Any further development on Santa Cruz / Sonic Fury sound cards?

jeuda · Sep 11, 2004, 04:32 AM

I read that Cirrus Logic has discontinued development for CS4630 chipsets. And there has not been any updates from Turtlebeach, the last driver update is 4193. Is there any unofficial development like soundforge going on?

WOuld appreciate if anyone can point me to its web location..... or perhaps share your views here...

Eck · Sep 14, 2004, 06:16 AM

There isn't much that can be done once a chip maker halts development. Unlike 3dfx, Cirrus Logic remains in business to protect against folks hacking into their source code. They want you to buy the products that have their new chipsets.

Turtle Beach actually did a terrific job updating the Santa Cruz driver with the latest (at the time) Sensaura build and cleaning up any bugs from the last official driver. The 4193's get a lot out of the Santa Cruz hardware that still packs a wallop.

There's something going on regarding the Voyetra software, some of which is bundled with the Santa Cruz. I think there are users who were annoyed that after purchasing the full version of AudioStation and changing hard drives, they were locked out of registering the thing. I was invited to participate in a class action suit myself! Since I hadn't run into the problem, I wasn't interested. Generally, I install AudioStation if I'm gonna be using the Santa Cruz and had purchased licenses for the 4 and 5 versions just to have the full program. When I went to the Voyetra site recently to see if I could get the latest version I found it to have disappeared from their promotional pages and they are slowly updating the file readme's to say that it is a discontinued product. My guess is that with all the crackers out there the only way Voyetra could make AudioStation development profitable was by using the activation feature, and that if there's a problem with that, they might as well give up the product and concentrate on other things. No problem for me, as there are many media players and encoders that provide the same features today. Even the free Windows Media Player 10 has a pretty good Library and free mp3 encoding now. (AudioGrabber can use Lame, though. Tough to beat that!)

Anyway, the Santa Cruz is still a great card with the 4193's a driver that optimizes it well. I'm someone that is more interested with compatibility with older games rather than new one's. Just recently, my Radeon 7500 died and I am (due to finances) forced to use my Voodoo 5 5500 card. Since the VESA support on the Voodoo is the newer VESA 3.0 that doesn't run on NTFS, I was forced to rebuild with a small 9x partition. So, I'm also using my SBLive 5.1. I need that for my old DOS games I still can't live without. As soon as I swapped out my Santa Cruz and installed the official Creative driver, I almost vomited from the audio difference with music! Yecch! Thank goodness I have the drivers and software for the Audigy 2. I'm using the Audigy 2 software with the latest Audigy 2 ZS drivers. You know, it sounds pretty darned good! It takes a wacky installation routine, though. Creative could easily put together the package themselves, and should since they are still selling the cards. Most follks are getting crappy audio with their Live cards. If I hadn't just switched from the Santa Cruz, I would have been fooled into thinking it sounded fine (like I was in the past). But, what a difference the Audigy 2 ZS driver makes!

Sorry for the little ramble, but I thought I would share a little.

jeuda · Sep 14, 2004, 11:46 AM

Hi Eck,

Sure, I loved to read your experiences... wow din know that
The Audigy 2 ZS does make such extensive improvement. I have tried to mod those drivers, but it doesn't seems to work at all for my CT4830 (I have 3 of these!)

Is there an updated guide somewhere to refer to?

jeuda · Sep 14, 2004, 11:55 AM

Got a question for you...

If Audigy 2 AZ is that good, is it good enough to replace Santa Cruz?

Eck · Sep 14, 2004, 04:48 PM

jeuda,

Yeah, it is. You get EAX 3 & 4 support, better EAX 2 support (although for EAX 1 games the Sensaura version of EAX on the Santa Cruz sounded pretty much the same as the Live), and DAC's supporting higher frequency's. Does this mean better sound for music? Well, alot of folks think the Audigy 2 sounds almost as good as the Santa Cruz! And the headphone support also has been improved so that the Santa Cruz's Sensaura HRTF headphone support isn't as much better as it used to be over the Live!

Seriously, if you want the latest EAX support for gaming then it's the Audigy 2 or Audigy 2 ZS. As for music, a number of people are running two soundcards, the M-Audio Revolution for music and the Audigy 2 ZS for games. (No hardware 3d sound for games on the M-Audio.) This is hearsay, but I've noticed that folks are saying the Audigy 2 has a slightly exagerated midrange to better accomidate gaming. I've noticed that the Santa Cruz has slightly exagerated high treble and slightly diminished low bass. The Live, in my opinion, has slightly exagerated bass (which is kinda nice for some music). But the Santa Cruz's treble boost is nice too (it makes for a nice percussive punch to the instruments).

It also depends alot on your speakers. I mostly use headphones as I have a sound sensitive neighbor. As such I already have way too many soundcards. (I also own an Acoustic Edge!) Since I'm broke, any further experimenting is only if everyone of my cards die. Besides that, if you have a really awesome speaker system, yes, you will notice improvment by upgrading to either an M-Audio Revolution or an Audigy 2 ZS. But if your speakers are average to good, you'll probably only notice the slightly different equalization emphasis from the drivers. Within limits, you can adjust those things with EQ's and bass & treble controls.

So, unless you're a really intense gamer with a need for the latest EAX support (which only helps on mostly future games, just a few current one's), or a nit-picky audiophile with a speaker setup to die for, I really wouldn't recommend replacing your Santa Cruz. If it dies (rare for a sound card), then okay you might as well. Otherwise what you have is pretty darned good. Heck, they're still selling the things!

Eck · Sep 14, 2004, 05:13 PM

Oh, I almost forgot. A guide? Well, there are some here as well as links within some posts to others. I use a combination of the older guide for the Live to Audigy 2, and use the Audigy 2 ZS cd's 402 drivers as the base instead of the older Audigy 2 driver. I CTZAPP the 402 in first, reboot twice (eliminates setup complaining I don't have Creative hardware), then run ctcomp.exe on audio\setup file for the Audigy 2, and run it without installing the Windows drivers, EAX Console, or Speaker Calibrator. Then I run the updates for the applications. Then I install PlayCenter 3.02.52. Reboot. Update PlayCenter to 3.02.70. Reboot. Then I ctcomp the extracted 444 driver setup, run it, reboot, then CTZAPP the same driver over itself so XP device manager shows the correct driver and it works correctly. Then I copy the 4MB Soundfont file from the install folder to Windows\System32, as well as the 8MB one from an older disk and the EAPCI8M.ECW from an even older disk! I rename default.ecw to EAPCI2M.ECW and rename EAPCI8M.ECW to default.ecw. I switch the Soundfont Manager to use the 8MB Soundfont in both A&B, and move the cache slider to around 32 MB. You should set AudioHQ to run at startup and show icon in systray so you can access the EAX EQ settings. To use them, you need to select the setting at the top, scroll down and click Parametric EQ, and then click the volume slider. You don't need to move the slider, just click it. (If you don't do this, you'll hear no sound when you select an Advanced EQ setting. It's a bug-don't ask.)

Well, that's sort of a guide I guess. The newer Audigy 2 ZS guide just gives you a bunch of applications that won't open on a Live. Install and update the Audigy 2 aps, not the Audigy 2 ZS ones. You'll need the CD image that was floating around (that multilanguage.rar thing), and the application updates from Creative's site, as well as the 402 driver from the ZS cd. There was a standalone version of it that an Evil_One used to have posted somewhere.

Good luck, if you want to experiment with that. Works fine for me. (But then, so does the Santa Cruz, and you see how much easier it is to optimize that: Double Click the Santa Cruz 4193 installation file-Boom! You're done!)

jeuda · Sep 15, 2004, 12:57 AM

Thanks for spending time to share with me. What you have mentioned here will encourage me to try out the driver mod for SB Live.

Getting another sound card, is not what I have in mind now. Perhaps there is no perfect solution for sound. Well, you did compel me to try the mod.. so I am gonna give it a try no matter what.

Brian48 · Sep 17, 2004, 08:24 PM

Just one thing to keep in mind. EAX 3 & 4 is only supported from the Audigy on up. You might get some improved functionality using modified A2 drivers on a SBLive, but you'll never get any of the same features. That said, I'd stick with the TBSC if you're satisfied with it. Legacy product or not, it's still a very sound card.

jeuda · Sep 17, 2004, 11:49 PM

Hi brian48,

I gave that sblive! a try.. in no less than 15 mins, I am back to santa cruz again. The difference is obvious, dun think I can live with sblive! on my main system....

Eck · Sep 19, 2004, 02:29 AM

jeuda,

Don't feel bad. That's just what I did!

Brian48,

That's right. But the SBLive does sound much better with the new drivers.

Using headphones, there's a big difference. The Sensaura HRTF headphone support on the Santa Cruz is about the best there is.

Although listenable, after having experienced the Santa Cruz with music for awhile, then hearing the SBLive, my reaction was NO, NO, NO I will not accept this! Quick! Put back the Santa Cruz!

I wound up putting Windows ME on my smaller partition as without the SBLive, MS-DOS Mode is useless. I use the 4193 WDM's as that gives me the built in WDM SBPro/MPU-401 support for my old DOS games. Unfortunately, there is no FM Music support, so the games that don't use MPU-401 General Midi have no music. I suppose I could solve my problem (keeping my DOS games supported while mostly using XP) by making the whole drive FAT32 and installing XP on it, but I've never experienced a 120 GB HD with one big FAT32 partition. (I only need FAT32 for my Voodoo 5 5500 to support VESA video for the old games-VESA 3.0 doesn't do it on NTFS.) Funny that my problem is video and not sound. VDMSound ran everything fine on XP with my dead Radeon 7500! (VESA 2.0-so much for progress.)

Has anyone used a huge FAT32 partitioned HD with Windows XP? Notice any problems? Things not running well? I'm wondering whether to try it.

Eck · Sep 19, 2004, 06:38 AM

I just had a thought.

Right now I've got 2 Primary partitions with 32GB's of Windows ME and the rest of the 120GB's Windows XP. Instead of wiping the whole thing to install XP on FAT32 and risk what I think will work (the Voodoo card and vdmsound working to give me full audio and video for MS-DOS games on XP FAT32), not working, I might just wipe Windows ME off and install a second XP partition (on FAT32). This way I can try it out first. (But it should work.)

If it does work I can either leave it like that and just use the FAT32 XP for the occasional nostalgia fix, giving me lots of nice NTFS XP for normal use, or wipe it all and go full tilt FAT32 XP.

By the way, I know the normal rules but I've got Partition Magic 8.01 so they don't apply. Magic!

Also, so I can sort of apply this post to the thread subject matter:

SANTA CRUZ ROCKS!

DPGX · Sep 23, 2004, 02:59 AM

They were really nice cards, I recently switched from a Santa Cruz to a Chaintech AV710. Honestly for the 19.95 it was well worth picking up and should continue getting drive support. Its a nice cheap alternative to Creative Lab's offerings Id give it a look if youre in the market for a new card. The control panel is nice and streamlined, no bloatware and no spyware. Theres obviously more expensive better envy24 based soundcards from m-audio and Turtlebeach even offers one, but if youre looking to save money go for the Chaintech or Gainward solutions

Hope this is helpful and sorry if I ran off path a little,

Mike

Eck · Sep 23, 2004, 08:25 AM

I'm - tired - of - installing - Windows!

Gosh darn, it doesn't work. After experimenting with my system to reach a happy medium of compatibility with new stuff and dos games using the Voodoo 5500 I'm forced to use, and a reinstall for my friend's computer so he could get a fresh slipstreamed SP2, I've installed about 6 full setups (only one for my friend). My gosh, I'm exhausted!

Anyway, NTFS or FAT32 doesn't matter. The dos games just will not use the VESA video support of the Voodoo card on an XP system. My old Radeon used to do it perfectly so I'm a little confused, but that's the way it is. After being sure it would work, I formated the whole drive with FAT32 XP and installed away, leaving checking out the dos games for last. Stupid was I. It didn't work. I had to get rid of everything again and make a 7.89GB FAT32 with 98 2nd ed, and the rest of the 120GB with XP on NTFS (both Primary and hidden from each other - the way I like it).

I've also got to go with the SBLive, as the Santa Cruz (or any other modern card), will not provide acceptible dos sound. This, after a couple of years of happily gaming away with XP, my Santa Cruz, My Radeon 7500, and vdmsound on a single NTFS drive. (If you can't see the game, as with the Voodoo, it doesn't matter how good it sounds!) Darn it!

By the way, I just noticed that the Audigy 2 ZS 444 drivers fix the problem with the LFE effects not being transferred to the main speakers. Oh, you could set it up in PowerDVD options, but I never noticed a difference (so it wasn't working). I was shocked to experience such booming out of my Sony MDR-V6 headphones while using PowerDVD5. I'm talking like sitting in the theatre! At least I'll enjoy some cool explosions in movies. I hope the headphones can handle it.

I'm definitely disapointed, though. I had gotten used to the Santa Cruz sound. The Live's not bad, but it'll take getting used to again. I use the WDM's in Windows, and the old Creative dosdrv drivers for dos mode (with a manual install so they don't run from the Windows Autoexec, messing with things.)

DPGX,

Thanks for the suggestion, but another card? What with a CT4760, an SB0100, an SB0224, two Santa Cruz's, 2 Acoustic Edge's, 3 HP Riptide's (pretty good for 2 channel audio and a built in modem if you're only gonna use a 9x box), and a Creative Ensoniq card, I think I'll find one of these will suit my needs! Talk about sound card overkill! If I found that I liked one, I wound up buying a second "just in case." I'm pretty good at swapping them out without killing the operating system, but this recent activity of trying to get what I want to work with the Voodoo card had me constantly repartitioning and reinstalling. I'm freak'n exhausted! That's it! I'm sticking with this. (Until I can afford a new video card.)

Eck · Sep 25, 2004, 11:36 PM

And I'm back to the official Creative 252 SBLive drivers and software, once again. The 444's boomed out way too much bass and buried much of the rest of the spectrum. It sure broke in my new headphones, but I hope they weren't compromised by all the bass booming. So far so good.

Still, when I gather enough funds for a new video card the Santa Cruz is going back in, and 98 will come off, as it wouldn't be needed assuming the ATI 9600 Pro still comes with Vesa support. I may need to settle for less expensive, but I'm hoping. I don't think the newer models would work on my KT7A. It's just AGP 1, 2, 4x and the newer cards are 8x AGP I think.

**dj_stick** · Sep 25, 2004, 11:47 PM

8x agp cards *should* still work there, just they will be runnign at 4x

Eck · Sep 29, 2004, 07:26 AM

Thanks dj_stick. Good news. I bought a Radeon 9600XT (Built By ATI). I just finished installing just XP on the whole drive with the new card and the Santa Cruz. DOS gaming bliss, with the Santa Cruz giving me the awesome music audio as well. DVD's look much better than with the old 7500 too. (And vastly superior to the Voodoo.)

It's the first time I didn't bother with VIA 4-in-1's. I've got an old Abit KT7A (non-raid), and usually used the 4.38's before. However, this time I noticed ATI's faq's mentioned that I shouldn't even install the VIA AGP driver. They say to stick with Microsoft's. Being that XP also includes a version of the other driver's, and recent posts at ViaArena mention that the newer 4-in-1's were mostly designed with Windows ME in mind, and that XP basically includes what's needed, I decided to see how things would run without using the seperate VIA versions. So far there's no problem. Happy camper, here!

Sep 11, 2004, 04:32 AM	#1
jeuda DriverHeaven Lover Join Date: May 2003 Location: Singapore Posts: 169 Rep Power: 0	Any further development on Santa Cruz / Sonic Fury sound cards? I read that Cirrus Logic has discontinued development for CS4630 chipsets. And there has not been any updates from Turtlebeach, the last driver update is 4193. Is there any unofficial development like soundforge going on? WOuld appreciate if anyone can point me to its web location..... or perhaps share your views here... __________________ [color=gray] [color=sienna]:: A64 3000 \| Abit KV8 Pro \| 2x512 PC3200 [/color] [color=sienna]:: Galaxy N6600GT DDVI \| Audigy 2 ZS \| [/color][color=sienna]WD-Raptor 36GB[/color] [/color]

Sep 14, 2004, 11:46 AM	Thread Starter #3
jeuda DriverHeaven Lover Join Date: May 2003 Location: Singapore Posts: 169 Rep Power: 0	Hi Eck, Sure, I loved to read your experiences... wow din know that The Audigy 2 ZS does make such extensive improvement. I have tried to mod those drivers, but it doesn't seems to work at all for my CT4830 (I have 3 of these!) Is there an updated guide somewhere to refer to? __________________ [color=gray] [color=sienna]:: A64 3000 \| Abit KV8 Pro \| 2x512 PC3200 [/color] [color=sienna]:: Galaxy N6600GT DDVI \| Audigy 2 ZS \| [/color][color=sienna]WD-Raptor 36GB[/color] [/color]

Sep 14, 2004, 11:55 AM	Thread Starter #4
jeuda DriverHeaven Lover Join Date: May 2003 Location: Singapore Posts: 169 Rep Power: 0	Got a question for you... If Audigy 2 AZ is that good, is it good enough to replace Santa Cruz? __________________ [color=gray] [color=sienna]:: A64 3000 \| Abit KV8 Pro \| 2x512 PC3200 [/color] [color=sienna]:: Galaxy N6600GT DDVI \| Audigy 2 ZS \| [/color][color=sienna]WD-Raptor 36GB[/color] [/color]

Sep 15, 2004, 12:57 AM	Thread Starter #7
jeuda DriverHeaven Lover Join Date: May 2003 Location: Singapore Posts: 169 Rep Power: 0	Thanks for spending time to share with me. What you have mentioned here will encourage me to try out the driver mod for SB Live. Getting another sound card, is not what I have in mind now. Perhaps there is no perfect solution for sound. Well, you did compel me to try the mod.. so I am gonna give it a try no matter what. __________________ [color=gray] [color=sienna]:: A64 3000 \| Abit KV8 Pro \| 2x512 PC3200 [/color] [color=sienna]:: Galaxy N6600GT DDVI \| Audigy 2 ZS \| [/color][color=sienna]WD-Raptor 36GB[/color] [/color]

Sep 17, 2004, 08:24 PM	#8
Brian48 DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Nov 2002 Posts: 55 Rep Power: 0	Just one thing to keep in mind. EAX 3 & 4 is only supported from the Audigy on up. You might get some improved functionality using modified A2 drivers on a SBLive, but you'll never get any of the same features. That said, I'd stick with the TBSC if you're satisfied with it. Legacy product or not, it's still a very sound card. __________________ My current specs....... Heatware References eBay References

Sep 14, 2004, 06:16 AM	#2
Eck DriverHeaven Lover Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 154 Rep Power: 0	There isn't much that can be done once a chip maker halts development. Unlike 3dfx, Cirrus Logic remains in business to protect against folks hacking into their source code. They want you to buy the products that have their new chipsets. Turtle Beach actually did a terrific job updating the Santa Cruz driver with the latest (at the time) Sensaura build and cleaning up any bugs from the last official driver. The 4193's get a lot out of the Santa Cruz hardware that still packs a wallop. There's something going on regarding the Voyetra software, some of which is bundled with the Santa Cruz. I think there are users who were annoyed that after purchasing the full version of AudioStation and changing hard drives, they were locked out of registering the thing. I was invited to participate in a class action suit myself! Since I hadn't run into the problem, I wasn't interested. Generally, I install AudioStation if I'm gonna be using the Santa Cruz and had purchased licenses for the 4 and 5 versions just to have the full program. When I went to the Voyetra site recently to see if I could get the latest version I found it to have disappeared from their promotional pages and they are slowly updating the file readme's to say that it is a discontinued product. My guess is that with all the crackers out there the only way Voyetra could make AudioStation development profitable was by using the activation feature, and that if there's a problem with that, they might as well give up the product and concentrate on other things. No problem for me, as there are many media players and encoders that provide the same features today. Even the free Windows Media Player 10 has a pretty good Library and free mp3 encoding now. (AudioGrabber can use Lame, though. Tough to beat that!) Anyway, the Santa Cruz is still a great card with the 4193's a driver that optimizes it well. I'm someone that is more interested with compatibility with older games rather than new one's. Just recently, my Radeon 7500 died and I am (due to finances) forced to use my Voodoo 5 5500 card. Since the VESA support on the Voodoo is the newer VESA 3.0 that doesn't run on NTFS, I was forced to rebuild with a small 9x partition. So, I'm also using my SBLive 5.1. I need that for my old DOS games I still can't live without. As soon as I swapped out my Santa Cruz and installed the official Creative driver, I almost vomited from the audio difference with music! Yecch! Thank goodness I have the drivers and software for the Audigy 2. I'm using the Audigy 2 software with the latest Audigy 2 ZS drivers. You know, it sounds pretty darned good! It takes a wacky installation routine, though. Creative could easily put together the package themselves, and should since they are still selling the cards. Most follks are getting crappy audio with their Live cards. If I hadn't just switched from the Santa Cruz, I would have been fooled into thinking it sounded fine (like I was in the past). But, what a difference the Audigy 2 ZS driver makes! Sorry for the little ramble, but I thought I would share a little.

Sep 14, 2004, 04:48 PM	#5
Eck DriverHeaven Lover Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 154 Rep Power: 0	jeuda, Yeah, it is. You get EAX 3 & 4 support, better EAX 2 support (although for EAX 1 games the Sensaura version of EAX on the Santa Cruz sounded pretty much the same as the Live), and DAC's supporting higher frequency's. Does this mean better sound for music? Well, alot of folks think the Audigy 2 sounds almost as good as the Santa Cruz! And the headphone support also has been improved so that the Santa Cruz's Sensaura HRTF headphone support isn't as much better as it used to be over the Live! Seriously, if you want the latest EAX support for gaming then it's the Audigy 2 or Audigy 2 ZS. As for music, a number of people are running two soundcards, the M-Audio Revolution for music and the Audigy 2 ZS for games. (No hardware 3d sound for games on the M-Audio.) This is hearsay, but I've noticed that folks are saying the Audigy 2 has a slightly exagerated midrange to better accomidate gaming. I've noticed that the Santa Cruz has slightly exagerated high treble and slightly diminished low bass. The Live, in my opinion, has slightly exagerated bass (which is kinda nice for some music). But the Santa Cruz's treble boost is nice too (it makes for a nice percussive punch to the instruments). It also depends alot on your speakers. I mostly use headphones as I have a sound sensitive neighbor. As such I already have way too many soundcards. (I also own an Acoustic Edge!) Since I'm broke, any further experimenting is only if everyone of my cards die. Besides that, if you have a really awesome speaker system, yes, you will notice improvment by upgrading to either an M-Audio Revolution or an Audigy 2 ZS. But if your speakers are average to good, you'll probably only notice the slightly different equalization emphasis from the drivers. Within limits, you can adjust those things with EQ's and bass & treble controls. So, unless you're a really intense gamer with a need for the latest EAX support (which only helps on mostly future games, just a few current one's), or a nit-picky audiophile with a speaker setup to die for, I really wouldn't recommend replacing your Santa Cruz. If it dies (rare for a sound card), then okay you might as well. Otherwise what you have is pretty darned good. Heck, they're still selling the things!

Sep 14, 2004, 05:13 PM	#6
Eck DriverHeaven Lover Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 154 Rep Power: 0	Oh, I almost forgot. A guide? Well, there are some here as well as links within some posts to others. I use a combination of the older guide for the Live to Audigy 2, and use the Audigy 2 ZS cd's 402 drivers as the base instead of the older Audigy 2 driver. I CTZAPP the 402 in first, reboot twice (eliminates setup complaining I don't have Creative hardware), then run ctcomp.exe on audio\setup file for the Audigy 2, and run it without installing the Windows drivers, EAX Console, or Speaker Calibrator. Then I run the updates for the applications. Then I install PlayCenter 3.02.52. Reboot. Update PlayCenter to 3.02.70. Reboot. Then I ctcomp the extracted 444 driver setup, run it, reboot, then CTZAPP the same driver over itself so XP device manager shows the correct driver and it works correctly. Then I copy the 4MB Soundfont file from the install folder to Windows\System32, as well as the 8MB one from an older disk and the EAPCI8M.ECW from an even older disk! I rename default.ecw to EAPCI2M.ECW and rename EAPCI8M.ECW to default.ecw. I switch the Soundfont Manager to use the 8MB Soundfont in both A&B, and move the cache slider to around 32 MB. You should set AudioHQ to run at startup and show icon in systray so you can access the EAX EQ settings. To use them, you need to select the setting at the top, scroll down and click Parametric EQ, and then click the volume slider. You don't need to move the slider, just click it. (If you don't do this, you'll hear no sound when you select an Advanced EQ setting. It's a bug-don't ask.) Well, that's sort of a guide I guess. The newer Audigy 2 ZS guide just gives you a bunch of applications that won't open on a Live. Install and update the Audigy 2 aps, not the Audigy 2 ZS ones. You'll need the CD image that was floating around (that multilanguage.rar thing), and the application updates from Creative's site, as well as the 402 driver from the ZS cd. There was a standalone version of it that an Evil_One used to have posted somewhere. Good luck, if you want to experiment with that. Works fine for me. (But then, so does the Santa Cruz, and you see how much easier it is to optimize that: Double Click the Santa Cruz 4193 installation file-Boom! You're done!)

Sep 17, 2004, 11:49 PM	Thread Starter #9
jeuda DriverHeaven Lover Join Date: May 2003 Location: Singapore Posts: 169 Rep Power: 0	Hi brian48, I gave that sblive! a try.. in no less than 15 mins, I am back to santa cruz again. The difference is obvious, dun think I can live with sblive! on my main system.... __________________ [color=gray] [color=sienna]:: A64 3000 \| Abit KV8 Pro \| 2x512 PC3200 [/color] [color=sienna]:: Galaxy N6600GT DDVI \| Audigy 2 ZS \| [/color][color=sienna]WD-Raptor 36GB[/color] [/color]

Sep 19, 2004, 02:29 AM	#10
Eck DriverHeaven Lover Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 154 Rep Power: 0	jeuda, Don't feel bad. That's just what I did! Brian48, That's right. But the SBLive does sound much better with the new drivers. Using headphones, there's a big difference. The Sensaura HRTF headphone support on the Santa Cruz is about the best there is. Although listenable, after having experienced the Santa Cruz with music for awhile, then hearing the SBLive, my reaction was NO, NO, NO I will not accept this! Quick! Put back the Santa Cruz! I wound up putting Windows ME on my smaller partition as without the SBLive, MS-DOS Mode is useless. I use the 4193 WDM's as that gives me the built in WDM SBPro/MPU-401 support for my old DOS games. Unfortunately, there is no FM Music support, so the games that don't use MPU-401 General Midi have no music. I suppose I could solve my problem (keeping my DOS games supported while mostly using XP) by making the whole drive FAT32 and installing XP on it, but I've never experienced a 120 GB HD with one big FAT32 partition. (I only need FAT32 for my Voodoo 5 5500 to support VESA video for the old games-VESA 3.0 doesn't do it on NTFS.) Funny that my problem is video and not sound. VDMSound ran everything fine on XP with my dead Radeon 7500! (VESA 2.0-so much for progress.) Has anyone used a huge FAT32 partitioned HD with Windows XP? Notice any problems? Things not running well? I'm wondering whether to try it.

Sep 19, 2004, 06:38 AM	#11
Eck DriverHeaven Lover Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 154 Rep Power: 0	I just had a thought. Right now I've got 2 Primary partitions with 32GB's of Windows ME and the rest of the 120GB's Windows XP. Instead of wiping the whole thing to install XP on FAT32 and risk what I think will work (the Voodoo card and vdmsound working to give me full audio and video for MS-DOS games on XP FAT32), not working, I might just wipe Windows ME off and install a second XP partition (on FAT32). This way I can try it out first. (But it should work.) If it does work I can either leave it like that and just use the FAT32 XP for the occasional nostalgia fix, giving me lots of nice NTFS XP for normal use, or wipe it all and go full tilt FAT32 XP. By the way, I know the normal rules but I've got Partition Magic 8.01 so they don't apply. Magic! Also, so I can sort of apply this post to the thread subject matter: SANTA CRUZ ROCKS!

Sep 23, 2004, 02:59 AM	#12
DPGX DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Aug 2002 Posts: 20 Rep Power: 0	They were really nice cards, I recently switched from a Santa Cruz to a Chaintech AV710. Honestly for the 19.95 it was well worth picking up and should continue getting drive support. Its a nice cheap alternative to Creative Lab's offerings Id give it a look if youre in the market for a new card. The control panel is nice and streamlined, no bloatware and no spyware. Theres obviously more expensive better envy24 based soundcards from m-audio and Turtlebeach even offers one, but if youre looking to save money go for the Chaintech or Gainward solutions Hope this is helpful and sorry if I ran off path a little, Mike

Sep 23, 2004, 08:25 AM	#13
Eck DriverHeaven Lover Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 154 Rep Power: 0	I'm - tired - of - installing - Windows! Gosh darn, it doesn't work. After experimenting with my system to reach a happy medium of compatibility with new stuff and dos games using the Voodoo 5500 I'm forced to use, and a reinstall for my friend's computer so he could get a fresh slipstreamed SP2, I've installed about 6 full setups (only one for my friend). My gosh, I'm exhausted! Anyway, NTFS or FAT32 doesn't matter. The dos games just will not use the VESA video support of the Voodoo card on an XP system. My old Radeon used to do it perfectly so I'm a little confused, but that's the way it is. After being sure it would work, I formated the whole drive with FAT32 XP and installed away, leaving checking out the dos games for last. Stupid was I. It didn't work. I had to get rid of everything again and make a 7.89GB FAT32 with 98 2nd ed, and the rest of the 120GB with XP on NTFS (both Primary and hidden from each other - the way I like it). I've also got to go with the SBLive, as the Santa Cruz (or any other modern card), will not provide acceptible dos sound. This, after a couple of years of happily gaming away with XP, my Santa Cruz, My Radeon 7500, and vdmsound on a single NTFS drive. (If you can't see the game, as with the Voodoo, it doesn't matter how good it sounds!) Darn it! By the way, I just noticed that the Audigy 2 ZS 444 drivers fix the problem with the LFE effects not being transferred to the main speakers. Oh, you could set it up in PowerDVD options, but I never noticed a difference (so it wasn't working). I was shocked to experience such booming out of my Sony MDR-V6 headphones while using PowerDVD5. I'm talking like sitting in the theatre! At least I'll enjoy some cool explosions in movies. I hope the headphones can handle it. I'm definitely disapointed, though. I had gotten used to the Santa Cruz sound. The Live's not bad, but it'll take getting used to again. I use the WDM's in Windows, and the old Creative dosdrv drivers for dos mode (with a manual install so they don't run from the Windows Autoexec, messing with things.) DPGX, Thanks for the suggestion, but another card? What with a CT4760, an SB0100, an SB0224, two Santa Cruz's, 2 Acoustic Edge's, 3 HP Riptide's (pretty good for 2 channel audio and a built in modem if you're only gonna use a 9x box), and a Creative Ensoniq card, I think I'll find one of these will suit my needs! Talk about sound card overkill! If I found that I liked one, I wound up buying a second "just in case." I'm pretty good at swapping them out without killing the operating system, but this recent activity of trying to get what I want to work with the Voodoo card had me constantly repartitioning and reinstalling. I'm freak'n exhausted! That's it! I'm sticking with this. (Until I can afford a new video card.)

Sep 25, 2004, 11:36 PM	#14
Eck DriverHeaven Lover Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 154 Rep Power: 0	And I'm back to the official Creative 252 SBLive drivers and software, once again. The 444's boomed out way too much bass and buried much of the rest of the spectrum. It sure broke in my new headphones, but I hope they weren't compromised by all the bass booming. So far so good. Still, when I gather enough funds for a new video card the Santa Cruz is going back in, and 98 will come off, as it wouldn't be needed assuming the ATI 9600 Pro still comes with Vesa support. I may need to settle for less expensive, but I'm hoping. I don't think the newer models would work on my KT7A. It's just AGP 1, 2, 4x and the newer cards are 8x AGP I think.

Sep 29, 2004, 07:26 AM	#16
Eck DriverHeaven Lover Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 154 Rep Power: 0	Thanks dj_stick. Good news. I bought a Radeon 9600XT (Built By ATI). I just finished installing just XP on the whole drive with the new card and the Santa Cruz. DOS gaming bliss, with the Santa Cruz giving me the awesome music audio as well. DVD's look much better than with the old 7500 too. (And vastly superior to the Voodoo.) It's the first time I didn't bother with VIA 4-in-1's. I've got an old Abit KT7A (non-raid), and usually used the 4.38's before. However, this time I noticed ATI's faq's mentioned that I shouldn't even install the VIA AGP driver. They say to stick with Microsoft's. Being that XP also includes a version of the other driver's, and recent posts at ViaArena mention that the newer 4-in-1's were mostly designed with Windows ME in mind, and that XP basically includes what's needed, I decided to see how things would run without using the seperate VIA versions. So far there's no problem. Happy camper, here!