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Windows 7 + Sound Blaster Audigy problem

S

strat4812

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 8, 2008
Messages
129
I am running windows 7 RC 7100 64 bit which I love, but I am having a problem with audio inputs on my sound blaster audigy 1. My headphones sound perfect, my mic sounds just fine when I am not using it in a program... I mean if I unmute the mic and talk I can hear myself just fine in my headphones, but as soon as I run ventrilo or recording software like audacity and try to record something or talk on ventrilo the output is garbled and choppy in the software but in my headphones I sound fine (the mic is unmuted so I can hear myself). That last statement may be hard to understand, I have tried the drivers creative just put out for windows 7 and a previous version, same thing. The microphone works just fine in xp, I have a guitar plugged via line in, which also sounds fine in windows 7. Any help would be great.
 
try installing the drivers in compatability mode as well. I have vista and my webcam is pretty old. no vista drivers. the drivers wouldn't work at all when i just tried installing them. installed in compatability mode and made its app run in compatability mode and it worked fine.

so try installing with vista drivers and see if it works better. if that doesn't help, try it that way, but go to all the executables and set them to compatability mode and it might fix it for you.
 
I tried that as well, still the same result. What I am doing now is using my audigy for audio and line in, and my supreme FX II for mic which works, but I still want to exclusively use my audigy.
 
Have you tried reporting the issue via the windows feedback panel? They're pretty good for that kind of thing. If it's a windows issue they'll probably sort it out and if it's a creative problem, at least they might put more pressure on them to put out a working driver.

Other option is wait for retail build/ stable driver release
 
I'm also struggling with getting my Creative sound card to function properly with Windows 7. So far, no luck using Creative's drivers or the Daniel K drivers, I'm only getting sound from 2 speakers when running a test and I'm having issues with dialogue drop out in certain games. Just have to wait for Creative to get their shit in gear.
 
You are only getting sound in two speakers. Let me help. First you need to go to control panel, and sound and there you need to choose configure. then choose 5.1, and do not choose Large or full size speakers. This causes an issue with Bass Management. Second, go into the new console launcher and there choose your speakers as 5.1 again. The two settings do not link. Lastly, go back to your control panel, and make sure that you have chosen your default playback and recording devices. Reboot and try your configuratin again. I am very familiar with these drivers and the tweaks necessary for them.

Cheers,
Earl
 
I have the same "mic sounds like garbled junk" issue with my Auzentech Prelude X-fi in Ventrilo with Windows 7 64 bit RC1 (build 7100).

Tried:
-Messing with a zillion settings in the control panel and in Ventrilo
-32 and 64 bit clients of Ventrilo
-Compatibility modes
 
Seems like the Vista problem all over again. Your card is not at fault here, its the drivers that are provided. Try googling x-fi work around if there are any.
 
bluetoast said:
Seems like the Vista problem all over again. Your card is not at fault here, its the drivers that are provided. Try googling x-fi work around if there are any.
Click to expand...

I wasted a good number of hours on this over the weekend. I know several people who use USB mics in Windows 7 64 bit with Ventrilo and experience no issues. Based on that I already had ordered a USB mic on Tuesday and it'll be here tomorrow.
 
I'm having the same problem. I'm using my Audigy 2 ZS with the latest Windows 7 Creative drivers (just released). Everything sounds great, but my mic sounds like I'm speaking through a fan or something. It's all garbled and choppy.

So what I did was just use my Audigy 2 ZS for speaker output and use my Realtek HD Audio for my mic in. That solves the problem. I guess it's a temporary workaround until the issues in Windows 7 are ironed out or until I get a new sound card.
 
anyone come up with a fix for this? it is a really weird problem. if i go into the setup of ventrilo and use the test, everything sounds fine. exit the test and use the mic inside of ventrilo and it is all choppy (i'm called boba fett). and it is not a ventrilo problem because if i use in game chat i get the same choppy results. is this happening on all creative products?
 
Wow this is wierd. My audigy 1 (my aud2 I used for years died on me, still had an old 1 lying around) had this same problem a little while ago. Everything worked fine, except my mic in ventrilo for WoW. So I disabled it, enabled and installed the drivers for my onboard sound.

Then a few days ago I switched to windows 7. I found out I could use both onboard sound and the audigy 1 at the same time, so I installed the drivers for both, hooked the speakers into the audigy 1, and the mic (and my headphones) into the onboard. This works great.

Now that I think of it, I might have been using windows 7 beta at the time when the audigy 1 mic in was not working right. I switched back to vista shortly after, but continued to use the onboard sound. Now Im back on 7 again. I wonder if its just a win7 issue and not a audigy issue?

There is a new audigy 1 win7 driver out just a week or 2 ago, I haent tried the mic in on the aud1 yet so I dont know if it fixed it. For the time being though, if that does not work guys, you can just enable and install drivers for your onboard sound, use its mic input, and hook the rest of your stuff up to the audigy. You can easily make different sound cards the primary/default device for specific purposes in windows 7, very nice feature. 7 seems to be modular as much as possible, which is very cool!
 
This choppy mic issue is a problem with Creative's 64 bit drivers and there is no known fix I am aware of; my solution, too, was to run dual devices and mic/headset from my Realtek onboard while using Audigy for system sound.
 
Having this issue too with my Audigy 2 zs and Windows 7 x64.

A quick fix for me I found was to adjust the sample rate / bit depth under the advanced tab in mic properties.

Example: Default setting for me was 2 channel, 16 bit, 48000 dvd qual. I would just set it do cd quality and poof, the chop was gone (no noticeable drop in quality either).
 
Sorry for the old bump but it's still an issue.

I have Audigy 2 ZS on Win7 x64.

However I know how to fix it temporarily each time until you reboot etc

Just stop and start the windows audio service until it corrects itself.

Also, I've found that opening vent or TS and using the test feature, then closing it if it is garbled, then reopening it and testing till it works is also another option.

Hope that helps.
 
Just thought i'd add i have exactly the same problem.

Audigy 2 ZS
Win7 64bit
Mic sometimes works fine, other times it's the same problem you're all describing.

It's all the same hardward as i was running with winXP 32bit, so it's either windows or the drivers, so far it's looking like a driver issue along with 64 bit (found that people had the same issue on vista 64)
 
Not sure this link will work for everyone, but it appears to be a bug tracker internal to Creative, showing what's likely to be causing the issue.

Of all the other bugs i saw, this is the only one marked urgent under the staff comments, so they do know of issues.

http://connect.creativelabs.com/windows/Lists/Audigy%20Issues/DispForm.aspx?ID=37&Source=http://connect.creativelabs.com/windows/Lists/Audigy%2520Issues/AllItems.aspx%3FView%3D{AC4C4640-D50F-4093-B6AE-98EC3B455779}%26FilterField1%3DProduct%26FilterValue1%3DSound%2520Blaster%2520Audigy%25202%2520ZS

If it doesn't work, here's a rough copy/paste;

================================

Creative Labs: Connect > Beta - Windows > Audigy Issues > Issue affecting Audigy and X-Fi on systems with 4GB RAM or more
Audigy Issues: Issue affecting Audigy and X-Fi on systems with 4GB RAM or more






New Item

Title
Issue affecting Audigy and X-Fi on systems with 4GB RAM or more
Product
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
Category
Driver
Issue Status
Reported
Description
When using a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 series or X-Fi series sound card in a 64-bit Windows system with four gigabyte (4GB) RAM or more, various issues can be experienced. Often sound playback becomes jittery, choppy and noisy and recording fails to work. Sometimes you can record sound, but it's horribly noisy and scratchy. This happens with the latest 64-bit drivers for both product series, under Windows XP 64-bit, Vista 64-bit and Windows 7 RC1 64-bit and other 64-bit Windows operating systems. The issue goes away if the computer can see only 32-bit amounts of RAM, as in 4GB of address space minus PCI addressing. On a 64-bit system with 4GB of RAM installed, disabling Memory Hole Remapping in the BIOS makes the issue go away, since there is no RAM amount above the memory hole address space. Consequently, disabling Memory Hole Remapping on a 64-bit system with more than 4GB of RAM does not solve the issue, since there is RAM above the 32-bit limit of address space. Many users have reported varying issues most likely relating to this, such as noisy input and output, corrupted audio and a complete loss of EAX and ALchemy functionality under all 64-bit Windows operating systems. Consider this report a collected issue observation for 64-bit Windows systems with more than 4GB of RAM installed and usable. This is a serious issue, affecting all 64-bit Windows systems. It is severely hurting customer trust and the Sound Blaster brand.
OS

CPU

RAM

Video Card

Related Issues
Hardware acceleration (Dsound2D/3D and EAX) not available on XP x64 edition with 4Gb of RAM; Cannot record with system memory greater than 4GB; 4 Gb on XP64; No hardware acceleration with 4 Gb+ RAM XP 64 bit; Hardware acceleration (Dsound2D/3D and EAX) not available on XP x64 edition with 4Gb of RAM
Staff Comments
Urgent!

Created at 5/19/2009 10:19 PM by
Last modified at 5/19/2009 10:19 PM by
==================================
 
Thought i'd let everyone know that i've had success in "fixing" this issue with the mic sometimes being complete garbage.

My system is Win7 64, Audigy 2 ZS and 4gb of ram.

Creative appear to of acknowledged that 4gb usable ram and upwards (so will only show on 64 bit machines) causes varying issues on their cards.

As i have only 4gb and not more, i was able to try the memory hole remapping "check" (disabled it in the bios)

This of course now makes windows only see 3.5 usable ram from the 4 it knows i have installed.

But, it has also stopped the mic issue, one that would plague me a few times a day, has now not occurred in the days since Saturday (4 days?)


So, Creative know about this, they are aware it's a driver/hardware combo issue, but are yet to fix it, hopefully soon(ish) as so many more people have >4GB and 64 bit.

As for me, rather than fork out on a new sound card, a new USB mic will get round the issue so i can enable my remaining half gig of ram again, until they update the drivers ;)

Hope this helps some people.
 
Confirmed that re-enabling the memory hole mapping (so 4GB or more ram) and using a logitech USB desk mic has worked round the problem fine.

************THIS SHOULD WORK FOR MOST OTHERS WHO'VE HAD THE PROBLEM WHEN MOVING THE WIN7/64 BIT.*************
 
A lot of us out there with >4gb ram and a 64 bit system still experience noises (on my sys its just random pops in varying amounts) with the audigy 2 (and many other creative cards).

I myself have tried the newest daniel_k driver pack, both the win7/vista latest drivers and newest beta drivers, to no avail. I have even tried the OSS kx drivers, which simply would not produce any sound at all. I of course complely uninstall each driver by removing every creative entry in the control panel programs menu, followed by a reboot, followed by a run of driver cleaner for all creative files; so not completely uninstalling the old drivers is, with 100% certainty, not causing my issue.

My onboard audio works great, and I have it hooked to my logitech z-2100 hunded something 200w 2.1's, and it works great. Its well known that the realtek HD codec on amd 790FX/GX boards are pretty good varying on the specific model, and my gigabyte mobo's implementation is particularly good. Absolutely no noise on the line at all, and the mic input works equally well.

However I want the audigy 2 hooked to my headphones (cheap little JVC S150-BN "flats) full time. I used them and/or my Plantronics audio 625 headset for gaming, and I both want my EAX and hardware audio rendering my audigy 2 delivers, or is supposed to. I also like to have the headphones using a dedicated input so I can have bass boost and some other tweaks apply to it, without messing up my regular speakers settings, without having to constantly change the settings or having to switch plugs when going from headphones to speakers.
My speakers have a headphone out port on the volume controller, but the audio is not of the same quality as it is coming directly out of the audigy 2.

I have read speculation around the net that some part of the creative drivers/applications doesnt work right with 64bit + >4g ram. I found once that I uninstalled the creative software, but had left just the driver file itself running the aud2, and I finally had no noise! But I lost the driver features like bass boost that I wanted, and Im not sure if hardware EAX will work without at least the full base driver package & mixer stuff installed.

I just cleared off all traces of creative software & aud2 drivers. Im just going to try manually installing the driver file only via device manager, and if it works without any problems, firing up TF2 ot something that has EAX, and testing it. Good luck to me!

Creative should be ABSOLUTELY ASHAMED that they have allowed this to go on for so long. Even people with recent X-FI's are having similar problems with this setup, not to mention the many tens of thousands of owners of all the audigy series cards. Sound card tech has not evolved that massively in the last years, a regular 5 year old audigy 2 on regular pci still does just fine for 99% of normal computer activities and gaming. I mean, onboard soundis good for almost all circumstances with a quality mobo (read reviews on teh forums before you buy!), as now with the age of high 3-4ghz quad cores the little bit of extra load an onboard audio chip puts on the cpu has negligible impact on fps.
Still, its nice to have hardware sound and eax in games, I dont really notice the diff at all on my speakers, but you can really make use of the directionality and features of EAX with headphones with a decent soundstage!
I could see if it was maybe just one card line with the problem, but creative practically has almost their entire line of soundcards over the last what, 6+ YEARS non-functional on a setup many many people use now and nearly everyone will move onto in the near future? I mean come on, more than 4gb and a 64 bit OS is basically the norm for any enthusiast, and the regular market will be there very soon if not mostly there already.

So come on creative, get your act together, fix the freakin drivers please. Having to run a bare driver file and get none of the other driver features is a pretty crappy work around. This aud2 was quite pricey back when I bought it, and strangely enough my audigy 1 on the emu10k1 works just fine. If I really cant get this working to my liking very soon, Ill just pop the old aud1 back in for my headphone source, but I really prefer the sound and driver features present on the audigy 2.

Sorry for large post, but Ive been messing with this audigy 2 for several nights now after work, wanted to share progress/findings and vent a bit :)
 
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Shame I didn't read this topic last night, Been having the choppiness on vent and in Valve games (TF2) for a while (as soon as I moved to Win7) I installed the latest drivers from Creative's site last night after getting the choppy voice in TF2 and everything seemed to work fine then the audio just stopped working which caused me to stomp and break my headphones (reboot etc didn't fix)

One thing that did work for me on (only on Vent, it wouldn't work in TF2) was going into the playback devices, Properties/Advanced and changing the format from 24bit/48000Hz to 16bit/48000Hz or something and hitting Apply, Sometimes I'd have to do it a few times but the choppiness went away

Of course I no longer have the Audigy front panel thing so the only way I can hook up headphones is through the 5 colored slots on the sound card and it appears Newegg doesn't have any headphones that connect like that so I'm out of luck


Tell me about it Malakai...From Newegg at the time:
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum 7.1 Channels PCI Interface Sound Card - Retail
Item #: N82E16829102163 $169.99
 
Vasta, yup, i spent a couple of weeks messing with things like that, finding that i'd "fixed it" only to find it went back again later and the same "fix" didn't work.

However, if you read my posts in this thread, you'll see what can be done to work around it. I'm still successfully using a USB mic as i only suffer the mic issue, otherwise i'd drop my ram to under 4gb usable and that also fixes it.
 
Yeah, Same thing happened to me, I'd fix it by changing the format in the playback devices then half an hour later everyone on Vent would be like "your mic is doing that thing again"

If I didn't break my headset I would've read all the posts, Kind of wish I didn't bust them because when you have no headset you notice how much you really need one...I'm dying here

I picked up a new headset from Newegg a minute ago, USB only, removable microphone so hopefully it works because I've noticed over the past year or so if I open my case and barely bump the Audigy card then turn the PC on the card somehow is no longer detected yet it is screwed in there...I can finally retire the card after 4 or 5 years of use
 
when i first installed w7 i put on the newest daniel_k drivers (3.5) and had the popping weird sound issue. moved down to his 3.1 drivers and haven't had an issue since. I have 6gigs of ram and, no, my mic doesnt work. I enabled my onboard sound and plug my mic into that. So i have speakers/headphones into the audigy2 zs and my mic into the onboard sound and everything is working.
 
Moussaka, sounds like you used the work around successfully, i could of used my onboard sound, but, i really didn't want to ;)

Vasta, sounds like the case isn't allowing your car to sit square and fully in the pci slot, i've had that happen may times over the years. It could be the case causing it or even just a dodgy pci slot, maybe try re-seating it in another slot?

Easiest way to tell is get the case on your bed or something and lie it on the side, don't screw the card in, just insert it straight to the pci slot, then notice how close or far the back plate is from lining up with the case back plate.
 
On a whim, since I recall way back in the day that audigy 1's used to be picky about irq assignments on certain chipsets, I went into my bios advanced mode (control F1 on my mobo in sig), and changed IRQ assignments to manual, set IRQ3&4 to reserved, then manually assigned 3 to pci slot 1 and 4 to slot 2.

Booted in with the full oct09 beta driver installed (ie directly from the exe, not extacting it and using the /wdm setup.exe) and viola, no more popping. Ran some video and music and messed with the settings, and not a single damn pop so far!! Hope this sticks I missed eax and good sound thru my headphones :)

This is after trying the kx drivers, daniel k driver pack, various ways of manually installing just the driver, and multiple versions of that driver.
 
Try using the actual Creative release drivers from their website now you've made this change. Should be no need for beta versions.
I'm interested if this made a difference too.
 
Just to update you all...

I have Win 7 x64 and a Audigy2 ZS - updated to the drivers released in April 2010 and still the underwater mic problem exists...sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't and I generally find I have to open a program like Teamspeak and use the input test to see how the mic sounds...if it sounds garbled, I close and reopen Teamspeak, if it's ok, I go ahead and play the game or whatever I'm doing.

But yes, the problem still exists with the April 2010 drivers.
 
Hi, I'm a new user who Googled onto this forum having incurred the Audigy issue myself. Despite this topic being made May 2009, I'm annoyed this sound issue still is present in some form, even today! While significant progress was made identifying the problem, Creative took no steps to resolve it. It's been up to the 3rd party fans to resolve the issue themselves! This is unacceptable from Creative's point-of-view, and needless to say I will NOT be buying another Creative product. This issue is not only effecting Audigy cards, but some of their other sound cards as well. This is a MAJOR issue. Creative should have literally said, "EVERYONE, STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING! We need to resolve this!" Instead, they gave up! Their latest driver still doesn't resolve the issue!

In short, this is what I did to partially resolve mine.:
1.) Don't download any Creative drivers. They suck. If you have them on your comp, uninstall them.
2.) Download only Daniel_K's pack. You can find the latest version as of today here:
http://forums.creative.com/t5/Sound-Blaster/SB-Audigy-Series-Support-Pack-3-8-04-19-2010/td-p/554398
3.) Install the Win7Vista_4GB_MicFix.reg file. You can find it here, but backup your registry before installing it:
http://uploaded.to/file/nqfgf3
4.) Restart comp.
5.) Test to see if it works. For me, it's not perfect (slight crackle sound), but at least it's 100% consistent and it's very close:
http://www.davidjscott.com/misc/audigy2TestWithRAMlimit.wav

^ While this should be satisfactory for games like Team Fortress 2 (esp. with tons of gunshots going off anyways), this quality still is unacceptable if, say, I want to create YouTube videos or do shout-casting matches for Starcraft 2. The crackling sound will drive viewers nuts.

Basically, I'm tempted to just buy another soundcard that isn't from Creative. The fact I even have to go through all these steps just to get it to work and yet it still doesn't work 100% is unacceptable from a professional sound card company.
 
There is no motivation for them to "fix" the issue. They would prefer you send them more money and buy a new card that is supported.
Quite often "old" hardware is no longer supported, not to stick up for creative but I would not wait on a "fix" from them.
 
I think it is funny how people think that any company is required to continue support for such an old product.

All audigy cards except the SE (why the SE?) are EOL.

The X-Fi cards are a lot better... AND you can get an X-Fi Extreme Music on Ebay for around $30 last time I checked.

Do you all know of any other company that continues to provide driver updates for consumer hardware.. such as drivers, firmware updates, etc. for stuff that is 7+ years old.

Going from 2003 to 2010 is a pretty good run in my book.
 
It's older than that. I remember dealing with Audigy issues going from windows 2000 to XP in 2001 and it took them years to get it working there. I don't even think they supported Vista, and it took the community to get it working there.

10 year old card. time to let it go.
 
k, I'm just going to buy a new one, even though the Creative website literally says the Soundblaster Live Audigy 2 ZS is supported in Win 7/Vista (guess not!). I'm going with the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty. It might be a little extra, but they're having a big discount on NewEgg ($79.99; free shipping) and I want to make absolutely certain I don't have to deal with these sound issues for another ~10 years.
 
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I'm awaiting the designed for 7 Titanium HD, i too have this ZS, but i use a USB mic to get round the issue, i don't blame Creative in this case, it's an old card on a completely different op sys.
 
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