Creative X-FI Soundblaster Drivers released v1.18 [HOWTO]

Heissi · n00b Joined: 22 Feb 2008 Posts: 5

I just installed the drivers for SB X-Fi (I followed this Howto).

Then I wanted to test the speaker configuration:

na85 · n00b Joined: 01 Jun 2008 Posts: 12

hi all.

I tried following the guides in this thread to no avail.

My situation is:

I can get the driver to install just fine using creative's (shitty) installer. Sound works great! No crackling, mp3's via audacious play fine, as do youtube vids, etc. However when I reboot and do

aidanjt · Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 3:31 pm Post subject:

My solution was to just get rid of the piece of crap, alternatively the ALSA team finally received the spec sheets for the card, so expect real support for it in the 2.6.27 or 2.6.28 kernels.
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Wizumwalt · Guru Joined: 20 Aug 2006 Posts: 547

I've got a Creative Labs X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty sound card (which I now regret buying) and I'm just trying to get some basic sound from a game working but having issues. Supposedly, this is something that should work.

Creative Lab's has released an ALSA driver and I was hoping someone could lend a hand w/ my config.

I've configured my kernel as stated here.
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/alsa-guide.xml

Here's the error I'm getting trying to install the driver.

desultory · Bodhisattva Joined: 04 Nov 2005 Posts: 9410

Merged the above post.

the_root · Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 2:36 am Post subject:

iSacrifice · n00b Joined: 12 Jul 2008 Posts: 3 Location: Russia, Moscow

na85 · n00b Joined: 01 Jun 2008 Posts: 12

the_root · Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 6:14 pm Post subject:

the_root · Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 6:20 pm Post subject:

Wizumwalt · Guru Joined: 20 Aug 2006 Posts: 547

Having a problem trying to get my X-Fi card recognized by gentoo. Below is what my kernel is seeing, but it's not seeing the X-Fi card I just put in.

I've configured my system as stated in this guide ... http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/alsa-guide.xml

iSacrifice · n00b Joined: 12 Jul 2008 Posts: 3 Location: Russia, Moscow

few more than 20 last rows of dmesg are:

na85 · n00b Joined: 01 Jun 2008 Posts: 12

garlicbread · Apprentice Joined: 06 Mar 2004 Posts: 182

i've just posted an ebuild for the 2nd beta 1.18
over at the bugzilla https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=193670
which includes blacklisting for the modules as well

I haven't managed to get things working yet, but I'm getting close
I think the version of the kernel / alsa has a large part to play
with 2.6.26 modprobing ctalsa generates a BUG error with nothing listed in /proc/asound/cards (I've loaded the modules in the above order as suggested)
with 2.6.23 this seems to be much more promising with X-FI listed under /proc/asound/cards
but still a BUG error under dmesg (more hidden) and is still generating and no sound so far
will need to try 2.6.22 next

EDIT
holy crap it works, currently using one of the old 2.6.23 gentoo sources
I normally feed in my sound from my cable tv box through the external front header (the one mounted in a 5 1/4 bay)
considering the release notes mentioned the external header doesn't work yet, I'm quite surprised
the optical input on the front that I use for the PS3 works as well

to get to the mixer I had to use alsamixer -c1
as it's recognized as the 2nd card on the system
also ctalsa does take a long time to load, probably because of the bug

even though it's working I'm still getting a rather unhealthy looking message within dmesg and /var/log/messages
I've posted it on bugzilla for info

Edit
I've now got mplayer working, although I'm getting an odd skip now and again when playing an mp3 not that often though
need to set "ao=oss" within /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf
also I needed to symlink
ln -s /dev/dsp1 /dev/dsp
before mplayer would work
I'll look at udev next to see if we can get rid of the mknod's in the ctsound script

the_root · Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2008 10:13 am Post subject:

yes, it happens sometimes, there is a big mess arround the "modules autoload" ,"modules blacklist" .. and other , so, check up this, in "/etc" -> "udev" -> "blacklist" .. after the installation - there are few modules added to blacklist , which doesn't have to be there .. , also take a look at "modules.conf" .. and similar ...

hollovoid7 · Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2008 5:55 am Post subject:

What is the status of things on the current kernels? I have been holding back and sticking with 2.6.25, and it works fine, but was just wondering, in case there is some killer feature a new kernel brings to the table that I want.

And what has alsa been doing this whole time? Last I heard (and still reeling on thier website) that they had what they needed from creative, and there was a guy on the mailing list saying he had started the initial work many months ago, but nothing since. I asked on their mailing list, with no response over a month later.. seems like they are in the "I give up and am ignoring it" stance. Very "creative" of them *snickers*
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MAO

garlicbread · Apprentice Joined: 06 Mar 2004 Posts: 182

The ebuild I've setup seems to simplify things a bit, but it only works as far as 2.6.25 and even then it takes a while for the modules to load into memory (and results in a Bug being generated, but this doesn't seem to make the system unstable)

2.6.26 doesn't currently work (something's been removed in the source that the driver needs, although not sure what, probably because the source is using some old piece of code / api)

the module dependency within the source code needs looking at as well as it's a bit of a mess, as you need to blacklist the modules to prevent them from being loaded automatically, then load them in just the right order for this to work.

I think for Alsa i heard that they had some info from Creative, but they lacked the resource to look into it / were waiting for some other driver to be finished first I think

hollovoid7 · Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 12:14 pm Post subject:

Ahh I see, Its too bad too, because the card is pretty nice and some official drivers (from alsa) would be excellent. I tried the e-build but never seemed to do everything right for me, so its been manual config here.

Im just gonna continue my stand off with 2.6.25 until then, because onboard audio, no matter how good the manufacturer says it is, is horrible when you have some good speakers behind it (as I do). And its suppost to be HD, 7.1 support, and all that, but no bass/treble controls, and very low output (I have to CRANK my reciever to match what the xfi does, cause you cant max any values or it distorts horribly).
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MAO

keet · Guru Joined: 09 Sep 2008 Posts: 571

I'm a new Gentoo user, and I didn't want to try to make my X-Fi Xtreme Music card work, but I finally decided to try it. I actually got the X-Fi card working in Ubuntu (without any audio distortion), but I decided that I wanted to use Gentoo anyway.

In Gentoo, I was having trouble with the sound crackling in X-Plane, so I thought maybe my X-Fi card would work better than my Intel-HDA-based NVidia onboard sound, since they're both prefixed with X; you know, X-Fi, X-Plane. No, that's not really what I thought, but anyways...

I compiled the driver according to the instructions here: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_Creative_Labs_X-Fi (edit: the file provided here, xfidrv-1.18.2.tgz, also worked, with the same results)

But now my sound is all crackly. When I run alsaconf, it says that it can't find a sound card, which is strange, because my applications definitely provide sound. I'm going to try disabling my onboard sound in the BIOS and rebooting, but I doubt that will make any difference.

edit: It made no difference. The crackle seems to come only when a certain frequency is playing, perhaps a lower one, but it's pretty much constant. I've checked all the equalizer settings and they make no difference.. except that the crackle disappears when the volume is all the way down. Hooray. Then I hear nothing. I re-enabled it my on-board card in the BIOS, and now I have two kernel configurations in my /boot directory: one for my X-Fi card, one for my on-board Intel HD audio. I'm using the IHDA right now, since it doesn't crackle, except slightly in X-Plane.

I'm running Gentoo AMD64 (x86_64), kernel 2.6.25-r7, with an Intel Q6600, ASUS P5N-D, X-Fi XtremeMusic.

Mr_Maniac · Guru Joined: 10 Jun 2004 Posts: 543

Unfortunately, this is "normal".
But for me, it depends on what software is using my X-Fi. Xine, xmms, audacious and Flash are fine with ist. No crackling.
Other Software, for example mplayer, gstreamer, anything with OpenAL or SDL won't sound that good.
The driver is just very beta. But the ALSA-Team does have the specs, so there will be better drivers.
But one question remains: WHEN?
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AMD Ryzen 5900X
64 GB DDR4 RAM
GeForce RTX 3080
Gentoo Linux (most recent stable kernel - amd64)
Windows 11 x64

keet · Guru Joined: 09 Sep 2008 Posts: 571

Update: I installed OSS 4 using this guide:

http://gentoo-wiki.com/Howto_OSS4

And now my X-Fi audio seems good. I disabled my on-board sound in the BIOS and removed all ALSA support from the kernel. My kernel now has no ALSA support, and no sound drivers installed whatsoever, except for "Sound Card Support". Mplayer sounds fine, as do Saeurbraten, Xine, Scorched3D and X-Plane (except for the minor popping, which seems to be a problem with the program, rather than anything else, since it did the same thing under ALSA/aoss). VMware says that it "Cannot connect virtual device sound. No corresponding device is available on the host." But that is probably because I didn't have OSS enabled when I installed it.

So my basic steps were:

1. Download this driver: http://cincev.com/mnt/store/users/admin/xfidrv-1.18.2.tgz
(or you can download the original driver and make the modifications here http://gentoo-wiki.com/Creative_Labs_X-Fi )
2. Install the driver according to the wiki.
3. Make sure that ALSA support is either disabled in the kernel, or enabled as modules. I recommend having just basic "Sound Card Support" enabled.
4. rc-update del alsasound boot (stop ALSA from loading at boot)
6. Install OSS 4 using the guide here (DON'T enable OSS in the kernel): http://gentoo-wiki.com/OSS4
7. run ossdetect and soundon

Hopefully I haven't forgotten anything; I worked on this last night and today, trying various things, and I didn't document it as I went along, so I might have forgotten to write a step.

update: "Volume Control" in Gnome fails with " No volume control GStreamer plugins and/or devices found" even after "emerge gst-plugins-bad" , and Skype wouldn't play sound or accept sound input. I downloaded the OSS version of Skype, which plays sound, but I think it still won't accept input.

I might just go back to Intel HDA, as this doesn't seem to offer any improvement.

OriginalP · n00b Joined: 11 Oct 2008 Posts: 1

News: ALSA Driver For The Creative X-Fi Appears

keet · Guru Joined: 09 Sep 2008 Posts: 571