Search the Community

So my old workstation is using Alienware Area 51 R2 motherboard (MSi MS-7862) that having Soundblaster Recon 3Di audio codec. I running into sound problem with linux since first time I have the system, but I doesn't bother to fix it and instead using external USB DAC. Now since the PC is decommissioned as my primary system, I want to use it just to do some linux-related experiment, maybe some members here have the same problem and have the fixes. method I tried so far (with no success): Manually disable some setting and cranked few settings directly in ALSAMIXER (resulting on very low volume, SPD/IF working only on mono) Changing kernel from all LTS release from 5.4 to 6.10 (no progress) Changing ALSAMIXER to PAVUCONTROL (made even worse, no audio at all) Following some guide here and here Updating/downgrading BIOS and tweaking its settings Here is my system information: Intel Xeon E5-2650v3 4x16GB (64GB) SKhynix ECC LRDIMM 2666MT/s Dell Alienware Area 51 R2 motherboard (MSi MS-7862) BIOS A14 (Latest) Samsung PM981a 512GB NVMe SSD (Manjaro 22.1 Talos KDE Plasma 5 Kernel 6.1) Samsung PM911a 512GB NVMe SSD (Mint 21.1 Victoria XFCE Kernel 5.19) Soundblaster Recon 3Di integrated sound card (Windows device ID: HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_1102&DEV_0011&SUBSYS_1028064C&REV_1009) PNY RTX A2000 12GB If you need any additional information, please let me know, any help will be appreciated!

Couldn't really find an answer for this. I have a soundblaster gc7 and if I plug it into the optical port on the back of my Xbox can I hear and do party chat at the same time? Or just hear

Hi, I don't post here or come on the forums often, but I've recently gotten back into using headphones, I just recently bought a SBx G6 because I thought it was like the battery-less version of the e5 that almost blew up on me but no mic unfortunately lol. Anyways, I've had a pair of AKG M220s for a while I like them a lot but I find they lack in bass for my liking a lot, I listen to A LOT of everything mostly EDM or 90s dance music, or old school hip-hop and a lot of 70s 80s rock, but I also find myself dabbling in a lot of instrumental violin or even classical. So I'd like to find a pair of headphones that do it all really well but i can still use my AKG's for the classical and stuff that doesn't require the bass. I am a bit of a bass head coming from car audio where you slap 2 12" subs throw 1200 watts to it and call it a day, but I do concern myself with powerful mids and highs, but I can't exactly do that with a pair of headphones lol. So I guess what I'm trying to ask is for some moderately priced over ear headphones lets say $250 CAN max that can hit lows really well but not be unable to do clear mids and highs (probably looking at multi drivers but hopefully not too expensive), must have 3.5mm jack or at least 1/4" (I do have an old receiver that I can hook my SB to), and it's gotta be pretty comfortable for long use like 4 hours plus, I spend almost too much time listening to music sometimes, and a little louder than my m220's (I got that receiver when I was a kid and blew out my ears with IEM's before I knew what clipping was so a little hearing impaired lol). Now to be clear I don't exactly want these headphones to be shaking off my head but just a clear vibration or something. Also if you guys have any recommendations on a stupid cheap mic under $50 preferably cheaper the better that'll have some decent audio for discord let me know. And lastly any recommendations for a kind of upbeat or soothing classical would be super appreciated. Thanks in advance guys :)

Hello, I’ve got a Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 2ZS. I’ve been using it for years and recently installed it into my new gaming PC. Since this card was made almost 15 years ago, I was wondering whether it is a good idea to upgrade to a newer one. I usually just use my headphones with my computer, but I do have an ear for audio and appreciate good sound. Every now and then I use my Logitech Surround Sound Setup with my audio card. Anyways, are there any reasons/advantages to upgrading to a new card? The Logitech surround Sound has its own built in Amplifier (in the sub), and the headphones don’t have that high an impedance. I mostly use my Bose QuietComfort 2.

Hi guysI'm planning on upgrading my PC with a soundcard, probably a Soundblaster Z and I was wondering if I should get "Gaming" headphones or not.I play FPS games so I need good directional sound and I listen to music pretty much all the time.Specifically I'm unsure wich one of those is better all around for both gaming and music:- Audio Technica M50 + Blue Snowball mic- Sennheiser Game OneWill a soundcard make a difference with the headphones I listed above?I know the difference between open and closed headphones and what impedance is, but other than that I could really use some help. I'm also open to suggestions, my budget is around 250€/300$.Thanks for any help and sorry for bad englando

Question: has anybody swapped out the chips from the bottom of their Soundblaster X7? What were the results like & are you still satisfied with your original purchase? I did a cursory search in this forum and found some December, 2016 reflections about the device. @Rambi83 ... @pas008 ... @Aytex ... I think one of you might have picked up this device. Musings? Buyer's' remorse? Did you monkey around with the electronics & get satisfying results? My Turtle Island DSS2 is still chugging along (it's my primary audio interface with my XB1 console, FireTV, and AppleTV [as I live in a condominium with a light sleeper, I game & watch video silently]), so I'm in no hurry to run out and spend ~$570 CDN to pick up. I'd like to see if users are still happy with the product.

Hey there! I've got a Creative Labs SoundBlaster ZxR that I've had for some time now. It's no stranger to unique and frustrating issues and this latest one has me baffled, although it appears to be an issue with the motherboard more so than the card itself. After upgrading to a Gigabyte GA-AX370 Gaming K5 and a Ryzen 7 I've had an issue where I completely lose the sound drivers after a full shutdown ONLY. If I reboot without it losing power it will still work when I get booted back into Windows 7. Onboard audio is disabled and no drivers for that chip are installed. Here's what I've tried: Installing a SoundBlaster Recon3D (same interface) which worked no problem. Installing the ZxR into another system, which also worked without issue. Loaded a fresh install of Windows 7 to a separate drive and loaded the drivers up, which still had the issue.Installing into the other PCI slot also didn't work. Some things to note: The ZxR has sometimes been detected as a Recon3D soundcard in Windows. Running drivers sweeper didn't solve the issue. It seems to detect the card late. After reinstalling the sound drivers and rebooting the default sound device is my GPU and after maybe 30 seconds it detects the ZxR and it works until my next shutdown. It seems to me that it's an issue with the motherboard specifically, but I have no idea what I can do about it. I do have the latest BIOS loaded and disabled onboard audio. Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Sound Blaster ZxR I was thinking about getting this sound card right here. I haven't bought a sound card in a long time but I would like one for gaming. I understand there are plenty of audiophiles on here so before you laugh just understand it is purely aimed for gaming. I still want your input as there are many of you on here that know more than me when it comes to Audio. I feel like this is a good sound card for gaming and nothing more. That is all I use my PC for. Anyway thanks for any input.

I have been reading a number of posts and I am confused. I hope you can help me. I have a Soundblaster - Creative X-fi fatality edition sound card installed in my PC. It is old. I also had Hyper X Cloud headphones. The headphones broke and I need a new pair. I will be using them with my PC. I do gaming (FPS - Americas Army) and as many others I would like to hear where people are (footsteps and such). Other people playing seem to be able to expertly hear where everyone is in the game. So, I asked around. People recommend all types from the Asus Strix 7.1, Astro A4/A50 to SteelSeries Arctis, Logitech 933, Hyper X and so on. I haven't been able to get a clear sense as to which would be best. So the questions are: 1) Do I abandon my Creative X-fi fatality sound card in favor of a headset that has a USB sound card with 7.1 surround sound to hear footsteps more accurately? 2) Of the gaming headsets with a USB sound card, which is the best for positional sound (hearing precise location of footsteps?) 3) If it is better to use my Creative Soundcard, then which headphones are best with it? need a microphone solution as well (doesn't have to be great) 4) Perhaps there is a better solution than a "gaming headset" that would produce better results? As a side note I use my Grado SR80 headphones to listen to movies or music. My budget is up to around $300. I really appreciate the help. I don't seem to be getting a clear picture. Thanks!

So I'm looking for a sound card for this Retro Gaming PC I'm building and I cannot decide which sound card to go for. I was going to go for a SoundBlaster Live but I was told it doesn't have dos drivers. I have a free ISA slot and a free PCI slot. Which ever works. It needs to have dos support and also support for windows 98 SE. Also, I would like one that works with the embedded DOS 7 in Win98SE

I own two DACs: the Scarlett 2i2 and the Creative Soundblaster Z. The Soundblaster has audio processing capabilities (DTS and Dolby, EQ, etc.) but the Scarlett does not. There is no way to connect these 2 via cable since the Scarlett uses USB and the Soundblaster only has optical and analogue output. I would like to be able to use the Soundblaster to process audio but instead of having it use its' onboard DAC send the processed digital audio out of the motherboard USB to the Scarlett. Is there any way this can be achieved? Thanks!

Hello everyone, I want to buy a sound card, but I don't really know which one to be. Currently I'm choosing between Asus Xonar U7 MkII or Creative Sound BlasterX G6. I've researched and there were different opinions and reviews, but nothing solid. My question is which I should buy and I won't be dissapointed for the purchase? Also I want to hear other suggestions on their price (around $150) and what specs I must check while choosing soundcard. Thanks for the attention!

So i have a SoundBlaster 5.1 VX. Its really quiet when compared to my realtek onboard audio. I wonder if the card is worse than my realtek. I did update the drivers, that was the first thing i did when i plugged it in.

Becareful if you get this speaker, I got mine from Massdrop in dec 2017. The rgb and display broke end of March 2018, sound still working no issue tho. And Massdrop don't do warranty pass 30 days on this product (they don't mention this under product information), and because I'm in Canada Soundblaster can't help me. Soundblaster s only dealing with American ! Sound quality on this speaker is meh. Logitech z623 got better sound imo. I like the software for this speaker, it has voice morph lol. Just sharing. incase someone's looking for review. I replaced the speaker with G560, so much better and the it has visualizer for songs. And it's cheaper.

I don't know if i'm just bad at tuning a sound card or need an actual amp, but i can't quite make my soundblaster zx not sound either flat or muddy with my Senheiser HD 558's.. am i just bad at tuning or do i need a dedicated amp? I know mobo audio is comparable to a soundcard rendering them useless but the cheap dac on my $60 ivy lake asus p8b75m sounded quiet, crunchy and depressing,the $20 used Sound Blaster zx isn't as bad so don't roast me, it was $20

Hello guys, I understood after quite some research, how to get, real dolby digital sound. The clue, is to have a sound card supporting ddl, streaming sound to it, via a supperted device, mostly directly via usb and then output this signal to a ddl supporting device via the supported input. So i achieved this with the following: SoundBlaster X-FI Sourrund 5.1 Astro A50 / Logitech z906 SoundBlaster is connected via USB to PC and then with SPDIF Toslink to Astro A50. So DDL is now working perfect. But i have 2 minor issues which are a bit annoying to me. Sometimes the sound transimition shortly stops, I would call it a hickup. It's just a small interruption of the signal transmition (~0,5s). The secound problem is, as long as no software directly hook ups the sound card, I have some weird distoration sounds (mostly weird click sounds) As a side note, the USB cable and SPDIF Toslink cable, are both high quality cables, and the USB & Toslink cable are both 0,5m long. So is this a normal behavior of DDL? Is this a buffer overflow or sth else? Is it because of the very old SoundBlaster Sound Card? I also have an Asus Xonar U7, but i don't use it, because the SPDIF out is Coxial and I would need an converter plugged in between astro headset and soundcard. Are there any solutions for me? tia Synergi

Hi, I strangely find comfort in a bit of white noise while using my headset. I also love talking into my mic and being able to get reverberated sound that goes through the headset. For example, when I'm on any voice chat software, Skype, Discord, TS, etc - I don't want to hear myself(like an echo) but only hear the white noise and the sound of my mic picking up my voice. This way, I can determine how loud I'm being or whether I'm breathing into my microphone. This feedback is vital to me because I love the clarity and crispness of headsets. It's like talking in real life and hearing your own voice, I hope that makes sense - it just helps me stop from speaking too loudly. I can accomplish this my motherboard's on board RealTek audio but not my Creative Sound Blaster Z. On my Sound Blaster Z card that I bought yesterday, the headset feels completely muted, too quiet - almost to a fault. Can anyone help? For those who may be interested, here's the specs: Soundcard: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009ISU33E/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 All other PC Parts: http://pcpartpicker.com/list/xkzdXH Thank you in advance

Hi, I am looking for some gaming speaker for a price around $80/$90. I like tho corsair VOID rgb usb, do you know if they are good? or what other headset would you recommend in the same price range? Thanks

Hey guys, should i use the mixamp and the soundcard, i got the mixamp plugged in the soundblaster, or should i use the soundblaster on its own? btw i have a sennheiser g4me one.

i have a laptop which has an integrated sound card mentioned above.it for some reason has stopped recognising my wireless headphones.my windows can.sound is coming from it but sound blaster tweaks in sound really improved listening..any help??

Hi all. I'm planning to buy this: http://us.creative.com/p/sound-blaster/sound-blaster-play-2 But I cannot find anything that tells me whether it works with Linux or not. Can you tell me anything about this? Thank you a lot!

*warning* This is a shit load of things to read, if you cant handle story time there is nothing for you here lol. with that said here's the story! Ok so the story begins a week or so ago when I decided to shove a Creative SoundBlaster ZS in my computer, I had it lying around collecting dust so I just said to myself "Whats the worst that can happen lol?" and this is the story of the shit that happened: I shut off my PC and put it on my kitchen table for surgery, touched the tap to ground myself or something and commenced with the operation. I scouted out that the second lowest slot on my motherboard was probably the best place to put it so it wouldn't interfere with my horrible, basically nonexistent, cable management. I unscrewed the cover and slotted the card in, I chose a pink screw and tightened the card into place, also just btw my mobo and PCI openings on the case don't line up that well so I usually have some problem installing new stuff in the case, I routed back the cables I had unplugged to fit it in and put it back in my room. I plugged everything back in except for my headset, flipped the switch on the powersuply and started the computer. It booted right up without any problems and everything seemed fine, I then proceeded to plug in my headset into the sound card and there was no sound, nothing. I was a bit surprised at first but then I remembered that I probably needed some drivers for it so I hoped on google and checked for them and the first result was to Creatives official website, this sound card was ofcourse marked as end-of-line and had no more real support but there was a driver from 2010 on there so I downloaded it and booted the installer. Everything seemed fine until it suddenly said "Please connect hardware you wish to install the drivers for and press OK" I was surprised because it was clearly installed in my case but I gave the PCI card a wiggle and then tried again, same error, and again, same error. At this point I was getting pretty pissed but I shut down the PC, removed the card and reinstalled it and the started it back up and now the driver installer was nice and let me install it. After several reboots during installation of the driver it was finally done so I plugged in my headset to the card again and still nothing, I realized it was not set as the standard unit in the sound controller after a little while and I fiddled around with it for a while to get the right thing selected and I think I deactivated something in the process but I'm really not sure what I deactivated.. I then tried again and after a while I could only get the sound out to work, not the mic but I was fine with that and used the motherboard for the mic and that worked just fine, and that's how I had it, until today. Today I found out that I actiually had the Audigy ZS Platinum Ex! I found a manual on how to install it and all the cables and the 3.25" extension just in a pile so installed them, did something about the shitty cable management and found some .25" David Clark headphones my dad had and reinstalled the drivers. After a LOT of trubble with it I got sound out of it, but with a lot of noice and almost worthless quality, so I started to google. After 10min of googling I found a solution, finally I found something that worked, the KX Project! I had some trouble with those drivers as well, not installing properly, but in the end I got them installed. I then spent about 20 seconds figuring out what to put as my standard playback unit and so on but in the end I got it working! I am right now listening to some music with my David Clark's and everything is working perfectly right now. Hope you enjoyed this read and respect to those who read all this .

Creative just released their new lines of Sound Blaster X headphones with detachable mic. I wonder how they will sound. Something tells me that will be very close to HyperX Cloud line of headphones/headsets but I hope that they will sound better. A couple of pics : They look beautiful though.

Hey friends, I have 2 problems I need to address. 1. A while ago my PC randomly reset all my audio settings such as EQ. Not sure why, but I went through it all again and it all seems normal. However, when I am playing music and have a game or something open, the music sometimes goes quiet. It's not the setting in Windows for communication programs to make everything quiet, because I have checked that and it is set to do nothing. Only when something else loud happens in another program it happens. I am running a Creative Soundblaster sound card!!! 2. I have also started hearing some popping from my headphones. I am using a reasonable amp, I don't think it is a lack of power because it was fine before hand. It isn't too bad, but enough to annoy me. I honestly don't know what is going on, and I have asked all my mates and no one really understand what I am saying. I hope the screenshots of my Soundblaster settings helps!!! Cheers guys!

Hey there. There's something really messed up with my PC. I recently had big problems with my Steelseries H Wireless. The sound would randomly disappear and when it did that, all the programs would crash, well not Chrome, while watching YouTube videos on Chrome when the problem arrives the video would just stop and you couldn't resume it. So what I did was just pull out the USB and plug it in again and the sound would come back! But now I returned the headset and I bought a Creative SoundBlaster Z. I have no idea why, but the sound card sounds horrible. And when I'm trying to change something in the control panel, like switching from 5.1 to headphones, the sound disappears and everything that plays sound crashes. What the guck is wrong?? I have tried reinstall Windows like three times. I've also disabled Realtek audio in BIOS.. My setup: Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 (Latest UEFI) MSI Ligtning GTX 780 16GB RAM Samsung 830 SSD (boot) Western Digital 3TB Intel I7 2600K Windows 10 64-bit XFX 850W PSU Creative SoundBlaster Z