Logitech Z5500 & Creative Sound Blaster External Surround 5.1 sound ca

Ok, so i've got myself some of these:

Logitech Z5500 Digital PC Multimedia Home Theatre: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo



And also one of these:

Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo



And i've had nothing but headaches with the two of them!

I was more or less forced to buy the external sound card due to the inetrnal configuration of my PC and the limited choice of cards available. I think the speakers are fantastic though, and what sound I am actually getting so far is amazing!


I managed to set up the speakers as per normal, and the sound card works great, with a few exceptions. Firstly, I initially received the expected sound from the speakers when I first wired them up, but as soon as I installed the software, the output was distorted and crackly and I had no idea how to get the levels back down to normal. However, at the time I had just reformatted my PC and was only running XP SP1, so perhaps the problem could be the fact that I did not have SP2 installed...

I had no idea how to correct the distortion, so I reformatted my PC again and started from scratch, but didn't install the software this time, and so far the speakers seem to be working fine. However...


The second problem: For some reason my Sony GigaPocket software (TV & A/V input source) doesn't seem to want to work with these speakers, and seem to be somehow only compatible with the onboard sound card. The PC remote control will also not work for controlling the volume either

As you can see from the comparison pictures below, the onboard sound card allows significantly more volume options than the Sound Blaster external sound card:





The required control I need to have the PC remote control and also GigaPocket working is the first option ('Volume Control'), which is absent from the Sound Blaster menu - Does anyone know whether this option is installed by the software (If so, then it no longer becomes a problem and problem one is all I have to worry about)

Naturally I can only select one of them at once, and as I have no speakers connected to the old sound card (In-built to the motherboard) then it's basically redundant. I have also now disabled the SoundMAX onboard soundcard via the system BIOS

In the Sound control panel > Audio tab, is there only 1 device available? The Soundblaster device? If there is only 1 device, you should have the Volume control available. That control panel allows you to specify which sound card you want to use. Its possible that the gigapocket software has a similar feature, and will override what windows has selected. Look for an option like that in the software.