Vista audio quality horrible?

[clickynext]

Is it just me, or is the audio quality in Vista really bad? Just listening to songs regularly, the sounds distort extremely easily.

I'm using an SB Live! on RC1. Sound quality was just fine with XP.

 

[Shawn]

It was doing it really bad with both my motherboard's onboard AC'97 and a SB Live that I put in when I couldn't get my Santa Cruz to work. Now that I got the Santa Cruz drivers working it's definitely not as bad with the Santa Cruz as it was with the other cards I tried, but the audio still skips/stalls when there is a lot of hard drive activity.

I think the problem exists because Vista handles the sound drivers at the user level instead of the kernal level now. New drivers need to be designed to make up for this change. I also think that buggy chipset drivers could be the cause. I suspect that these problems will be solved once manufacturers start releasing offical drivers. The drivers I am using for the Santa Cruz are the same drivers that were released years ago for WinXP. I was able to get them working after a bit of a hassle but of course the Santa Cruz Control Panel is nonfunctional.

I'm pretty sure that it's the combination of beta drivers + drivers that were not designed for Vista which are causing the problem.

 

[clickynext]

I just found that in the sound options if I turn the "speaker" volume level all the way up, and the individual program volumes extremely low (like 5) then it gets rid of a lot of the distortion!

Is there any way of setting something like that for everything on the system? The settings don't tend to stick.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: Shawn
It was doing it really bad with both my motherboard's onboard AC'97 and a SB Live that I put in when I couldn't get my Santa Cruz to work. Now that I got the Santa Cruz drivers working it's definitely not as bad with the Santa Cruz as it was with the other cards I tried, but the audio still skips/stalls when there is a lot of hard drive activity.

I'm glad that I'm not alone in having problems with skipping audio. Vista tells me that the drivers aren't designed to its specifications, so hopefully if/when official Vista drivers are released, the problem will go away.

 

[clickynext]

Originally posted by: ProviaFan

Originally posted by: Shawn
It was doing it really bad with both my motherboard's onboard AC'97 and a SB Live that I put in when I couldn't get my Santa Cruz to work. Now that I got the Santa Cruz drivers working it's definitely not as bad with the Santa Cruz as it was with the other cards I tried, but the audio still skips/stalls when there is a lot of hard drive activity.

I'm glad that I'm not alone in having problems with skipping audio. Vista tells me that the drivers aren't designed to its specifications, so hopefully if/when official Vista drivers are released, the problem will go away.

I'm curious about what causes the skipping audio. On a clean installation, I don't have it, but one day it suddenly started happening, and the only thing I could figure out to reverse whatever changed was to do a system restore.

 

[$pade]

Shawn - How did you get ur Santa Cruz to work under Vista? I am assuming you are using latest xp drivers with some modifications?

I am about to go back to XP because I can't get my onboard sound (DFI Nforce 4 Ultra D) or Santa Cruz to work.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: clickynext
I'm curious about what causes the skipping audio. On a clean installation, I don't have it, but one day it suddenly started happening, and the only thing I could figure out to reverse whatever changed was to do a system restore.

I don't know - I've had the audio problems since a fresh install (if you're curious about hardware, it's my "X2" system listed in my sig).

 

[Shawn]

Originally posted by: $pade
Shawn - How did you get ur Santa Cruz to work under Vista? I am assuming you are using latest xp drivers with some modifications?

I am about to go back to XP because I can't get my onboard sound (DFI Nforce 4 Ultra D) or Santa Cruz to work.

I don't remember exactly but I think is is pretty much what I did to get it working:
Removed the Santa Cruz card
Did a clean install of Vista
Disabled automatic updates (this is important, you'll see why)
Turned off the User Account Control
Downloaded the sc_4193.exe file
Right clicked on it, went into properties, then set it for WinXP SP2 compatability mode
Clicked Ok, then right clicked on the file again and ran as administrator.
After it finished installed and asked to restart I let it restart then turned off the computer as it was POSTing.
Reinstalled the card.
When Vista booted up it asked to install the drivers. Let it search for the drivers but decline permission to search windows update for the drivers!
It'll find the drivers but say they are unsigned. Install them anyway and restart.

Should work after that. The Santa Cruz Control Panel is nonfunctional though. You will have to make adjustments through the sound option in the control panel instead.

 

[postmortemIA]

Is Santa Cruz using Crystal CS46xx chipset?

If yes, then you can use generic Crystal sound driver. I managed to install them for my Hercules Fortissimo II

 

[clickynext]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
Is Santa Cruz using Crystal CS46xx chipset?

If yes, then you can use generic Crystal sound driver. I managed to install them for my Hercules Fortissimo II

Does the generic crystal sound driver come with Vista or is there a place to download it? How is the sound quality for you with that? I may need to give my old Gametheater XP a try.

 

[postmortemIA]

It did come with Beta 2, but it doesn't with RC1. However, you could get it from Windows Update, if you chose to let windows to find driver from there. It will download two Crystal drivers, "unsupported customized Crystal SoundFusion" and "Crystal SoundFusion(tm)" (That driver is present on Windows XP so my guess it is just that driver). For some reason, Windows will install wrong one of that two, but it will download both, so then you can go to device manager and replace it, the Crystal SoundFusion(tm) will be there on the list. And it works just fine for me, I couldn't tell any difference. I get two channel output, but then I only have two speakers on that system. Your mileage may vary, but that is only way I know that works cuz Cirrus Logic abandoned this chipset completely. I doubt there's anything for 64-bit version.

 

[CSMR]

Vista has some nice improvements to the way audio is handled. Look for a thread by amir in the AVS forum on this. Of course you need drivers to work and hardware to be decent.

 

[clickynext]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
It did come with Beta 2, but it doesn't with RC1. However, you could get it from Windows Update, if you chose to let windows to find driver from there. It will download two Crystal drivers, "unsupported customized Crystal SoundFusion" and "Crystal SoundFusion(tm)" (That driver is present on Windows XP so my guess it is just that driver). For some reason, Windows will install wrong one of that two, but it will download both, so then you can go to device manager and replace it, the Crystal SoundFusion(tm) will be there on the list. And it works just fine for me, I couldn't tell any difference. I get two channel output, but then I only have two speakers on that system. Your mileage may vary, but that is only way I know that works cuz Cirrus Logic abandoned this chipset completely. I doubt there's anything for 64-bit version.

Thanks... installed it but the distortion with this driver on my Game Theater XP is worse than my SBLive, and there's no bass. Oh well, guess it is all beta software afterall.

 

[postmortemIA]

doesn't bass come from a set of good speakers?

 

[clickynext]

Bass does come from a good set of speakers, and I'd say my logitech z-560's qualify for a good set of speakers in this case. For some reason the crystal sound card under vista just didn't output any low frequency sounds.

Well I'm back to the SBLive. Out of the three I've tried, (the other two being gametheaterxp and soundmax) this is the only one with anywhere close to acceptable results so far. Of course, it is still all beta software/drivers so I'm not blaming creative for it, but I will be if they don't have working drivers by the time Vista is really released.

 

[Vic]

IMO audio quality is noticeably improved. Make sure to get the latest drivers for your hardware.

 

[clickynext]

Originally posted by: Vic
IMO audio quality is noticeably improved. Make sure to get the latest drivers for your hardware.

lol, that's the problem. There are no drivers for many devices. For the SBLive, creative says as much. From the creative website:

Live! Series No Development Planned

 

[jazzboy]

I have an Audigy 2 ZS and on some apps the sound quality wasn't right.

I found that if you go to Control panel/Sound, select properties for you're sound card then go to the Advanced tab and then change the sample rate/quality to 41000 hz/16 bits - it sounds fine.

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: clickynext

Originally posted by: Vic
IMO audio quality is noticeably improved. Make sure to get the latest drivers for your hardware.

lol, that's the problem. There are no drivers for many devices. For the SBLive, creative says as much. From the creative website:

Live! Series No Development Planned

You expected anything different from Creative?