Guide: How to install SoundBlaster Audigy 2ZS drivers on Live!/Audigy/Audigy 2

BiGBrOwNPimpsta · May 6, 2004, 10:31 AM

**Announcement

Since I haven't had the time or motivation to go and setup some type of FTP for the ISO, I say it is better to go follow classic_leon's guide on how to mod it to an Audigy 4 Pro. Its pretty much the same thing and the drivers are newer. Give it a look over here: Moddified Audigy 4 Pro ISO is out! Download is now available. I may one day make a clear guide like this for it as well.

I installed this on my Audigy 2 on Windows XP Professional, I have never tried it on Live! or Audigy 1 but they have gotten it to work through this method. These do not work for Extigy and have not been attempted on NX cards, you may try them but may not work due to them being USB cards. I have explained how to install it on an Audigy 1/Live!, but until someone explains the method clearly for those cards I cannot gurantee it will work. People have also reported some issues installing it on the Audigy LS card. Due to Live! not having the EAX Advanced HD chip, there are a few limitations such as no time scaling. Audigy 1 does not have DVD audio and depending on your card, it will not support surround modes higher than it can at maximum (i.e. SB Audigy 1 will not support 7.1) and bass boost is disabled on 5.1/6.1 modes, that is when bass redirection comes into play. so dont freak out if one of them is disabled.

**I nor DriverHeaven hold any responsibility if anything should happen. Your are doing this at your own risk, back-up your files, create a system restore point and read everything carefully. Feel free to discuss any problems in this thread as many other people are disucssing these drivers there as well.

What you will need:

Audigy 2 ZS driver CD

Link for the 4 disk version (rar format), the download links are screwy and very slow at times. The 4 files should be relatively large in size about 90 MB or more each, disk 4 may differ slightly but still would be 80MB+. The downloads do cancel or restart, that's why a download manager (such as Download Accelerator Plus) would help speed things up and keep it stable. Make sure they are absolutely 100% complete and download each one by one for a safe download. I apologize for the bad links, I am trying to get someone else to host this fairly large package. If you can please PM me.

4 Disk version
http://club.hitel.net/Club/ClubUser...4152_a2zs-i.rar
http://club.hitel.net/Club/ClubUser...8054_a2zs-i.r00
http://club.hitel.net/Club/ClubUser...7743_a2zs-i.r01
http://club.hitel.net/Club/ClubUser...3968_a2zs-i.r02

or if those do not work, THEN try these:

ISO version(special thanks to DVDKingdom) and 1 disk version (special thanks to BONEHEAD)
http://file.mydrivers.com/sound/A2zsDrvDisc.ISO
ftp://BONEHEAD:test@66.25.208.140/Audig2%20ZS.rar*DOWN

You do need both the 4 disk and 1 disk version of the Audigy 2 ZS CD, just different mirrors.

CTCOMP.exe compatibility patch

This is a more updated version; this link should be alive permanently and fast (thanks to DVDKingdom and Down1oader)

http://members.aol.com/dvdking2001/Pub/ctcomp.exe
http://www.surana.plus.com/stuff/ctcomp.exe

Equalizer Patch

Grab this to get the EQ working fully (special thanks to necrosis and Down1oader)

Link 1: http://home.earthlink.net/~necrosis_2003/patch.exe
Link 2: http://www.surana.plus.com/stuff/patch.exe
Link 3: PLEASE do not use this link unless link 1 is dead and please notify us if it is! http://members.rogers.com/bbp/patch.exe

WinRAR

WinRAR is used to extract many common formats (i.e. zip, rar, tar, ace), always is handy and should be left on your computer for any use.

http://www.rarlab.com

Creative Driver/Software Updates for Audigy 2 ZS

Visit http://www.creative.com and download all driver updates (necessary ones like the EAX 4 update) and software updates are optional (such as the EAX console) from any region.

Hidden Creative Audio Control Panel (optional)
Since many people HATE the creative control panels, creative has hidden one to really piss you off! In addtiona, it is unified and has almost all neccessary options. Special thanks to TIRO for telling me how to make the control panel link. I have zipped it for everyone, if anyone can host this tiny file please tell me.

http://www.surana.plus.com/stuff//ctpanel.zip (special thanks to Down1oader)
http://members.rogers.com/bbpfiles/ctpanel.zip

Uninstall ALL SOUND BLASTER DRIVERS AND SOFTWARE BEFORE CONTINUING. Restart(s) are required after un-installation. During driver updates, restarts are required, not the applications like THX console or EAX console.

Instructions:
1. Download the 4 disk version as listed above or download the whole CD. Use WinRAR to extract the disks by right clicking the first disk (106431634152_a2zs-i.rar) and going “extract files…”. Select the directory to wish you want it to extract to, once the file has finished extracting, you will be prompted for the other disks in order (2, 3, 4). If you have the ISO version (or any version where all the files are in 1 package), a simple extract to a directory should do the trick.

2. When the whole CD is extracted, run the CTCOMP.exe. It will ask you Audigy 2 CD directory is, this where your patch is to be applied. Apply it to your CD’s folder in /Audio/Setup folder, for example: “F:\Audio\Setup” is where my driver CD is located so I chose that as where it should be applied. Your directory may differ because it may be on your C: drive or desktop.

3. To being the install, run the START.exe in driver CD folder, located at /CTrun/Start.exe. Installation will start, follow the on screen directions should take about anywhere from 2-8 minutes depending on how fast your computer is. Once everything is installed, restart your computer. Once restarted your sound should be working and lots of Creative Labs junk to compliment it.

4. If you are an Audigy 2 user, install all downloaded Creative updates (driver updates in order of oldest to latest) from the Creative site, restart the necessary number of times and skip to step 6. If you are not using an Audigy 2 continue to step 5.

5. The CTCOMP patch must also be applied to driver updates (not application updates) and installed oldest to latest. To do so, you must extract the actual .exe update files with WinRAR the same way you did the driver CD. Right click on the file, select “extract files…” and select the directory to where you want it extracted. The using the CTCOMP patch, select the folder of the extracted update (just the root directory not any subfolders within) and click next. Do this for all driver updates and install them in order of oldest to latest.

6. To get the equalizer to work, after installing everything and verifying your sound is working, restart the computer in safe mode. Once booted, apply the patch.exe file. Verify the directory for your Creative folder (i.e. C:\program files\creative) and all files should be patched successfully.

7 (optional). Extract Ctpanel.zip to windows\system32, and a new link in your control should appear as "Creative Audio Control Panel". For Live users, after extracting the file, navigate to windows\system32 and find the YourCPL.txt. Open this text file and edit the line:
"C:\Program Files\Creative\SBAudigy2\Program\WDM\COMMON\CtPane l.exe" (without quotations)

and change it to:
"C:\Program Files\Creative\Program\WDM\COMMON\CtPanel.exe"(wit hout quotations).

Everything should work and the end result looks like this:

Now enjoy your enhanced Live!/Audigy/Audigy 2 soundcard!

***Veridian3*** · May 6, 2004, 10:39 AM

nice guide BBP - stuck.

***Zardon*** · May 7, 2004, 01:44 PM

Thread opened for discussion.

iceboy · May 7, 2004, 01:56 PM

I can't download from these

http://club.hitel.net/Club/ClubUser...4152_a2zs-i.rar
http://club.hitel.net/Club/ClubUser...8054_a2zs-i.r00
http://club.hitel.net/Club/ClubUser...7743_a2zs-i.r01
http://club.hitel.net/Club/ClubUser...3968_a2zs-i.r02
even when using flashget to download it, error occurs and it will start to re-download from 0kb. Any better mirrors?

jtedaldi · May 7, 2004, 02:15 PM

Nice guide

But, what improvements audigy 1 users will have?

BiGBrOwNPimpsta · May 7, 2004, 02:21 PM

better sound quality and lower CPU usage almost nothing actually for CPU usage from what i heard.

sorry about the links I can't do anything, I have to find another. DVDkingdom gave one but it was an ISO and was toooooo slow.
if anyone is willing to donate 500mb webspace please tell us! lol

OpusP.Gladiator · May 7, 2004, 02:22 PM

I too can't seem to get the 8054link which is probably the one I need for my audigy2 Platinum.... In any case just wanted to say that I've been waiting for creative to do this, I'm glad someone's thinking on their feet

help with link2 though...

thnks,
---Opus

iceboy · May 7, 2004, 02:34 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by BiGBrOWnPimpsta
better sound quality and lower CPU usage almost nothing actually for CPU usage from what i heard.

sorry about the links I can't do anything, I have to find another. DVDkingdom gave one but it was an ISO and was toooooo slow.
if anyone is willing to donate 500mb webspace please tell us! lol

what is the dvdkingdom link?

anyway maybe u should use BitTorrent to share the files?

BiGBrOwNPimpsta · May 7, 2004, 02:38 PM

i didn't try this one but now it's seem to be going faster

http://file.mydrivers.com/sound/A2zsDrvDisc.ISO

if you know how to use an ISO with daemon tools or ISO buster its pretty easy. I just never tried it, i can edit the guide later on how to use it.

i seriously would ask people in this thred:
Audigy2 ZS Drivers

they actually know how to find good links, i just simple put what they put up in a clean form.

iceboy · May 7, 2004, 02:56 PM

thanks for the link, it's pretty fast, fluctuating at 100-150kb/s. For ISOs, I like to mount them using Nero Imagedrive, or Alcohol 120%. Sometimes, I can even 'unrar' ISOs using winrar. Still downloading

Eli · May 7, 2004, 03:14 PM

will installing these audigy drivers will let me use ASIO (in low latency) on my sb live 5.1, just like i have when i use the KX drivers?

anyone tested it on a SB Live! 5.1?

OpusP.Gladiator · May 7, 2004, 03:34 PM

oh yea.... thanks for the iso link ...so far so good....

I've been dealing with some issues over some of creative's sotware not working quite right and quite frankly am only 90% happy with them so far.... but that's how the computer industry generally does things anyways.....Kinda like the government (if ya heard Rumsy 2day, lol)....sorry 'bout that last one....just sorta seemed appropo... I emailed Creative's support quite some time ago about integrating a 1/3 octave eq in their software (like winamp) and allowing 5.1 recognition thru the optical port and well, they tried:-) some of it at least, hehehe

thanks again for fiddling with this to make it Mo' Beta.....

--Opus

Genius · May 7, 2004, 04:30 PM

Works great minus one annoying issue. You cannot use the EAX Console if you're running the latest version (patched up to whatever release creative has) because the EQ patch overwrites something needed. I will revert to the original EAX Console just so I can have this EQ. I have been using the Audigy ZS drivers on my Audigy 2 for ages now (I thought it was common knowledge how to do this already) and the EQ is the only thing I really wanted. Thanks!

me972 · May 7, 2004, 04:41 PM

Why not buy a Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS for less then 100$???
I baught mine for 90$ ?!?! its not like having to mod a R9800SE/NP that cost 150-200$ to work like a PRO or XT that once used to cost over 400$ ....but on the other hand who cares?! just enjoy..... :-)

Genius · May 7, 2004, 04:57 PM

Because the day after I buy a ZS, which is a very very very very very minimal improvement (primarily software) over my Audigy 2, Creative will release another new card with another software bonus and very minimal hardware improvements called the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZX or some such crap. It never fails with Creative.