I just posted this elsewhere but thought it might help more people if I started a new thread.
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I bought a set of Medusa 5.1 surround headphones just on a week ago.
I ordered them Friday night and they arrived Tuesday night. I live in Australia and they were delivered from the U.K. Sensational!
Great quality, couldn't fault anything at all.
I plugged them in, everything was fine until I started playing Battlefield 2 where I found the rears had almost no bass at all. REALLY disappointed. Even testing them with the Creative speaker settings applet that gives you a voice through each individual channel sounded tinny through the rear speakers IN THE HEADPHONES ONLY.
So I swapped the front and rear connections on the amp and the problem swapped from rear to front. I figured "must be the amp" because I have external Creative speakers connected to the Audio Out ports on the amp and those rear speakers sounded great. I used the Creative speaker calibration applet (Basic) which even allowed me to change the polarity of each channel. I'd read here somewhere that this might be causing the problem and that Creative speakers (like mine) were wired to compensate for the polarity reversal. Or something.
Still no improvement.
So I sent an email to Speed-Link support who suggested:
"please set in the Soundcard Software the Bass Redirection to Enabled. Does this not help it can be a faulty Headset, please change it then there you bought it."
I'd tried that already by using the Support page on both the Speed-Link and Medusa websites.
Then I installed the kx Project package as suggested elsewhere in this thread, along with RightMark 3D sound for testing. The rear sound was marginally better in BF2 but other channels were getting 'choppy' and slowing the whole game down. But, the rears started working fine through the headphones when I tested them out in RightMark.
Figured I was on to something.
So, I un-installed the kx Project drivers and un-installed all of the Creative and Soundblaster Audigy programs I could see in the 'Add or Remove Programs' Control Panel applet then rebooted.
I then went to creative.com and downloaded/installed the:
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy unified series Beta driver with OpenAL support 2.08.0002. Here's the link:
http://us.creative.com/support/downloads/download2.asp?Product=4915&am...lcentri
Now, these drivers are beta and aren't supported by Creative etc. etc. so install them at your own risk. You know the drill.
I went to Control Panel, Sound and Audio Devices, then 'Advanced' under the Speaker Settings section (down the bottom) and made sure '5.1 Speakers' were selected.
BF2 now works as well through the rear speakers as through the fronts.
I sh!t you not. TOTALLY IMMERSIVE.
It's like night and day compared to what they were like when I first plugged them in. I was CONVINCED that the amp was the problem but I persevered with it. All I can say is that it was well worth it.
I don't care that I don't have all of the Creative applets chewing memory and getting in the way, I'm just stoked that these fantastic headphones work as well as I'd been led to believe seeing many reviews on many different websites, including Tom's Hardware.
How to go about fixing X-Fi problems I couldn't say but try looking into the soundcard drivers to see if that fixes the problem.
I haven't tried installing the current latest Creative drivers again as I'm frightened they'll mess up the headphones again.
Hope this helps someone.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I bought a set of Medusa 5.1 surround headphones just on a week ago.
I ordered them Friday night and they arrived Tuesday night. I live in Australia and they were delivered from the U.K. Sensational!
Great quality, couldn't fault anything at all.
I plugged them in, everything was fine until I started playing Battlefield 2 where I found the rears had almost no bass at all. REALLY disappointed. Even testing them with the Creative speaker settings applet that gives you a voice through each individual channel sounded tinny through the rear speakers IN THE HEADPHONES ONLY.
So I swapped the front and rear connections on the amp and the problem swapped from rear to front. I figured "must be the amp" because I have external Creative speakers connected to the Audio Out ports on the amp and those rear speakers sounded great. I used the Creative speaker calibration applet (Basic) which even allowed me to change the polarity of each channel. I'd read here somewhere that this might be causing the problem and that Creative speakers (like mine) were wired to compensate for the polarity reversal. Or something.
Still no improvement.
So I sent an email to Speed-Link support who suggested:
"please set in the Soundcard Software the Bass Redirection to Enabled. Does this not help it can be a faulty Headset, please change it then there you bought it."
I'd tried that already by using the Support page on both the Speed-Link and Medusa websites.
Then I installed the kx Project package as suggested elsewhere in this thread, along with RightMark 3D sound for testing. The rear sound was marginally better in BF2 but other channels were getting 'choppy' and slowing the whole game down. But, the rears started working fine through the headphones when I tested them out in RightMark.
Figured I was on to something.
So, I un-installed the kx Project drivers and un-installed all of the Creative and Soundblaster Audigy programs I could see in the 'Add or Remove Programs' Control Panel applet then rebooted.
I then went to creative.com and downloaded/installed the:
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy unified series Beta driver with OpenAL support 2.08.0002. Here's the link:
http://us.creative.com/support/downloads/download2.asp?Product=4915&am...lcentri
Now, these drivers are beta and aren't supported by Creative etc. etc. so install them at your own risk. You know the drill.
I went to Control Panel, Sound and Audio Devices, then 'Advanced' under the Speaker Settings section (down the bottom) and made sure '5.1 Speakers' were selected.
BF2 now works as well through the rear speakers as through the fronts.
I sh!t you not. TOTALLY IMMERSIVE.
It's like night and day compared to what they were like when I first plugged them in. I was CONVINCED that the amp was the problem but I persevered with it. All I can say is that it was well worth it.
I don't care that I don't have all of the Creative applets chewing memory and getting in the way, I'm just stoked that these fantastic headphones work as well as I'd been led to believe seeing many reviews on many different websites, including Tom's Hardware.
How to go about fixing X-Fi problems I couldn't say but try looking into the soundcard drivers to see if that fixes the problem.
I haven't tried installing the current latest Creative drivers again as I'm frightened they'll mess up the headphones again.
Hope this helps someone.
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