Serious help, kX screwed up sound drivers...

Kittie Rose

I wanted lower latency for my VSTs so someone recommended this for me.

Now, I wasn't sure which Soundblaster I had, but I thought that it wouldn't hurt to give it a try.

It all installed okay, but when it was all set up and running, the only sound I got was the into noise to Windows. Guess I must have a 24 bit SBLive! which isn't supported.

Now, I uninstalled those drivers and went to install the 24 Bit SBLive! drivers, and it didn't work! So I thought, well, I probably got the 5.1 version then, that sounds equally familiar.

Yay, these installed! But I still had no sound.

In the end I had to go to add new hardware and chose a generic SBLive! driver which immediately works without a restart. Probably my fault for not doing a rollback, but I never thought it'd be this complicated.

Either I have some weird variant, or something got seriously screwed. It now lists the device as SBLive! Audio instead of Emuk10, or something resembling that, I don't remember exactly. It looks so unprofessional I don't trust it, since it's a generic driver I probably won't get very good performance.

I can't install new drivers at all. The auto installer on the Soundblaster website doesn't pick up any Creative products on my system. I haven't tried the 5.1 Digital drivers, it could be that. I'll take a look at the drivers. Is there any other way to tell? Would it be written on the card itself anywhere?

If I did have a supported card, then why did I have absolutely no sound? If not, is there something similiar I can get to give me ASIO support with a 24Bit SBLive!?

Please help. I need to get it working so I can install the latest drivers, and I also need a way of getting my latency much better so my VSTs are more responsive to my MIDI controller. I'm thinking of turning an old laptop into a softsynth, does anyone know any good laptop soundcards with MIDI? And not the insanely complicated EMU ones, I just want a basic thing that I can get for $100 or so off eBay, either PCMIA(preferable, Audigy 2ZS would have been perfect but it had no MIDI port) or external(if it's fast enough).

Russ

There should be a sticker on the back of the card with the serial number, that may indicate the model number (if it is a retail model, bulk models would be harder to figure out). i.e. Mine is a SB0228 and the 1st 8 chars of my serial number are C6SB0228.

Russ

BTW: If you cannot determine the model number from the serial number there are other indicators you can use.

i.e.
There is usually writing on the front on the card that indicates the model family if not the model itself.

If you can read the writing on the main chip (should be the biggest chip on the card, and probably says Creative on it), it would help narrow done the possibilities.

Kittie Rose

I'm not sure how you get it from the model number can someone explain?

Russ

What do you mean (how do you get what from the model number?)? Did you figure out the model number (or do you mean, how do you get the model number from the serial number?)?

Post what ever numbers you find, and we will see if we can help you figure it out.

Kittie Rose

Okay, I checked it. It had "Soundblaster Live! 5.1 Digital" written on it.

Why didn't it work then? Isn't this card supported?

Russ

Yes it is (mostly). Which version of kx did you try and install? How many speakers do you have connected to the card?

You should probably use kX version 3538j.

Kittie Rose

I downloaded 3534 from the Swedish server.

Is there a way to improve latency on those crappy AC97 cards, btw?

Russ

Oh, that is old, there have been a lot of improvements since then, as well as support for cards such as yours. Download 3538j from the link in this forum (in the '3538j Released' thread at the top of this forum).

As for the latency, I get pretty good results with kX Asio and my SB Live! 5.1 Digital model , on an older computer system (5.33 ms).

Kittie Rose

Okay, I'll try it in a minute. Should I install the latest Creative drivers first?

Btw I badly need a souncard compatbile with kX that has an MIDI port for a laptop. Does one exist?

Russ

No, if anything remove the Creative drivers (you might want to use DriverCleaner to clean off the Creative driver and the kX driver before installing 3538j).

As for the question about the laptop, I do not know. Even without kX support, you may be able to find a laptop with a sound card that includes drivers with decent ASIO support. Hopefully someone else can offer some info on that.

Kittie Rose

Hi, got it working, thanks. Unfortunately only one of my soundcard's outputs still works. What is the difference between them and how do I get the rest to work?

Russ

Go into kX's speaker setup (Surrounder+), and set it to 5.1 with Surround On. It defaults to stereo only.