Audigy 2 Value quality or am I clumsy?

[Ice_bear]

Scenario: just installed the 2nd Audigy 2 value (OEM) board in the new rig & it does not produce any sound either. (Everything else works just fine). The 1st went back to the store & was toast so they replaced it. (Had it installed & working a week before it just refused to produce any sound. The replacement sounded very very distant before it, too, refused to make any sound.) Before I take the 2nd board back I'd like to understand the problem.
Question: Have I hit some very poor quality, a fault with the setup or a fault with my installation?
The rig: Casepower iCute 0408SL (front audio was connected to motherboard for 1st card but not for 2nd), OCZ 450w Modstream, Asus A8n-SLi Deluxe (onboard audio Not enabled), AMD 64 3200, 512 MB RAM, Asus en6600GT, Maxtor 160GB, Lite-On DVD/CD ROM & a CD-R/W, Win XP, Antec Lansing 2.1 speakers / stereo headphones & an Audigy SB (with no sound!)

Thanks

 

[folken]

Have you tried downloading the latest drivers off the creative site? I don't know 100% if that is a driver problem but it sure couldn't hurt.
Have you check to make sure nothing is muted somewhere? or that a volume bar is down?
Check the windows volume in the control panel to make sure it is actually working with the creative volume control thing.
Have you tried different PCI slots? Maybe there is some sort of conflict going on.

<A HREF="http://www.folken.net/myrig.htm" target="_new">My precious...</A>

 

[Ice_bear]

Thanks for the advice.
I have checked the Creative and Windows volume bars & the mute buttons (at least all that I can find). Unfortunately no effect.
The Sound Board is on the lowest PCI slot. The manual indicated that this had the least conflicts. I did try it on the next highest slot but there was no noticeable difference.
I had not considered the driver update though, so I will try that.
Do the Audigy 2 OEM cards have any known quality problems so that getting a faulty card could be a reasonable chance or is the quality sufficiently good that it is more of a "win the lotto" type of chance?

 

[folken]

I myself have never had a prob w/ any creative products. Just from reading this forum you can tell that other ppl have
Give new drivers a try, beyond that I don't know that there is much else you can do. Creative might simply just hate you Maybe someone around here has found an answer to his crazy creative problems.

<A HREF="http://www.folken.net/myrig.htm" target="_new">My precious...</A>

 

[Ice_bear]

Thanks Folken.
I checked the Creative website but the only Audigy 2 Value driver was for digital sound. Not the full analog drivers!
Uninstalled the drivers & board and then reinstalled the board & the drivers. The speakers do make a sound when the machine is turned off (pop!)- but not the stereo that I would like. Phoned the store & will arrange for them to test the card and/or swap it for a new one.
Maybe there will be music tomorrow night!

 

[Ice_bear]

No music tonight! The board was tested and determined to be OK. The store suggested that Windows might be the culprit (bad install or something). Sigh.
Now to reinstall Windows or watch the snow fall. Maybe the snow.

 

[folken]

Time to get a turtle beach or maudio card, lol.
They are still good cards and they come at a VERY good price. You will mainly just loose out on eax4

<A HREF="http://www.folken.net/myrig.htm" target="_new">My precious...</A>

 

[Ice_bear]

Turtle Beach? Now there's a name I have not heard since the *good old days* of DOS, HIMEM , and IRQs. Have not seen them in a retail store for several years. Do they still exist? Creative / Sound Blaster appears to have a tight monopoly on sound boards.
Reinstalled XP, downloaded all the patches & latest drivers for motherboard, etc, & then installed the SB drivers & Creative diagnostics (Incl. bells & whistles). Nothing. No sound. Dead quiet. Well not quite. The speakers do give a *pop* when I turn off the system. The same noise that occurs if one turns off the PC before the speakers & there is some current going to the speakers.
Store Tech support (store where I bought the parts, except SB) says trouble list is 1) XP, 2) drivers, 3) SB.
Creative diagnostics give the card a clean bill of health. Everything works. XP says no conflicts, board works as advertised. All volumes at 90% (except for speakers - 50%) no sound for Creative, DirectX diagnostics or anyhing else.
Will try SB in an older PC.
EAX4? I would settle for stereo!

 

[folken]

Creative definatly has a stranglehold on the sound card industry but little companies like turtle beach and maudio are still around and doing well.
Creative cards work perfectly for most people but it seems you have been another random case of them absolutely not working. It is sort of like SP2, it works great for some and gives tons of random little problems to the rest.

Turtle beach cards and maudio cards are definatly on par with the creative cards. They aren't quite as good for gaming due to the lack of the latest EAX cert but at this point you can probably live with any sound They are WAY cheaper, I think the highest end turtle beach card w/ 7.1, DD, DTS, etc is only $50. It has pretty much the same specs as an audigy 2 with the exception of sample rate (96khz vs 192khz).

<A HREF="http://www.folken.net/myrig.htm" target="_new">My precious...</A>

 

[cookingfrags]

one thing...with the problems you've been getting, this may be a very big thing...i don't think Turtle Beach releases new drivers for its sound cards anymore. basically, if it doesnt work, your stuck with what you have and there's really no chance fixing it if the problem lies with the drivers. even for their high end card, the Catalina, the last driver update was in 2003.

but with the luck you've had with the Audigy 2 Value, suppose thats not too much of a problem for you.

 

[folken]

I just thought of something. Do you know for sure that your speakers are still good? Did you try using a pair of known good headphones or something.
I can't believe I didn't think of this sooner, lol.

<A HREF="http://www.folken.net/myrig.htm" target="_new">My precious...</A>

 

[mattburklund]

I had a problem like that a long time ago. I will try to remember what I did.
First I unplugged the card and then uninstaled and deleted any and ALL creative software/driver program on my computer. I then installed the card in the #3pci slot-some have said that is the best slot. reboot, shut down install card, install drivers, hope for the best.
Worked for me. I tried just uninstalling before, it never worked unitl I uninstalled and deleted all the creative stuff.
Matt

 

[Ice_bear]

Thanks for the reminder. I did check the speakers (Antec Lansing 2.1) with the older PC & they work just fine.) The headphones have been used a few times recently with the older PC & they, too, work.
Put the 2nd Audigy 2 SB into the older PC and IT worked as well. (Obviously I should use the older PC & forget about the newer games & the very slow XP startup !!)
Checked out Turtle Beach and they can be found in one of the area specialty stores. Unfortunately they do not support the 2.1 speakers. (Yes, I could go for 5.1 but I could only use 3.1 of that. Do not ask - just call it a domestic *peace* policy!)
So it is off to the store for some tech support.

 

[Ice_bear]

Thanks for the advice mattburklund. When the replacement card was 1st installed in the 3rd PCI slot, I left the old drivers from the failed SB. Since that time the HD was formatted and XP installed and the drivers / Creative installed, with the SB in the 3rd PCI slot. The drivers (& all Creative SW) were uninstalled and then the SB was uninstalled. The SB was placed into the 1st PCI slot (For slot 3, XP had reported both the SB & the video board using IRQ 18 - but after checking MicroSoft - this is just an abstraction (HAL - I think) so it is not a *real* conflict that shows up in System Info) and then the drivers installed. After all that - no sound (No sharing of IRQs either, after I disabled the firewire in BIOS)!
I am sure that it is something small that I have overlooked - but it sure is bugging me!
It would not hurt to do it again, maybe I missed something.

 

[cookingfrags]

i'd be hard pressed to believe that it doesnt support 2.1. technically, "2.1" is more of a speaker thing than a sound card thing as in 2.1 mode, the sound card doesn't send a discrete ".1" signal to the speakers as it does in true 5.1 mode. instead, the ".1" is dealt with pretty much exclusively in the speaker crossover.

so i'm pretty sure the sound card does support 2.1. if thats the only qualm you had over Turtle Beach, i wouldn't sweat it.

 

[BomberBill]

Man, did you get it all sorted after that? I'm about to buy the same card and I pray to the Gods that I dont experience the same issues your having with your's - I dont have the tech-know-how to run through all that you did.

 

[Ice_bear]

OK, I have lots of beautiful sound, from all of the right connections. Will have to revoke any geek status that I may have claimed. At some point, after the 1st board died, the onboard sound was enabled! Argh! Of course uninstalling, reinstalling, etc. did not work. The motherboard SB drivers are loaded automatically with all of the rest of them. So, according to XP, the Audigy would appear to work. And being so sure that I had disabled the onboard, in BIOS, I did not check either the BIOS or the MB output.
The Audigy 2 SB is a good board. Just remember to disable any onboard (motherboard) sound devices in BIOS. Installation should not be any problem.

Many thanks for all of the help.

*A little knowledge is dangerous*
*Nothing is foolproof - fools are too ingenious*