X-Fi: muffled sound... sometimes?

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Nihilanth99

2[H]4U
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Aug 28, 2002
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I've had a weird issue with an X-Fi XtremeMusic ever since I purchased it around two months ago. In some applications, it sounds wonderful, yet in others, it sounds like audio from a 15-year-old PC—almost as if it's being played back at a lower sampling rate than it should be.

If I load up an mp3 file in Windows Media Player, everything sounds wonderful. Yet if I load up Quake 3 at the same time, it sounds terrible—while the good-sounding mp3 remains playing in the background. It seems as if only certain applications sound the way they should. The windows clicks and beeps sound muffled, as well as most games I've tried. The few games that sound as they should are GTR 2, Half-Life 2 and its associated mods, and Need for Speed: Carbon. These are barely a fourth of the total games I've got installed. Even semi-recent titles like Doom 3 and Far Cry suffer from muddy sound.

Because this system is only a couple months old, the initial driver set I installed was the release from Creative's site available in mid-October. I've since upgraded to the October 30 release and have found no improvement at all.

I've tried each of the different 'modes' available in the Audio Console, as well as toggled the CMSS settings on and off to no avail. My speakers are a 2.1 setup, and I've specified them as so within the settings.

This is just such an odd problem; clearly the card is capable of producing the sound it was supposed to produce, but it only does in select environments, making me think this must be some sort of software issue.

I've tried searching through Creative's official forum for a while now, and can only seem to find people with connectivity or crackling issues. As for this forum, I was only able to find one similar post:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1032887

Any feedback at all is more than welcome!
 
Looks like it's been off this whole time. Thanks for the suggestion, though; this may just be a setting I've overlooked...
 
Try to disable the EAX feature in games, maybe you didn't like the feature.
 
Thanks, that seems to have squared away Doom 3. What irritates me, however, is that the main reason I bought this card is to have compatability with EAX for use in games :(

The problem seems to be more prevalent in older games, for whatever it's worth. Games like Diablo 2 and Unreal Tournament are just stuck sounding like crud.
 
There was/is a wonderful upgrade for the UT2K4 game that has some enhanced sounds for the weapons. The lightning gun sounds wicked. Only problem is it seems to only work in Single player...if I want to use the in-game voice chat I can't get people to hear me. Basically it's useless for Multi if you want to communciate, sigh.
 
ey I have this new, but I have multiples isues when install, showme mensages failed to find dll funtion commond.is64bitplaform...................ctengine cannot be instaled :S, anybody have sugestion is normal???
 
You have the speakers connected via the analog outputs, correct?

Could you elaborate on "muffled"? Is there a loss of high frequencies, generic distortion, or drop-out (clicks and pops)?

Perhaps you could compile a list of applications that cause issues and applications that work fine, and perhaps specify if they always work fine or if they work fine periodically. I'm having a difficult time finding any commonality between applications. I thought perhaps there may be an issue with OpenAL, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

So, my tally is:

Functional
  • Doom 3 (with EAX disabled)
  • NFS: Carbon
  • Source engine games
  • GTR2

Non-functional
  • Diablo 2
  • Far Cry
  • UT2004

On the functional list, the only title that uses OpenAL is Doom 3, and you mention that it sounds fine with EAX disabled. The other two functional games use DirectSound, as do the two of the non-functional games, Diablo 2 and Far Cry. UT2004 uses OpenAL.

Very strange. All of the DirectSound games should be spitting the same data to DirectSound, and all OpenAL games use the same OpenAL functions, so I'm not sure what the deal is here.
 
Nihilanth99 said:
Thanks, that seems to have squared away Doom 3. What irritates me, however, is that the main reason I bought this card is to have compatability with EAX for use in games :(

The problem seems to be more prevalent in older games, for whatever it's worth. Games like Diablo 2 and Unreal Tournament are just stuck sounding like crud.
Click to expand...

Maybe you just don't like the effects done by the card, try to use basic settings, don't play in game mode or use whatever settings that will add effects to the game. Some games like Carbon and GTR2 doesn't support EAX so you wouldn't get effects in those games.
 
I have EAX enabled for UT2004 (works) and Far Cry (works great) with no problems. You do have to enable the settings within the game or you may as well use On-Board sound. Never played NFS/Diablo 2 and barely touched CS source.

OpenAL in America's Army works great.

http://www.openal.org/titles.html

It's hard to fix these kind of problems on a message board. I saw many folks trying to run Battlefield 2 in Entertainment mode. Folks it doesn't work.
 
Maybe he doesn't want EAX to work(because he doesn't like the effects), not all people like added effects.
 
Nihilanth99 said:
Thanks, that seems to have squared away Doom 3. What irritates me, however, is that the main reason I bought this card is to have compatability with EAX for use in games :(

The problem seems to be more prevalent in older games, for whatever it's worth. Games like Diablo 2 and Unreal Tournament are just stuck sounding like crud.
Click to expand...

Set it to Game Mode. Turn on EAX, Turn on Effects MIC/Macro/Elevation Filters, turn off CRYSTALIZER, EQ, set the speakers to 2.1 and use the correct setting from with the Game's control panel. CMSS-3D works better with Headphone but SHOULD do a half-assed good job with two speakers as well. With Headphone or Speakers, the better the Driver/speaker, the nicer the results. The Game mode panel will remember the last setting use so you should only have to do that once.

Always match Mode with source, and EAX is great for Games but sucks for Music playback IMHO! Try a USB Mic and see how that works?
 
alg7_munif said:
Maybe he doesn't want EAX to work(because he doesn't like the effects), not all people like added effects.
Click to expand...

Then fine, turn them off! Not only that, the amount effects can be added or taken away in increments. But music playback being muffled has NOTHING to do with EAX in Games. I agree that EAX with Music sucks for the most part:)
 
Thanks for all the input, guys!

phide: My previous card was a first-generation Audigy Platinum eX and I had been using it for the past five years or so, so I was quite familiar with what it sounded like. Since upgrading to the X-Fi, I do notice a slight improvement in sound quality when the thing works, but I also notice a sharp decrease in overall sharpness and frequency range when it doesn't. For the applications that aren't working correctly, it [noticably] sounds as if things aren't as crisp as they should be, and the frequency range seems limited (though this side effect isn't as distinct). For an application that has both worked and not worked (Doom 3), the before-and-after difference is clearly heard.

Disfunctional Titles:
Diablo 2
Doom 3 (EAX enabled)
Far Cry
Quake 3
Unreal Tournament
Unreal Tournament 2004

Functional Titles:
GTR 2
Need for Speed: Carbon
Half-Life 2
Doom 3 (EAX disabled)
Condemned: Criminal Origins

Again, the windows sound effects (clicks and beeps) seem to have the same muffled effect on them, but it's hard to confirm. Media files played through Windows Media Player sound great, though. And as stated before, the good sound and bad sound can coexist.

I'll try getting around to testing each game's audio settings a little later.
 
Nihilanth99 said:
Thanks for all the input, guys!

Disfunctional Titles:
Diablo 2
Doom 3 (EAX enabled)
Far Cry
Quake 3
Unreal Tournament
Unreal Tournament 2004

Functional Titles:
GTR 2
Need for Speed: Carbon
Half-Life 2
Doom 3 (EAX disabled)
Condemned: Criminal Origins
Click to expand...

The ones I've never owned or tested are in red. ALL of the others run with no problems on mine. As does all of the FPS War Games like CoD, MoH and etc... ALL work as well. Yes, I have most of them.
 
I hate to dig up an old thread, but I've been able to record the muffling using Doom 3. The second half of this clip should sound notably worse than the first half!
 
I hate to dig up an old thread, but I've been able to record the muffling using Doom 3. The second half of this clip should sound notably worse than the first half!
Click to expand...

The second half lacks high frequencies, confirmed with a spectrogram that it has no components above 12kHz, but to me it doesn't sound that muffled. The weird thing is that the effects' original sampling rate is 22kHz, so the HF parts are added during the mixing.
 
Interesting. Now that I'm in a predicament where recording proper in-game audio is important (.avi production), I'm searching for ways to fix this issue. I'm really at a loss as to what the root of this problem is. From what I understand, the hardware components are fine; this seems to be a software issue, and I'm pretty uneducated on the driver-level audio functionality within Windows.
 
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