• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Sound Blaster Omni USB - reliability issues

DoubleTap

DoubleTap

2[H]4U
2FA
Joined
Dec 16, 2010
Messages
3,181
I bought this a couple months ago as described in this thread: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1799681&highlight=omni

Overall, I'm happy with the features and performance, but I've noticed that sometimes, the sound output will have a lot of static. Keep in mind, I'm only using 2 connections on the sound card - the USB to my PC and Optical to my receiver.

When this happens, I unplug the USB cable, replug it and the sound quality returns. It's an easy fix, but it's unacceptable.

As if that were not bad enough, my PC started freezing up on my yesterday - at first I thought it was because I clocked it up to 4.4Ghz after running at stock speed for the last few months. The second time it happened, my PC froze, blue screened and rebooted and at the same time I heard a relay click in my receiver and I'm pretty sure it went from Dolby to Stereo mode. This happened a couple more times - each time within 30 minutes of booting up.

Now that I've disconnected the Soundblaster, the PC is back to being stable.

I can accept that I got a defective product, but the behavior is very strange - how could something going only through the TOSLink make my receiver change modes (still not sure what happened) and what would explain the static in the output when it's going through optical? That seems like something you would see with a copper connection when you have a ground, short, EMI, etc.

I suppose I'll have to RMA it, but I'm considering just going back to my on-board sound and using the multi-channel analog inputs on the receiver as I suspect the gaming surround experience will be better.
 
Have you installed the latest firmware and drivers? Are you using it on a usb 2.0 or 3.0 port?
 
Could well be that it is messing with stability.
I've got a USB pen that will render my CPU overclock unstable if I boot with the pen plugged in.
The mobo will reboot/post 3 times and will then no longer have the overclock applied.
It does this every time I forget to unplug the USB pen.

To answer your second point.
TOSlink sends instructions to your receiver on which mode to use.
If your receiver uses relays to switch between modes, this can cause the relays to click.
 
elzeus said:
Have you installed the latest firmware and drivers? Are you using it on a usb 2.0 or 3.0 port?
Click to expand...

USB 2.0, connected directly to the motherboard back panel. Device is new to market, I got the latest drivers when I installed it, but it's been 3 months so I should check again.

Nenu said:
Could well be that it is messing with stability.
I've got a USB pen that will render my CPU overclock unstable if I boot with the pen plugged in.
The mobo will reboot/post 3 times and will then no longer have the overclock applied.
It does this every time I forget to unplug the USB pen.

To answer your second point.
TOSlink sends instructions to your receiver on which mode to use.
If your receiver uses relays to switch between modes, this can cause the relays to click.
Click to expand...

That's a good point, I have heard of some devices having issues with overclocks. That seems like a deal breaker on what is largely a gaming device.
 
I connected my onboard Realtek/"Sound Blaster" to the multi channel input on my receiver.

Hard to put my finger on why, but subjectively, it sounds a lot better and a lot more clear. I suspect it's the lack of compression - the 5.1 Dolby encoder has to compress everything and while it wasn't obvious while using it, I feel like I hear the lack of it.
 
That's odd. I bought a USB x- fi for my laptop last year and it sounds crystal clear . Have you tried using a different port? Could also be a bad cable as well.
 
Venomous said:
That's odd. I bought a USB x- fi for my laptop last year and it sounds crystal clear . Have you tried using a different port? Could also be a bad cable as well.
Click to expand...

The SB Omni sounds fine when you use optical for stereo - it's not compressed, but when you use the Dolby encoder to send multi channel game sound to the receiver through the optical link, it has to compress the sound. I didn't think I would notice, but I do.

In games, the rear channel sound seemed to snap on and off abruptly as you turn around in a game. Now using the analog connections, the rear channel sound has a much smoother volume curve and I notice the game sound, not the weird effect of it popping in and out.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top