser card that comes with the Rampage Formula.

Two things I noticed:

1) I uninstalled the Soundmax drivers, but forgot to remove all the Open AL entries in the add/remove programs. This totally screwed up my games from launching particularly Mass Effect and Bioshock. I had to uninstall everything then reinstall the drivers.

2) The console launcher wouldn't launch. I did a repair (which basically reinstalled the drivers) and it worked.

Those were the only hiccups I had with xfi titanium. Been working great since then.
 
I've never had a problem with my X-Fi Titanium Champion. It has served me very well, and exceeded my expectations in every way. I also own and still use (albeit on a different machine) an original X-Fi XtremeMusic. I prefer the Titanium because of the improved Vista drivers, but with the release of the 2.18 driver for the original X-Fi series, that advantage isn't as apparent.

Honestly, I wanted a good X-Fi that was PCI-E and I haven't regretted my decision yet. My only complaint about the device is that I wish Creative had included support for balanced inputs on the breakout box. This is important for recording from professional (or even semi-professional) components. Then again, the Champion isn't marketed for musicians; it is marketed for gamers.

I'm both a musician and a gamer. Musician-style soundcards are terrible for gaming as they lack EAX, positional audio, and OpenAL support. Thankfully, the X-Fi cards have all of these things, along with a high SnR, and ASIO support. They meet my recording needs adequately, but could be slightly better.

The Crystalizer is hilarious though.
 
I have a PCIe version of the x-fi onboard my p6n diamond, and fwiw.. I had nothing but problems with it and Vista64. However, after the latest service pack for Vista, it works perfectly. I also did a complete reinstall of Vista 64 and got sound to work without installing any drivers other than windows updates. I also no longer have to flip my spdif on/off to get it to work like I did before.

Also.. have you tried running the CTZAPP.exe program off the driver cd? it has helped me in the past when I had driver issues. It will install/uninstall the WDM drivers.
 
You've made a good point:

Vista SP1 fixes so many important things compared to pre-SP1. Anyone who is running Vista should be running SP1 by now (if possible, certain users cannot for particular reasons).

I didn't use Vista at all prior to SP1 intentionally. It wasn't worth it at that point.
 
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