Larvae

im no genius when it comes to sound on PC at all. ive self taught what i do know about computers and it is more than the average person by far. but. im at an impasse. would love some help

i have a sound blaster live card
and logitech x-620 speakers

i can only get the two forward speakers going. why? any idea?

i thought i did everything. its something im not seeing.

Tyrsonswood

Make sure you set both windows and your drivers to match your speaker setup.... you may have set one and not the other. What version of windows and sound card drivers you using?

__________________
Band sites....http://www.myspace.com/chromecrow ... http://www.myspace.com/zoneblues

Larvae

sent you a message.

Robert McClelland

worng forum welcome

__________________
"XTREME AUDIO IS CRAP!" "There no support for it. It's crapist card on face of the earth it should be throw into the sun"

kris23

thread moved,

welcome to DH Larvae, though as this is a public discussion, i appreciate that all posts be made in public so others can put in their input as well. thank you!

__________________

dj_stick

check your windows sound control panel, make sure the speaker setup is set to 5.1

do the same in the creative driver panel

__________________

Larvae

thanks all, sorry about posting in wrong place, and i sent messages to those with input.

Tyrsonswood

I got your message and that's cool but these things are better solved here in the forums.... everybody in a similar situation gets help that way. Check out what Dj_stick says and see if that works for you.

__________________
Band sites....http://www.myspace.com/chromecrow ... http://www.myspace.com/zoneblues

dj_stick

as Kris23 stated earlier, please DO NOT PM members, instead ask questions in the public forum so that others may benefit in the future

__________________

Larvae

ah yeah that makes sense, sorry about PMing i figured it was just clutter to everyone else. but it totally makes sense

my problem persists, how do i access the driver? ive tried. ive failed.

Larvae

the windows one is done, but the driver one i cannot find

Larvae

anyone? how do i get to it?

Tyrsonswood

If I remember correctly, through control panel, there is an "advanced" tab on the creative driver page.

Been ages since I used creative drivers...

__________________
Band sites....http://www.myspace.com/chromecrow ... http://www.myspace.com/zoneblues

Larvae

if i open control panel. there is no creative driver area. this is where im stuck.

i can go to "sound and audio devices"
but those are the windows ones? correct? and they are set to 5.1 surround.

whats the other one?

Larvae

still need help ;[

Tyrsonswood

In XP it's ....... Control panel/ system/ hardware/ device manager/ sound video and game controllers/ creative........ (card number, or Live! will be mentioned) is the creative driver. Should be a "settings" , "properties", or "advanced" option there somewhere after you double click this listing. You will also see a bunch of audio and video codecs listed in this same area. I don't have creative drivers anymore, so I can't be more specific about this as I have nothing to refer to.

__________________
Band sites....http://www.myspace.com/chromecrow ... http://www.myspace.com/zoneblues

Larvae

everything i saw in there id been to before. everything is set to 5.1 as far as i can see.

Tipstaff

Couple things:

- On the back of front right speaker is a switch. What is it set for? 6.1, 5.1, or 4?

- Of the 3 plugs that you can connect to your sound card (green which is FL/FR, orange which can be Sub or FC, black which is RL/RR), do you have them all connected to their appropriate ports on the sound card? Also, which SBLive! card do you have exactly?

__________________

Larvae

all 3 are connected green/pink/black

and it is set to 5.1 on the back of the speaker

CT4830 = my card model

Tipstaff

Pink is for microphone. On later cards the microphone jack can be rerouted for other purposes, but in the Live!'s case (ok, that apostrophe just seems out of place) you can't.

From what I remember that while the Live! supports 5.1 via the digital connector (the far end orange/yellow one) that card doesn't support 5.1 direct connection, only quad setup. Here's how the connectors lay out: black (rear), green (front), pink (mic), blue (in), orange/yellow (digital).

Sometimes (again, on later cards) you can hook up the orange cable to the blue connector, because it serves a dual purpose, but I don't think you can do it here.

Anyways, I think you're kinda stuck. Try hooking up just the green and black connectors only, and move the switch on the speaker so that it's set to 5.1 or 6.1. The speaker system should simulate 5.1 or 6.1 from those 2 connectors. Other than that the only way to get full proper use would be to upgrade your sound card.

__________________

WxMan1

Creative cards come with this bloat ware called 58MB+ of something or another a.k.a. Creative Launcher and Creative Surround Mixer.

Creative Launcher is a task bar that insinuates itself at the top of the desktop. The Surround Mixer can be accessed from there. I don't recall if it installs with auto-hide enabled (try moving your mouse to the top of the screen and see if it pops up). This can be toggled on/off via right-click/properties context-menu. You should be able to find that also in the Start/Programs/Creative start-menu folder.

In the Main section of the Surround Mixer, there should be three radio buttons labled: effects, speaker, spectrum. When you select the speaker radio button you can then configure the speaker configuration and perform a speaker test also. This functionality can also be accessed through the Creative Launcher in the AudioHQ folder.

If you didn't install the Creative Sound Blaster application, that may be your big problem (or not). Depending on how you look at it, that is. All that is really fine and dandy, but why use 58+ MB of bloat-ware that pales in comparison to 6.8MB Kx Project drivers that absolutely blows Creative's garbage away.

<shameless-plug on>

Kx Project gives you complete and absolute control of the Creative digital signal processor (DSP) with a fully customizable GUI that, if one has the gumption, intellectual wherewithal, or audio knowledge as it pertains to electronic music, recording and/or mixing, Kx Project essentially opens the door to literally walk into your own recording studio on your desk-top. Literally. If all your after is play back, well, then, Kx Project drivers & DSP GUI is literally unparalleled in that regard also.

I've used Creative Sound Blaster Live (CT4760) from Aug 1999 through Fall of 2007 when I inherited a Dell OEM CT4780 sound-card and went through driver hell. I couldn't get the stinkin' card to work at all in Win98SE, but discovered that it worked out of the box in Win XP Pro (the front speakers only that is, and nothing I tried resolved that).

That's when I stumbled on the Kx Project drivers and surround worked presto chango straight from get go. However, the DSP was a bit daunting at first so I banged my head against the wall for quite a while and eventually I did manage to get the Creative Sound Blaster & Creative drivers to give me surround sound. But I was dismayed at how resource intensive and bloated all that Creative crap was. So I resolved to give the Kx Project another go.

Well, long and short of it: I've NEVER since had any pangs whatsoever to look back at Creative drivers or their bloat-ware application. With Kx Project drivers I have infinite more control over my sound than I ever dream of with Creative proprietary software. I've been able to create a couple of DSP presets having customized surround sound that includes custom reverb, chorus, depth, width, delay, 10 band equalizer, pitch control of the real channel, precise gain/mix control between F, R, Ctr, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W & NW, including explicit LFE (sub-woofer) signal processing, specific frequency range outputs customized to the specific frequency response of the speakers (front & rears have different frequency responses), etc. output to either 2.1 front channel (integrated 3rd order-cross-over @ 250 Hz) and 2.0 rear channel OR head-phones. That latter preset is a nice trick I came up with: psuedo-surround sound through two speakers. I swear to God that is cool as all get out and Creative can't touch that.

Finally, Kx Project by default swaps the front and rear output jacks internally whereby the Creative rear channel DSP is utilized for front speaker output instead of the default analog signal processor that Creative drivers inherently implement for front channel output. Not only is the signal to noise ratio of the rear channel DSP vastly superior to the front channel analog output, but to recording specialists: the noise on the default front channel outputs are absolutely unacceptable. And my ears deserve the best so that's good enough for me.

And if that's not enough, there is a mixer control panel that gives one the crude volume controls that are present in the Creative Surround Mixer application. However, once one learns how to setup their own graphic DSP with Kx Project you'll shun the Mixer control panel like the plague. Why do brain surgery with a pneumatic hammer if one has a laser scalpel 10 micron wide?

</shameless-plug off>

WxMan1

So just what is this Kx, that I'm raving about?

Click the link to find out.

See you in the Kx Project forums.

Larvae

KX = win

thanks much!