Vista and the Audigy DSP

gatekeeper6838 · May 11, 2007, 07:59 AM

I just recently purchased Vista Home Premium and fortunately I have enough experience to get my Audigy 2 Value up and running on Creative's Vista Drivers (Mar 9 07 version). It seems to work good enough for listening to music, at least after messing with the sound settings in the control panel (sound was a bit too bright, had to turn down the treble a bit, adjust the volume of the rear speakers, etc).

Now, I remember being horrified by a statement a while back saying that Vista's audio platform would all be software based and that you wouldn't be able to take advantage of any audio hardware features on your sound card. Count on Microsoft to assume that nobody would care or notice, or to assume that everyone ran their crummy on-board audio devices and wouldn't need hardware acceleration. Now, after doing some digging it sounds as if this is true in Vista RTM.

Still, I noticed that CMSS3D is still alive and well and seems to sound almost exactly as it did in XP. CMSS23D was gone, so was Stereo x2. I haven't tried any games yet, nor have I tried DVD or Dolby Digital of any kind (From what I hear, I can't). So what's the deal here? Is CMSS3D software accelerated now? With Vista's lack of DirectX HAL, is the APU even being used on the card? I can't seem to find a straight answer regarding this. Also, when I was running Vista RC1, I had Kx drivers running and it seemed to allow DSP effects, but were those software accelerated too?

**dj_stick** · May 11, 2007, 01:39 PM

CMSS is CL driver based, has nothing to do with kX

kX DSP effects are always hardware based, and kX doesn't really rely on directsound for controlling those

gatekeeper6838 · May 11, 2007, 11:48 PM

Yeah, I'm aware that CMSS3D is a creative technology... I was just wondering when the audio hardware is restricted by Vista audio software. Is it only when DirectX is used? I was also wondering how the Kx Drivers (which I'm not currently using, but thinking about using) function under Vista?

Originally I didn't want to install Kx on my Vista RTM because I wanted to use only stable drivers and have full EAX, DVD-Audio, Dolby Digital, etc, some of which Kx doesn't support. However, from what it sounds like, the Creative Vista drivers actually lack these things anyway because of the new audio platform in Vista. I'm just trying to make sence of it all. If Creative's drivers don't even support any form of hardware acceleration, why bother using them? Is Kx stable enough for Vista?

septic · Aug 6, 2007, 11:34 PM

The thing with audio running in software in Vista is related to Directsound. OpenAL and ASIO should still work fine accessing the hardware. Creative have more information in their forum:

http://forums.creative.com/creativel...essage.id=1694

May 11, 2007, 07:59 AM	#1
gatekeeper6838 DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 3 Rep Power: 0	Vista and the Audigy DSP I just recently purchased Vista Home Premium and fortunately I have enough experience to get my Audigy 2 Value up and running on Creative's Vista Drivers (Mar 9 07 version). It seems to work good enough for listening to music, at least after messing with the sound settings in the control panel (sound was a bit too bright, had to turn down the treble a bit, adjust the volume of the rear speakers, etc). Now, I remember being horrified by a statement a while back saying that Vista's audio platform would all be software based and that you wouldn't be able to take advantage of any audio hardware features on your sound card. Count on Microsoft to assume that nobody would care or notice, or to assume that everyone ran their crummy on-board audio devices and wouldn't need hardware acceleration. Now, after doing some digging it sounds as if this is true in Vista RTM. Still, I noticed that CMSS3D is still alive and well and seems to sound almost exactly as it did in XP. CMSS23D was gone, so was Stereo x2. I haven't tried any games yet, nor have I tried DVD or Dolby Digital of any kind (From what I hear, I can't). So what's the deal here? Is CMSS3D software accelerated now? With Vista's lack of DirectX HAL, is the APU even being used on the card? I can't seem to find a straight answer regarding this. Also, when I was running Vista RC1, I had Kx drivers running and it seemed to allow DSP effects, but were those software accelerated too?

May 11, 2007, 11:48 PM	Thread Starter #3
gatekeeper6838 DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 3 Rep Power: 0	Yeah, I'm aware that CMSS3D is a creative technology... I was just wondering when the audio hardware is restricted by Vista audio software. Is it only when DirectX is used? I was also wondering how the Kx Drivers (which I'm not currently using, but thinking about using) function under Vista? Originally I didn't want to install Kx on my Vista RTM because I wanted to use only stable drivers and have full EAX, DVD-Audio, Dolby Digital, etc, some of which Kx doesn't support. However, from what it sounds like, the Creative Vista drivers actually lack these things anyway because of the new audio platform in Vista. I'm just trying to make sence of it all. If Creative's drivers don't even support any form of hardware acceleration, why bother using them? Is Kx stable enough for Vista?

Aug 6, 2007, 11:34 PM	#4
septic DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 2 Rep Power: 0	The thing with audio running in software in Vista is related to Directsound. OpenAL and ASIO should still work fine accessing the hardware. Creative have more information in their forum: http://forums.creative.com/creativel...essage.id=1694