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Sound Blaster X-FI and audio in Vista


MadBoy

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Hello. I've Vista Ultimate x32 installed on AMD Athlon x64 3000 / 1gb ram / sata 2 hdd / some Asus mobo and Sound Blaster X-Fi with newest drivers installed. My problem is that when i simply without doing any changes to system run WinAmp and play music in it my processor usage for just this simple tasks goes up to 40-50% (counting audiodg.exe and winamp process). If that wouldn't be enough when i start playing with windows aka trying to access directories on hdd, switching between other windows (doing usual work, not even starting other programs!!) music stops for 1second or causing little noticable interrupts. I have read about AudioDg.exe being the protective drm crap and causing some problems. I am aware that my PC isn't something great but i'm not gonna upgrade computer knowing that it will behave similar even with 2gb ram or dual core.

Question is if this is just Sound blaster bad drivers, bad vista audiodg.exe process that or maybe realy my computer isn't "suitable" enough for this simple task .. playing music.

hope somebody can share his experience on this

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What x-fi do you have and what driver version?

Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum - SBXF_PCDVT_LB_2_13_0012.exe with date 10.3.2007. However i see that there is driver with same name that was released 15.03.2007. So downloading it now and will check it out but it would be weird to use exactly same numbers.

Edit:

Same problem when installed the ones from 15.03.2007. Actually those were the same drivers but turns out they were diffrently dated.

Edited by MadBoy
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i would still point to flakey drivers, his issue isn't with Memory being low but with CPU usage spiking,

Madboy,

have you checked on the creative forums yet? i remeber there being a huge there about how terrible the XFi drivers were. not sure if anything has changed since then or not

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i would still point to flakey drivers, his issue isn't with Memory being low but with CPU usage spiking,

Madboy,

have you checked on the creative forums yet? i remeber there being a huge there about how terrible the XFi drivers were. not sure if anything has changed since then or not

@fizban2 - i didn't checked anything yet on forum, i've assumed that when new drivers are rlsed few days ago it would be the working ones since i read about XFi problems ages/months ago.

@dale5605 - i will buy 2gb ram, dual core and best graphics card there is if i will know it will be usefull for anything else then just simple system and to get Winamp running. If i can't have Vista running with just Winamp open and i can't then go thru dirs on hdd because it's causing problems with playing music then something is wrong. If i have to buy new hw and see that the system takes 30% and rest is for games or anything else it's preety bad. My hardware setup ain't that bad yet, i installed Vista to test few things and i am dissapointed for now. I don't even want to mention that when i play music and i start Media Center in ultimate vista then the music is hardly playing anymore. I am realy afraid to even start games with my current setup on Vista even thou on WinXP they were working quite nice and i could play newest F.E.A.R without problems.

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  • 3 years later...
i would still point to flakey drivers, his issue isn't with Memory being low but with CPU usage spiking,

Madboy,

have you checked on the creative forums yet? i remeber there being a huge there about how terrible the XFi drivers were. not sure if anything has changed since then or not

@fizban2 - i didn't checked anything yet on forum, i've assumed that when new drivers are rlsed few days ago it would be the working ones since i read about XFi problems ages/months ago.

@dale5605 - i will buy 2gb ram, dual core and best graphics card there is if i will know it will be usefull for anything else then just simple system and to get Winamp running. If i can't have Vista running with just Winamp open and i can't then go thru dirs on hdd because it's causing problems with playing music then something is wrong. If i have to buy new hw and see that the system takes 30% and rest is for games or anything else it's preety bad. My hardware setup ain't that bad yet, i installed Vista to test few things and i am dissapointed for now. I don't even want to mention that when i play music and i start Media Center in ultimate vista then the music is hardly playing anymore. I am realy afraid to even start games with my current setup on Vista even thou on WinXP they were working quite nice and i could play newest F.E.A.R without problems.

Audiodg.exe is at fault as well a few other audio based dll files from Vista/ windows 7/ windows server 2008

Info here: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;981013

Seriously makes me wanna slap someone they they let this go on since Vista up to now.....

Best thing to do is for applications which drive up CPU usage / memory of audiodg.exe do the "disable audio enhancements" trick, although it is stupid.. since it makes you wonder why you bought a sound card to begin with..

there is a fix available, but you have to request it. I did but I have heard nothing back, I hope someone else gets that hotfix and posts it somewhere because I REALLY REALLY want it

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really? I got nothing back, that is quite lame I guess I will try again, need it for x64 windows 7 is that the same that you requested? maybe the fix is problematic for one version of the os or another... like maybe for x64 they are not sending it out

Edit: ok looked under your name and it says your info I am an id*** lol, I have read reports of the fix not working, did it work for you?

Edited by AbstractTheorem
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smile.gif

Looks like the binary isn't available anymore (I now get a "you must call support" link instead of a hotfix request page). Odd, but maybe that's why you didn't get a mail.

Been poking around on creatives forums and a couple of other places, seems that the hotfix is not working for many people....(a.k.a. memory leak / high CPU usage continue anyway)

Assuming that there is some truth behind "bad drivers" which everyone thought it was... maybe it was actually both which is why the hotfix is not working (or the hotfix sucks lol) have you had any memory leaks since applying it?

also any chance of you tossing that file anywhere? found a post on creative's forums where a guy got the hotfix but took him more than an hour on the phone to get it lol... would rather not do that. They posted a rapid share link with it, but the link seems busted (just gets stuck loading...might get fixed later...just so sick of restarting the windows Audio service over and over so it does not gobble up all 8 GB of my ram)

edit: got rapidshare link to work ... only took 30 minutes to find out that sometimes you need to add "www" to the front of rapidshare links when they timeout.... lol...saved at least 45 minutes of phone time tho lol

applied the fix and... it CHANGED NOTHING!!! leak still happening lol... jumped on poker stars and watched as my memory got gobbled up by audiodg.exe! .... sort of disappointing... but maybe that is why they took down the fix.

Edited by AbstractTheorem
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Assuming that there is some truth behind "bad drivers" which everyone thought it was... maybe it was actually both which is why the hotfix is not working (or the hotfix sucks lol) have you had any memory leaks since applying it?
Given that I had this problem on Vista with Creative drivers for the Audigy, and they went away after switching to the onboard realtek chip, I've got to imagine that this hotfix is meant to address bad drivers, and not a code problem (per se) in audiodg.exe. It's heavily prevalent with Creative drivers (and very old SoundMax drivers seemed to be bad at this too, at least in Vista while I was testing), it would seem.

Also, given that redistributing Microsoft binaries is technically a violation of the EULA, you just need to open a support case from the link in the KB and get a support person to send you the binary. It will be a free case as it's about a hotfix, anyway.

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Assuming that there is some truth behind "bad drivers" which everyone thought it was... maybe it was actually both which is why the hotfix is not working (or the hotfix sucks lol) have you had any memory leaks since applying it?
Given that I had this problem on Vista with Creative drivers for the Audigy, and they went away after switching to the onboard realtek chip, I've got to imagine that this hotfix is meant to address bad drivers, and not a code problem (per se) in audiodg.exe. It's heavily prevalent with Creative drivers (and very old SoundMax drivers seemed to be bad at this too, at least in Vista while I was testing), it would seem.

Also, given that redistributing Microsoft binaries is technically a violation of the EULA, you just need to open a support case from the link in the KB and get a support person to send you the binary. It will be a free case as it's about a hotfix, anyway.

ahh yeah did not really think about the EULA since it was just a fix... figured save the 2 hours on phone lol.... from what I can understand of the problem it has something to do with a combination of both creative and Microsoft.... tho I dunno that I really care that much where the fault lies they just need to fix it... sick of audiodg.exe drowning in GB's of memory lol

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