New Liveware, same old problems

[Ningauble 0]

MP3's still skip, EAX games have no volume control again(they blare full blast), and snap crackle

and pop just like the liveware 2 drivers did.

 

Tyan 1836dluan

dual celerons at 550

onboard AIC7895 scsi

sb live!

voodoo5 agp 5500

onboard intel 100Mb ethernet

128mb pc100 ram

Creative dvd-ram

seagate 8gig barracuda

2gig scsi jaz

 

Seems for many the problems are gone, but not here... same old same old,

tried just the driver then the full install same results.

 

The following games I have tested:

Diablo 2

Baldurs Gate

Everquest

Windows Media Player

 

Setting the hardware acceleration to basic seems to fix the mp3 problem

haven't tested the games

 

Ning

[mr_yellow 0]

SAME.

 

I posted before that my eax was working.. turns out eax is turned off at 3/4 acceleration.. when I bumped it up to max, i got the old crackling, delayed, and missing sounds in Halflife.

 

Abit BP6 dual 366@550 setup.

[yakkob 0]

Same here..

 

Deus EX and Motocross madness II get awful popping sounds and weird **** happening..

 

Bummer

 

Abit bp6 dual 433's

qq - beta bios

[cuke 0]

Try disabling the scsi adapter first, on the CT's newsgroup there are many users who have taken out their adaptor and the problems ceased. If you look you might see that it takes up nearly 100% of your CPU process.

Chris

[NotSoSmart 0]

Well Hell if it seems it is a SCSI card causing these problems Creative just dropped the ball. I just got a SB Live and came to see if anyone else had the snap crackle pop with Quicktime? Everything else works fine including all my games. I do have a ADaptec 2930(something like that) for an external CDR. I will disable it and see what happens.

[BlaZeR2 0]

What about those of us that have all the popping and crap, but don't have scsi adapters. (unless the HT366 Ultra 66 controller counts as a scsi adapter)

 

I learned (using diablo 2) that if you lower the hardware acceleration 1 notch, it disables EAX, if you lower two notches, it disables 3d sound (surround)

 

BLaZeR2

[Nightal 0]

I had the same snap and pops in those games etc.. I fixed it with by turning off ACPI which was forcing the IRQs to share. If you think this might be your problem.. search the archives for ACPI and IRQ sharing.

 

It works! It works! *Crash* Damn.....

[yakkob 0]

My yamaha8424sz is on my internal scsi card.

You mean I should, I should disable it every time I wanna play a game !!!!!!!!!

[Dragon-Lord 0]

I have returned my system to ACPI/SMP with the new drivers. This was after downgrading my system all the way to Standard (single processor) PC. This allowed me to set up my machine so that I was sure each device had a seperate IRQ. Once that was accomplished, I tried to go back to ACPI/SMP, but the system failed to boot, so a fresh install was required. My ACPI/SMP system still shows each device on a seperate IRQ (going up to 20).

 

LW3: DirectSound still seems to be flaky (scsi access causes hiccups in media player but not winamp/wave mode, for example), but Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 now work fine with full accelerated settings on (note Q3A doesn't have EAX support, so no way to test that here, but UT does and works now). IRQL errors have stopped (so far...). I had to do a full OS reinstall and have only installed the latest and minimum hardware/software to get this working (i.e. no ASPI, no nero, no NAV2000 etc).

 

Importantly, I had installed only the drivers for LW3 for my SBLive! and UT bombed out the system the first time I ran it. Also, the card was crackling and messed up when it came back (like LW2 errors). I then did a full LW3 install (the works), then powered down, powered up, and all is well...for now. Because of the winamp note above, I am sure it is not 100%, but mys system is now running better than it has ever.

 

I was also running SP1.59 beta for W2 on my old install, so I suspect that was a bad idea as well. Ie5.5 running fine as well as all the latest Office 2000 SPs.

 

Stay tuned, good luck,

 

:}

 

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

W2K Pro(Purchased Retail, beta SP1 1.59RC)

Supermicro SBDBS r1.02, Bios 3.0 (dead on-board SCSI chip)

2xPIII @450mhz (not o/c)

256mb PC100 Ram in 2 sticks

3xIDE HDs (50gb total, all NTFS) and 1 Pioneer IDE DVD-ROM (all UDMA)

Geforce 256 DDR (32mb), CL AnnPro (DET v5.32)

SBLive! Platinum with digital breakout card (LW3.0)

3COM 3C905B-TX 100-base ethernet (newest driver release on 3COM site)

SIIG AP-40 UWide SCSI PCI (W2K CD drivers)

Nikon LS-2000 SCSI film scanner (drivers now released)

Sony SDT-9000 SCSI 4mm DAT (W2K)

SAF 4012 SCSI CD-Write (W2K)

Iomega Zip 100 SCSI Drive (IO 2.2.1a)

MS Natural Keyboard Pro USB

MS Intellimouse Optical USB

HP Laserjet 6L via USB printing (newest drivers on HP site)

Epson Stylus Photo 700 via parallel

Rainbow Sentinel Parallel Dongle for LightWave6

[Dragon-Lord 0]

I have returned my system to ACPI/SMP with the new drivers. This was after downgrading my system all the way to Standard (single processor) PC. This allowed me to set up my machine so that I was sure each device had a seperate IRQ. Once that was accomplished, I tried to go back to ACPI/SMP, but the system failed to boot, so a fresh install was required. My ACPI/SMP system still shows each device on a seperate IRQ (going up to 20).

 

LW3: DirectSound still seems to be flaky (scsi access causes hiccups in media player but not winamp/wave mode, for example), but Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 now work fine with full accelerated settings on (note Q3A doesn't have EAX support, so no way to test that here, but UT does and works now). IRQL errors have stopped (so far...). I had to do a full OS reinstall and have only installed the latest and minimum hardware/software to get this working (i.e. no ASPI, no nero, no NAV2000 etc).

 

Importantly, I had installed only the drivers for LW3 for my SBLive! and UT bombed out the system the first time I ran it. Also, the card was crackling and messed up when it came back (like LW2 errors). I then did a full LW3 install (the works), then powered down, powered up, and all is well...for now. Because of the winamp note above, I am sure it is not 100%, but mys system is now running better than it has ever.

 

I was also running SP1.59 beta for W2 on my old install, so I suspect that was a bad idea as well. Ie5.5 running fine as well as all the latest Office 2000 SPs.

 

Stay tuned, good luck,

 

:}

 

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

W2K Pro(Purchased Retail, beta SP1 1.59RC)

Supermicro SBDBS r1.02, Bios 3.0 (dead on-board SCSI chip)

2xPIII @450mhz (not o/c)

256mb PC100 Ram in 2 sticks

3xIDE HDs (50gb total, all NTFS) and 1 Pioneer IDE DVD-ROM (all UDMA)

Geforce 256 DDR (32mb), CL AnnPro (DET v5.32)

SBLive! Platinum with digital breakout card (LW3.0)

3COM 3C905B-TX 100-base ethernet (newest driver release on 3COM site)

SIIG AP-40 UWide SCSI PCI (W2K CD drivers)

Nikon LS-2000 SCSI film scanner (drivers now released)

Sony SDT-9000 SCSI 4mm DAT (W2K)

SAF 4012 SCSI CD-Write (W2K)

Iomega Zip 100 SCSI Drive (IO 2.2.1a)

MS Natural Keyboard Pro USB

MS Intellimouse Optical USB

HP Laserjet 6L via USB printing (newest drivers on HP site)

Epson Stylus Photo 700 via parallel

Rainbow Sentinel Parallel Dongle for LightWave6

[BlaZeR2 0]

I am running ACPI and SMP, butmy soundblaster live isn't sharing any IRQ's. Why am I still getting pops and crackles in EAX or 3D audio games?

 

I don't understand

 

Should I reinstall without ACPI? also, how do I get Windows 2000 to use virtual IRQ's? My IrQs only go up to 18. I have heard of people having IRQ's in the 100's before. I just really want to be able to use EAX and 3D sound in games (Diablo II). Plus i like hibernation also.

 

Please, any advice?

 

thanks

BlaZeR2

[Ningauble 0]

I am in MPS multiprocessor mode, not ACPI and I am having the same problem. Best I can tell IRQ's are not being shared but it is difficult to say with the high interrupts the APIC uses. And disabling scsi isn't much of an option considering the OS is installed on a UW scsi disk.

 

Ning

[Dragon-Lord 0]

Yes, the best I can guess is that this is a problem with SBLive!, ACPI, SMP, and (possibly) SCSI - but the scsi hiccups could be just another symptom of the previous problem. These new drivers are certainly better with SMP, but it is clearly not perfect yet. The big question for me was whether the new reformat/reinstall made the difference in conjunction with the new LW3 drivers, or not? No way to tell, I guess. But since this procedure, everything involving IO works better now. I can compress 2gb of files, browse the web, play music, backup files to DAT, etc. all without crashing the system. Before, under the old LiveWare/System setup, an IRQL error would bomb me out somewhere during this process. The only IRQs shared in my previus setup were my PCI network card and the internal USB ports (enabled and working). I put an ISA ethernet card in the machine when doing all these changes and now I have no shared IRQs anywhere...for what it's worth.

 

Here's to W2K SP1 coming out next week...fingers crossed.

 

finicky OS,

 

:}

 

PS My OS is running on IDE/UDMA.

 

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

W2K Pro(Purchased Retail, ACPI/SMP)

Supermicro SBDBS r1.02, Bios 3.0 (dead on-board SCSI chip)

2xPIII @450mhz (not o/c)

256mb PC100 Ram in 2 sticks

3xIDE HDs (50gb total, all NTFS) and 1 Pioneer IDE DVD-ROM (all UDMA)

Geforce 256 DDR (32mb), CL AnnPro (DET v5.32)

SBLive! Platinum with digital breakout card (LW3.0)

3COm 3C515-TX ISA Ethernet 10/100 (W2k CD)

SIIG AP-40 UWide SCSI PCI (W2K CD)

Nikon LS-2000 SCSI film scanner (drivers now released)

Sony SDT-9000 SCSI 4mm DAT (W2K CD)

SAF 4012 SCSI CD-Write (W2K CD)

Iomega Zip 100 SCSI Drive (no drivers)

MS Natural Keyboard Pro USB (updated MS drivers)

MS Intellimouse Optical USB (updated MS drivers)

HP Laserjet 6L via USB printing (W2K CD)

Epson Stylus Photo 700 via parallel

Rainbow Sentinel Parallel Dongle for LightWave6

[Ningauble 0]

Switched to MPS Uniprocessor... EAX seems to work better, but MP3's still skip. I don't blame the OS, I blame Creative for the drivers. The basic win2k included drivers work fine, although they lack the eax support. I can't help but wonder what WHQL certification really means though. Guess they don't test on SMP machines too thoroughly.

 

Ning

[Ningauble 0]

Ok, still some problems even in Uniprocessor kernel. Volume control with EAX enabled in Everquest, Diablo 2, and Baldurs Gate is still messed up, in fact both the sfx slider and the music slider in EQ adjust the music volume for some reason, and the footstep sounds are so loud it sounds like I'm crushing the earth beneath me as I walk. Also I still had some skipping in mp3 playback in windows media player... although it is a bit better than in Multiprocessor kernel. The snaps crackles and pops are gone though.

 

Ning

[Dragon-Lord 0]

(sigh) I had 48 hours of perfection and bliss, and now it is EAX screeching again in UT and sound crashing in Quake3 (albeit less frequently than before). No hardware was added to my machine (except HP printer drivers and USB printing support) in the interim and the only software installed was IE5.5, photoshop 5.5, and Quicken 1999.

 

I am now getting strange error messages regarding a bad file called ctl3d32.dll. SFC is choking on replacing one version with another (Event Viewer), but both versions come back with the same version number. I checked my version of the file and I am seeing a datestamp of 1995 (huh?). The error messages only show up when I install or uninstall the LiveWare 3 software and drivers. Anyone see any relation?

 

I am very tired of this...

 

:}

[Damien 0]

I'm not doing much better, I've installed LW3, but I can't adjust any mixer settings, speaker configurations etc. All I get is ctsurmix.exe has generated errors and will be closed by windows - this is several steps back from the preliminary Win 2K driver kit which at least worked albeit with reduced access to the card.

 

Has anyone else had this problem? If so, do you know the fix?

[yakkob 0]

All peeps with problems using LW3 and SMP systems, goto the creative newsgroups (linked off the SBLIVE.com site) and post your system specs..

 

Hopefully Creative can peruse these and make head or tail of what is going on.

 

There is a thread already started..

I can't tell you what it is coz I am at work (no access to newsgroups )

 

Good Luck

 

Yak

 

--

[Ronin 0]

GUYS! GUYS!

 

Don't you see a pattern here, it's not just a SB Live problem but a harware problem in general. Everyone who is having problems should examine other hardware in there PC. You motherboard or scsi card could be the blame, it could be anything. Most likley it's your motherboard, I've ran my Sblive on an Asus P3B-F with nopt problems. I have since upgraded to duals cpu's but everything works great for me. Old and new drivers work fine. You need to investigate what other piece of hardware could be causing your SBlive to not function right, and replace it if need be or go with another sound card. Creative as we know is not going to fix your problems anytime soon.

 

 

...

 

 

 

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

My Windows 2000 System:

 

Dual Intel 850's

Tyan Thunder 2400 MB

Onboard Intel 82559 NIC

512 Megs Ram

Adaptec 39160 Ultra 160

1 - 18 Gig Cheetah - U160

2 - 18 Gig Cheetah U2W

1 - Maxtor 60 Gig (IDE)

SB Live Platinum

Plextor 12/4/32 - Burner

Plextor 40x UW CD-Rom

10x Sony DVD Drive

Hercules Geforce 2 64meg

Dual V2 Cards, for D2

Viewsonic PF815 22" Monitor

...

My Win ME System:

 

PIII 733

Asus P3C4X MB

256 Megs PC133 Mem

Adaptec U2W Scsi Card

1 - 9 Gig Cheetah 10K

48x IDE CD-Rom

CL Geforce DDR

ESS 1371 Sound Card

[yakkob 0]

It aint the mobo, my m8 has same system as me, and he has no crackling or popping.

The only difference is this: -

 

He has isdn on PCI slot

Network card on PCI slot

 

He has geforce gts2 64 mb ddr Elsa

 

BUT..He has SBLIVE Platinum, whereas mine is Player 1024

[[matt] 0]

As far as I can tell everthing seems to work fine with full hardware acceleration. I don't get any skipping, crackling or delayed sound, eax appears to work.

 

Mp3's and games all sound fine.

 

PC Spec

 

Win2k Pro 2195 (ACPI Multiprocessor)

Dual P3 500

Gigabyte GA-6BXD

128MB 100mhz DIMM

10GB HD

Creative TNT2 Ultra (5.22)

SBLive Value

Creative DXR3

Creative 6X DVD

HP 7200i CDRW

Hauppage WinTV

PCI Ethernet NC

[[matt] 0]

As far as I can tell everthing seems to work fine with full hardware acceleration. I don't get any skipping, crackling or delayed sound, eax appears to work.

 

Mp3's and games all sound fine.

 

PC Spec

 

Win2k Pro 2195 (ACPI Multiprocessor)

Dual P3 500

Gigabyte GA-6BXD

128MB 100mhz DIMM

10GB HD

Creative TNT2 Ultra (5.22)

SBLive Value

Creative DXR3

Creative 6X DVD

HP 7200i CDRW

Hauppage WinTV

PCI Ethernet NC

[Ningauble 0]

Hrrm, replace the 500 dollar mother board or the 150 dollar sound card...

 

There is *nothing* wrong with my board... the system runs flawlessly in win 98, and flawlessly in win2k with the drivers included on the win2k cd. I haven't seen another person with my same motherboard with these problems, but there are alot of people with the same exact issues on other boards. Creative writes piss poor drivers, thats all there is to it, and if I'm going to replace anything its not gonna be my MB its going to be the SBLive. Saying I should replace my MB is asinine... judging from the poll on creative's newsgroup I could pick 50 percent of the SMP-capable motherboards and still have the exact same problems.

 

Ning

[Nightal 0]

I see people still having problems because of ACPI... If ACPI is turned on then the PCI and other devices are sharing resources which is making SBlive go crazy. Do you notice that your sound card burps and pops when other kinds of I/O are happenning? Remember, the Video card, PCI network card, etc are all I/O. Gluck.

[CUViper 0]

it's not ACPI causing my problems..... i'm sure because it didn't work with standard mode too

 

I don't get crackling ar anything.... my problem is that any 3d-sound effects seem to be at full volume. Because it is so loud, it also distorts a little. I've been diggin through the registry trying to find a key that controls the volume, thinking that the mixer isn't handling it right. All volume controls work okay, but anything that uses 3d-sound is much louder than everything else.

 

For instance, in UT firing the gun, which doesn't use positional sound, is at normal volume. the ricochet (sp?) of the bullet off the wall, which is 3d positioned, is about twice as loud. Turn 3d-sound off, and everything is the same volume......

 

annoying to say the least........