Bought a Soundblaster X4, starting to regret it!

[PaulW]

Hi,

My ITX mobo needed an Optical out for my Logitech z906. i know people here will scoff at the z906 but that’s fine, i am happy with it.
Anyway, I bought a SoundBlaster x4 and on any online videos like You tube or the BBC news etc its causes a delay in the audio of about 3 seconds. Others have mentioned this as a reoccurring issue with previous models also.
some say the delay is because the z906 going to sleep, some say its due to the USB power settings. has anyone had this happen to them?

in hindsight if i knew this would be an issue, I’d never of bought it. I am now going to deal with Creatives customer support about getting a full refund and will then look for another option unless a fix can be found. maybe a cheap DAC PS100 if i can get hold of it. (other recommendations that'll do the job welcome)

Very surprised by this, really would have thought a well established company like creative would have a fix for this.

Thanks P

 

[PaulW]

Did you try changing the usb power settings and turning off standby ?

no not yet, i'll have to look into how to do that this evening. not confident it'll be the solution.

another possible fix people have said was to install a program that allways sends a optical signal out even if no sound is playing. That way it wont go to sleep.

 

[PaulW]

Just tried all you've suggested during my lunch break. still occuring as before. it seems to be quite sporadic as well. i open a tab with a you tube video and i scrub the time to different places and its ok. switch to another tab with a you tube video in it and press play and i have the 3 second delay and i try and scrub it and you get more 3 second delays from when you play it. the video plays you can see someone speaking and you hear no audio for 3-4 seconds. this was in firefox but I will try chrome later but suspect it'll all be the same.

 

[PaulW]

Have you tried the reg key fix?





Mentioned in the comments here:

God awful 3 second sound delay X4 USB card

I don't know where to look anymore. ANY sound source, any video, music, or whatever have a 3 full seconds of silence, then it catches up and play...

old.reddit.com

no not seen this, i'll give this a go tonight. thanks

 

[PaulW]

Please let me know how it goes - I was just about to pull the trigger on one of these myself.

Actually i think its sorted now. what i had to do was turn OFF the Encoder and not use the Dolby Digital Live as this was causing the 3 second delay in the audio as its software. there was some helpful yet patronizing guy on reddit who said :

Encoder off -> good quality stereo
Encoder on -> ddl,compressed 5.1 because of bandwidth limitation of the optical.
X4 cannot be faulty. Encoder is pure Software, X4 just outputs what it gets..
Don't know why you are going via ancient compressed DDL ... analogs output good quality, no compression, no latency, EQ can be used, calibration, etc.

i'd still like to talk to Creative about this surly they must know that there software on DDL has a delay on any streamed content. pretty poor tbh.

 

[PaulW]

Creative customer support via Overclockers Forum how can I help..........

Glad you sorted it.

Thanks @mickyflinn as always! OCUK community is always the best and my first point of call.

@Bill Turnip Yeah i am a bit disappointed in it to be honest you'd think stuff written on the box would work flawlessly. i'll probably chase this up with Creatives customer support for answers and let you know what they say.

 

[PaulW]

also @Bill Turnip maybe via analog this issue with the delay does not exist with DDL, so maybe it would work that way but not optical. This is something I'll have to try but prefer the cleanness optical delivers though.

 

[PaulW]

i'll probably chase this up with Creatives customer support for answers and let you know what they say.

@Bill Turnip @mickyflinn so i have been in touch with creative, they asked me to run a diagnostic on my PC with the tool they provided, i did this and sent it off to them. Today they got back to me and asked if i had i overclocked my PC? for which i said i had not over clocked my 5700x, i have however set my ram to 3600Mhz which is the recommended speed for AM4 systems. With the email they also provided a link, which says Creative does not support ram over its Base speed and may cause delays etc etc. This i was pretty surprised by. so Creative cant support the recommended sweet spot ram speed for my system? Are they saying that with any ram speed over the base there products wont work as intended? i really didn't see in big red letters on the box anywhere it says this.

 

[PaulW]

Looks that way

You should run the memory at default spec which I think is 2133 mhz and see if it makes any difference, then get back to them if it doesn't work.

that would be my next test yes

 

[PaulW]

They pointed me to this page For everyone's interest...

Creative Worldwide Support > Knowledgebase Solutions

Welcome to Creative Worldwide Support. Get technical help for your Creative products through Knowledgebase Solutions, firmware updates, driver downloads and more.

support.creative.com

 

[PaulW]

After a long Customer support back and forth with Creative labs they have given me a response. I sent them a video demonstrating the issue, the answer i received and i quote :

"We have checked your query and the initial silence is an expected interaction, since it may take some for audio to be played after the audio stream is started."

WHAT?

i said to them i didn't read that using DDL from one of there products is normal to have a delay of 3 - 4 seconds at the start of every streamed video. its a bit bad when they offer a key feature of the device and don't have this described anywhere AFAIK. it seems there is no solution here and simple Creative labs releases dodgy products that are not as described. Don’t buy from them. i won’t be ever again and i have asked them for compensation due to it not working as described. Wish me luck!

 

[PaulW]

Ok so Creative were pretty useless and basically fobbed me off, I'd thought I'd update people on this. i've been talking to the kind people on reddit and one guy said this occurs due to the optical port on the X4 going to sleep if no sound is played.
A makeshift solution to this is to us a lightweight program called SPDIF-KA which plays an inaudible sound all the time. so far it has worked and solved the issue at the cost of my system going into standby mode and saving power. Really however, this should be in the software from creative as a check box tweakable, its a common issues. i've logged this with there customer support team and pointed them to SPDIF-KA . Going by the utter useless support team at creative labs they probably won't do anything useful like pass it on to developers like they say they will, i have little hope of a software fix.
i the meantime if you have a issue similar to mine go and search and download the SPDIF-KA v1.4.0 exe

i'd put a direct link to it but it may get flagged by the mods here so i won't

Thanks

Paul