Skip to main content

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: Creative Announces New Live! & Audigy Drivers! (Read 6411 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Creative Announces New Live! & Audigy Drivers!

David Hamilton, Creative Labs UK, has posted in the official CL UK forums about the long awaited upcoming new drivers for the two most successful series of Soundcards. From what you can gather out of his post the new Live! drivers can be expected in a one to two weeks time frame. The Audigy drivers are to be released in August. However you can order the new installation CD for a small shipping fee right now. Also note that this new release seems to be equivalent to the drivers Compaq released in May 2002.

Quote
We have been working for some time now on a unified driver architecture base to allow us to better support our customers needs on a more timely basis. The unified driver architecture drivers will be know as the Creative MDP (Multi-Driver Pack) and will eradicate future issues that occur between drivers and applications running on different OS's and will also support both Live! and Audigy series cards under the one driver. The key benefit of the MDP approach is that there is now only one driver and app codebase as opposed to the multiple codebases that existed previously and had to be maintained separately. This will free up development time from a majority of maintenance to a much fairer balance of more enhancement development. 

As you can appreciate this meant starting from the ground up and building the drivers and apps all over again from scratch. This work has taken a great deal of time, but we have recently completed the stand-alone driver and apps that are now used on our new installation CDs, which some OEMs now have and our newer products will also use. 

We are very aware of some outstanding issues with the Live! and Audigy based cards that have been highlighted by many users and we very much appreciate your patience while waiting for the fixes to these issues. We had a very tough choice to make. Did we work on a fix using the old codebases, but in doing so delay the release of the MDP which has so many other benefits, or build the fixes into the MDP and release the two together a little later? We decided the best approach was to forge ahead with the new architecture which will provide better long-term advantages. 

The great news is that these issues are indeed resolved using the new MDP approach and all that remains to be done is release a web download. Unfortunately as in all things in life this is not a simple process. Due to the vast difference in code between the old system and the new and also between the Live! codebase and the Audigy there is a further great deal of work to be done. Why? Well it's simple. The full install is over 300MB, clearly too big for anyone but T1 users to download in a reasonable timeframe, therefore we have to create update packs whcih are much smaller because they update only the parts that require changing. However due to the previous different codebases we have to create two different upgrade streams, one for Live! and one for Audigy. Once installed they will both then be 100% MDP compliant. We took the decision a little while ago to release the Live! update first. This work is now 99% complete and the download (only 50MB if you want all components, 25MB for the core components) will be available in the next week or so on our site. The work has already begun on the Audigy download and barring any major issues this should be ready around late August time. 

In the meantime if you are a Live! user on a modem that doesn't want to download 50MB, or if you are an Audigy user that does not want to wait for the download, we have made the full CD available for order. The CD is free of charge, but there is a very small fee of ?1.50 to cover postage. Once both downloads are available we will implement a small handling charge for the CD shipment, so if you want it - get it now. 

One final point is that in the past when we have released large downloads our servers have become jammed and many users have complained about dropped downloads or simply just incredibly slow download speeds. Due to the size of this download we anticipated the same flurry of activity. We have therefore listened to our users and we are investigating many options. from the simple one of adding more bandwidth, to server bandwidth sharing between our WW servers (i.e. when the U.S. is asleep Europe can use some of their bandwidth to supplement ours and vice-versa) etc, etc. However one enhancement that has already been implemented and will be used going forwards will be our implementation of a new download queueing system that allows us to provide maximum service fairly across our user base. During busy periods you may have a few minutes wait before your download begins, but once it does you will be given guranteed bandwidth at a minimum 56K modem speed. Should your connection be dropped, no problem. Log back in within 5 mins and you go straight back into the download without queueing. Our servers also support resume download apps, so if you have these you will even be able to continue the download from the point it left off. 

We are very pleased with the performance and stability of our new driver set and we are sure you will be too. I hope you like the plans we have put in place and have a better understanding of the implementation issues encountered.

Creative Announces New Live! & Audigy Drivers!

Reply #1
...which is something the kx driver set has been doing for a while now, despite having a few issues here and there, they are worth looking at for enthusiasts.

http://www.kxproject.spb.ru/

I hope that Creative really sort it out this time, however as a 50Mb download I'm sure there is some hideous margin for error.

For a quality creative card, get the PCI128.

Ruairi
rc55.com - nothing going on

Creative Announces New Live! & Audigy Drivers!

Reply #2
They are availible at compaq for some weeks !

I am using them without a single problems. Many users even reported that the Soundquality has increased for Soundblaster Live 5.1.

ok, you can download them from here:
ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/softpaq/sp20501-21000/SP20920.exe  ( !!!377 MB!!)

1.download it
2.decompress it
3.delete CTOem.cfg ( So it can be used on non-compaq PCs)
4.start setup.exe

Only for Live 5.1( Not sure if they work for the other Live cards) and Audigy - and only for Win 2000/XP.
The package is multilangual.


If you just want to download the drivers and don't have a broadband connection you can download the drivers only from:
http://www.fileconnect.net/modules.php?nam...order=0&thold=0
Only 13 MB big.

Creative Announces New Live! & Audigy Drivers!

Reply #3
snkeaer, you are right.

i didnt want to post the info here because i was afraid that peope might consider it as illegal. but i have it in my website

Creative Announces New Live! & Audigy Drivers!

Reply #4
Why would it be illegal to post driver links?

Creative Announces New Live! & Audigy Drivers!

Reply #5
Does anyone know where I can order the new Audigy CD?

I have a bunch of machines I will be re-installing soon, and it would be nice to NOT have to go back to them all to update the drivers in August.  That's worth $1.50 to me .

- Agent 86

Creative Announces New Live! & Audigy Drivers!

Reply #6
Quote
Originally posted by silver_cpu
Why would it be illegal to post driver links?


uhhm.. maybe because that driver cd costs money

 

Creative Announces New Live! & Audigy Drivers!

Reply #7
Quote
Originally posted by Agent86
Does anyone know where I can order the new Audigy CD?

I have a bunch of machines I will be re-installing soon, and it would be nice to NOT have to go back to them all to update the drivers in August.  That's worth
Quote
Originally posted by Agent86
Does anyone know where I can order the new Audigy CD?

I have a bunch of machines I will be re-installing soon, and it would be nice to NOT have to go back to them all to update the drivers in August.  That's worth $1.50 to me .

- Agent 86 [/b]
.50 to me .

- Agent 86


check out my site. i have the direct link to where u can buy it.


Creative Announces New Live! & Audigy Drivers!

Reply #9
Quote
Originally posted by sneaker
If you just want to download the drivers and don't have a broadband connection you can download the drivers only from:
http://www.fileconnect.net/modules.php?nam...order=0&thold=0
Only 13 MB big.

Is there any way to get the rear-speakers working? Also, I find the general volume very low with these drivers.
Always defragment your MP3s to avoid subtle lack in harmonics.

Creative Announces New Live! & Audigy Drivers!

Reply #10
Tri,

Make sure you have the complete driver set installed, with AudioHQ.

Click on the AudioHQ Icon in the task bar (looks like a PCI card with a little speaker on top of it).

Double click Speaker.

Where it says "2 Speakers", click it and select "4 Speakers".

Et Voila.

Ruairi
rc55.com - nothing going on

Creative Announces New Live! & Audigy Drivers!

Reply #11
I think he doesn't has Audio HQ....


Try to change it in the windows multimedia settings.

/edit:
The creative shop sucks......

Only credit cards are accepted, but here in Germany credit cards are not common.

/edit2:

I am actually thinking about the question, if the compaq drivers would work also on Win 98 SE and WinME.
Does anyone know?

Creative Announces New Live! & Audigy Drivers!

Reply #12
No, I don't have a working version of AudioHQ. There is a new one posted at m3dzone, but when I start it, I always get an error regarding a missing "ctspres.dll" and the AudioHQ-window only shows 3 components: SFBank and 2 other... but nothing where I can select 4 instead of 2 speakers.

The multimedia-settings were already set to 4 speakers.

I also tried to install something that looked like a liveware for XP (60 MB zipfile, newest files dated to 11/16/2001) but setup always hung up during setting registry entries. I believe that this once worked, though.

I ended up installing those french drivers that I once found somewhere (newest files dated to 02/01/2002). The Emu10K1F.sys is version 5.12.1.3520.

These drivers pop and click when winamp is started for the first time after booting, but work flawlessly after that.

Well, I definitely hate CreativeLabs.
Always defragment your MP3s to avoid subtle lack in harmonics.

Creative Announces New Live! & Audigy Drivers!

Reply #13
I guess its time for you to visit the kX project then

Hint : kX is linked under the news item on my first post. kX is a driver set for all SB Live/EMU 10k(?) based cards.

Ruairi
rc55.com - nothing going on

Creative Announces New Live! & Audigy Drivers!

Reply #14
Yes, I have heard of them before and I think I'll try them this weekend.

Thanks all for your help!
Always defragment your MP3s to avoid subtle lack in harmonics.

Creative Announces New Live! & Audigy Drivers!

Reply #15
I couldnt have done it without my *sob* wonderful friends here at Hydrogen Audio...!

Ruairi
rc55.com - nothing going on

Creative Announces New Live! & Audigy Drivers!

Reply #16
So any word on the official sb live 5.1 driver update (not the 400 mb compaq ones)?

Also, you should know that if you use your pc for games at all the kX project drivers are probably not for you.

Creative Announces New Live! & Audigy Drivers!

Reply #17
Well, I know that there are no drivers ready on the official site.  I also know that the initial download of the official drivers will be quite large as well, at around 3-400MB.  The updates will be much smaller, at about 50MB or so.  Not exactly tiny drivers, which is a pain for people like me with a dial-up connection, but at least they offer cheap driver CDs.