I just had to post here to share my relief and gratitude to the author of these drivers.
Here are my new system's specs:
Asus P5Q-E
C2D E8600 with Zalman 9500 AT cooler - currently at stock 3.3GHz
4GB OCZ DDR2-1066 RAM
My trusty Audigy 2 ZS
My old Altec Lansing ACS340 2.1 system (from around 1999!)
Vista x64
Things seemed to be going well with the new OS. Installing the genuine Creative drivers went without a hitch. I was pottering about in Windows listening to some music and I realised it seemed to lack depth of sound and bass. My ancient speakers have always sounded pretty good and I started to think that maybe it was me, how could an OS or driver make this much difference to playing a regular MP3? However, the more I listened to music, the more I realised something was definitely wrong.
A few driver re-installs later, the problem was still there. I then stumbled upon the many posts on the Internet about these modified drivers.
I installed them and well, what can I say, there was an enormous improvement in sound!
At least as good, if not better than what I remember from 32bit XP. Of course not forgetting the inclusion of the speaker, equalizer, EAX, soundfont and MIDI settings that simply weren't there in the Creative drivers.
If anyone is having problems with their Audigys then I thoroughly recommend installing this. Just make sure you remove all your original sound card drivers and uninstall it from control panel beforehand.
Just for reference the file name of the driver I installed was SBAX_PCDVT_LB_2_15_0004EQ.exe
Good luck and happy Christmas!
Edit to add: The Environment settings don't appear to work, but the Special FX and Advanced EQ do. This may be because i've installed the old drivers multiple times and it's caused a conflict, I don't know. I don't use these settings anyway so i'm not too worried. Also installed WinAmp because I wasn't happy with Media player using 5-8% CPU time to play an MP3! Not to mention the DRM stuff using another 2-3%
Here are my new system's specs:
Asus P5Q-E
C2D E8600 with Zalman 9500 AT cooler - currently at stock 3.3GHz
4GB OCZ DDR2-1066 RAM
My trusty Audigy 2 ZS
My old Altec Lansing ACS340 2.1 system (from around 1999!)
Vista x64
Things seemed to be going well with the new OS. Installing the genuine Creative drivers went without a hitch. I was pottering about in Windows listening to some music and I realised it seemed to lack depth of sound and bass. My ancient speakers have always sounded pretty good and I started to think that maybe it was me, how could an OS or driver make this much difference to playing a regular MP3? However, the more I listened to music, the more I realised something was definitely wrong.
A few driver re-installs later, the problem was still there. I then stumbled upon the many posts on the Internet about these modified drivers.
I installed them and well, what can I say, there was an enormous improvement in sound!
At least as good, if not better than what I remember from 32bit XP. Of course not forgetting the inclusion of the speaker, equalizer, EAX, soundfont and MIDI settings that simply weren't there in the Creative drivers.
If anyone is having problems with their Audigys then I thoroughly recommend installing this. Just make sure you remove all your original sound card drivers and uninstall it from control panel beforehand.
Just for reference the file name of the driver I installed was SBAX_PCDVT_LB_2_15_0004EQ.exe
Good luck and happy Christmas!
Edit to add: The Environment settings don't appear to work, but the Special FX and Advanced EQ do. This may be because i've installed the old drivers multiple times and it's caused a conflict, I don't know. I don't use these settings anyway so i'm not too worried. Also installed WinAmp because I wasn't happy with Media player using 5-8% CPU time to play an MP3! Not to mention the DRM stuff using another 2-3%
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