Creative's official SBLive drivers is here!

[Qstix 0]

Go and get 'em at http://www.soundblaster.com !

[Bigegg 0]

GREAT !!

[mello_j 0]

is there any difference between this official release and the leaked 70mb download of livewire from before?

 

i am asking cause i have that version installed, and it runs fine, so i wouldnt want to risk installing this if its the same thing...

 

thanks.

[SHS 0]

Me to

[Jabba 0]

same question...I'm happy with the 70mb ones.

[Qstix 0]

What I've heard the drivers are the same.. but I haven't tried the 70mb myself though.

 

I think you guys should stick with the ones you've got until Creative releases better ones, because this version of Liveware is not by far as good as the Win9x version yet..

 

---------------

Qstix

[deckard 0]

I'll second that. These drivers well, kind of suck. When I boot now the Creative 'lightning crash' sound plays at MAX volume and my desktop takes much longer to come up. After it's finally done the volume returns to normal. I can't tell you how irritating that is. The mixer app is a total waste. It is nothing more than the standard Windows volume control. Price of running the latest and greatest OS I guess.

[DrSchmoe 0]

The reason it takes longer to load could be due to the SoundFont. Try disabling the SoundFont and see if your speed is boosted. My guess is that the default.sf2 file ended up getting badly fragmented during the install, or, you are loading a larger SoundFont.

 

Also, the volume is regulated by devldr32.exe. The problem is that devldr32.exe is a user process and loads after the startup sound, hence the loud volume. If it were run as a system service, this might correct the issue. However, tampering with devldr32 can cause your system to die a multitude of deaths (i.e. proceed at your own risk).

 

As for the drivers, they are different. The release version has been signed by Microsoft's hardware labs. However, a DMA problem that would flush the buffers still remains. I previously thought it had been removed, but after further testing, it remains.

 

I don't have the time, but I am guessing it would be fairly simple to hack the LiveWare 3 utilites to work with the WDM drivers (after all, they work in NT4). I wouldn't worry about it though, my guess is that LiveWare 4 is right around the corner, and Creative didn't want to release two versions within weeks of each other.

 

[This message has been edited by DrSchmoe (edited 23 March 2000).]

[deckard 0]

Dang Schmoe you are a pretty sharp fellow. Glad to have people like you posting on these forums. I'm gonna go try out that soundfont business. The obvious fix for the startup thing was just to disable it and hey that's just fine with me for now.

[DrSchmoe 0]

Thanks!

 

I am fairly impressed with the drivers so far. Sure I miss the applets from LiveWare 3, but I really don't care *that* much. For the most part they just looked cooler than the previous versions.

 

The drivers are EAX 2.0 compatible, so as far as features go, we are on par with 9x users.

 

It sounds like some people are still having problems with LW2k, which is interesting. My guess is that they tried the hacked version of LW3.

 

Look at it this way. Now that Windows2K is officially supported by Creative, they can't hang up on you when you call for support

[Jerry - 0]

And they don't even install!

[Jabba 0]

DrSchmoe, I suffer from having used the hacked liveware 3 drivers. I wondered if you could spare a moment of your time and look at my post "More Liveware Problems..." since you seem to know what you're talking about.

[Dragon-Lord 0]

Could the "DMA problem that flushes the buffers" be responsible for my EAX problem? The drivers seem to work fine for typical uses, but when I put full acceleration on, and enable 3d sound (EAX) in Unreal Tournament or Half-Life (so this is not application dependant), I get huge distortions whenever more than a few simultaneous sounds are trying to play. For example, the very simple UT open plays almost perfectly (maybe a skip or loud pop), but as soon as the game begins proper, it sounds like an insane symphony. Also, it is clear to me that the EAX enabled sounds are playing way too loud.

 

I am running an ACPI Supermicro P6DBS, Dual 450mhz P3, with 256mb of ram. This problem does not occur under Win98se, but has been a steady problem under W2k under all three sets of drivers (original w2k, leaked beta, MS certified release).

 

:}

[LoW_beta 0]

Dragon-Lord, I think the distortion problems are related to the amount of voices the drivers come defaulted at for directsound accelration. Take for example the Win9X drivers have the wave voice applet and it comes set at 4 voices, you can raise it all the way to 32 which helps in games that support that many. So right now I'm guessing that the Win2K come defaulted at 4 voices and that's why many games sound like crap.

 

I've been told there is a way to change that value through the registry but haven't found out where yet. Until then you'll have to put up with the distortion. Overall I'm happy with the drivers but i'm sad Creative left that feature out of this release.

[DrSchmoe 0]

I am guessing Creative has a legitimate reason why they didn't include the applet to change max number of voices. I am wondering what that reason is

 

In any event, I am not sure that it isn't a DMA buffer problem. Individual applications should be able to specify their own number of accelerated streams, and bypass the system default.

 

Does this same problem still exist when you switch to 2 speakers? I haven't started testing, but I am guessing that two speaker mode might reduce the effects of the buffer issue (Which might actually be more of an over-run scenario). If Creative set the DMA buffer size too low, many concurrent sound effects could be overwriting one-another and causing the problem.

[BarryC 0]

Couldn't install them, after they unpacked then nothing else happened, no setup window or anything. While they were unpacking you could see the files in a temp folder but once they were all unpacked they were deleted.

[Dragon-Lord 0]

I am only using two speakers, so the number is speakers is not relevant. Under win98se, I did up the number of voices to 32. It seems a very simple thing for them to have provided. My system is hardly unique in having this problem. I will check the registry and let you know what I find...muhaha

 

:}