The other day I bought a Sound Blaster Live 24-Bit External for my laptop. The onboard sound is so poor that it can't deal with AC3 Filter properly in movies, so I needed a replacement.

So if I tick "Use SPDIF" in AC3 filter's Media Player Classic control panel the Dolby Digital input light on my speakers lights up and we have proper 5.1 and its all good and sounds awesome. But I can't get games to output in 5.1 and I don't know why - the only way I can get 5.1 is by selecting the Dolby Pro Logic option on my speakers which is the same way I get music to output in surround. So I guess Pro Logic is an emulation mode, not the real thing.

Quake 4 won't even recognise my sound card and tells me that it doesn't suppport OpenAL. So I downloaded and installed OpenAL and I still don't get anything.

Anyway, the card is connected by USB to my computer and then by optical cable to the speakers themselves. The speakers are Acoustic Solutions DS533s.

Could it be that I only installed the drivers, and not creative's huge suite of bloatware apps as well?

Huh. Is a 5.1 configuration enabled in windows? Control Panel > Sound > Speaker Setup > drop down menu to 5.1


And yah, I havnt had much success with creatives drivers, they are the reason my pc BSOD's after certain games.

Quote: Originally Posted by Wafflesomd Huh. Is a 5.1 configuration enabled in windows? Control Panel > Sound > Speaker Setup > drop down menu to 5.1 And yah, I havnt had much success with creatives drivers, they are the reason my pc BSOD's after certain games.

Yeah, I tried doing that...but it just causes the speakers to crackle really badly when I fire the a gun or an explosion happens. Does the same thing in Prey too, so that's why I have it set to 'desktop stereo speakers'.

I had a look at the alternative open-source creative drivers but they say they don't support Sound Blaster Live 24bit.

I would suspect that games are looking for internally attached sound cards. When you think about it, you are actually running two sound cards... the internal one that you have set to SPDIF and the external to decode the digital signal to output to the speakers. My suggestion would be to exchange the external soundblaster for an internal version if at all possible. Soundblaster has some issues with how they handle some output, but they are the standard most game software recognizes.

Going on what gumby said, it might help to disable the onboard in the bios.

Well your sounhd card is the same as mine and mine works perfectly everytime. Try going with the recommended installation options even if it does install some crap its worth it to have decent sound.

Could the problem be that you have an external sound card playing though speakers which have there own "sound card of sorts"/

Have you tried hooking up by the three connections at the back rather than optical?

Quote: Originally Posted by Im_gumby I would suspect that games are looking for internally attached sound cards. When you think about it, you are actually running two sound cards... the internal one that you have set to SPDIF and the external to decode the digital signal to output to the speakers. My suggestion would be to exchange the external soundblaster for an internal version if at all possible. Soundblaster has some issues with how they handle some output, but they are the standard most game software recognizes.

Actually FYI, when I plug in the sound card it disables the onboard SigMatel audio chip automatically. And the only internal sound card available is the Creative Audigy 2 ZS PCMCIA which costs £70 - rather a lot for dated technology when if I had a desktop I could get an X-Fi for only £50...

Quote: Originally Posted by Reza Well your sounhd card is the same as mine and mine works perfectly everytime. Try going with the recommended installation options even if it does install some crap its worth it to have decent sound. Could the problem be that you have an external sound card playing though speakers which have there own "sound card of sorts"/ Have you tried hooking up by the three connections at the back rather than optical?

I don't have a 3-jack to one jack for the coaxial-in. Regardless this shouldn't matter anyway as optical or standard one-plug coax should do the job.

Well then maybe its a problem with the speakers and the onboard they have!

It's never the speakers, trust me, everyone has had this issue at least once.

Whenever I hear this, I know its an issue where the owner does not have something configured right in windows of the sound card.

So am I correct in assuming that I should have surround when playing games because of Creative's EAX thing?

I'll install all the software off the disk later, see if that works. Maybe the EAX support isn't included in the drivers.

OK, by looking at Creative's documentation it appears that digital surround sound speakers like mine will only output in surround if they are being fed an AC3 (a.k.a. Dolby Digital) or DTS signal. Which explains why Media Player Classic using AC3 Filter gives me proper surround but is the only thing that will.

Creative's upmixing CMSS utility does absolutely nothing, and if I do a speaker test from the Creative control panel the only sound I get is from the left and right speakers.

So unless I can find a utility which will upmix a standard stereo signal to AC3 or DTS, I guess I won't be getting proper surround sound any time soon in games and I'll have to put up with the built in Dolby Pro Logic.

Wait, you said your using SPDIF, well, there's your issue, games dont like it, and arnt really coded to output for it.

Music isnt either, its only 2 channel, right and left.

You will pretty much only able to use it with movies, thats pretty much it.

Well I'm only using SPDIF in Media Player Classic, not anything else. The Sound Blaster is connected by USB and then optical to the speakers.