Hi,
Sorry if this thread has been many times discussed but i haven't found the original post...

I've try to install the modified driver and my conclusion is clear:
why choose an Audigy 2 is you own a Live! card ?
Never thought the Live! could be so good !
trust me or not but I've this metallic sound no more: it sounds kinda analogic now.

How is it possible ?
the DAC's still the same...
it has better stereo separation..etc...
Clearly audible on applauses.

Sincerely,
Nick

I love my Live! again !

You got me interested

Do you have any links/etc to modified drivers? I really think my Live! needs some refreshments...

here is the right stuff
http://kpush.tripod.com/tweaking/id33.html

but take care:
on a XP system, Windows won't uninstall olders drivers, it installs WDM drivers
but with Windows 2k that rocks !!

well here are some more tweaked drivers

http://discuss.futuremark.com/forum/showfl...&Number=2315604

Using A2 drivers will not turn your Live! into an A2. Please post some RMAA results.

Hell, no !
but it improves the Live !
it gives mainly better sound quality.

I own a Audigy Platinum, and when I played some games with the Originaldrivers (+updates, blah..) I couldnt play with the "new" EAX3" because of heavy performace problems and bluescreens.... Now, with A2 drivers, i have no problems any more, Directsound is working correctly and I feel, too, that the Sound ist better than with A1 drivers

May not be true unless you have very good ears or very good audio playback equipment.
One area that is really improved, though, is resampling. The A2 drivers are apparently better than the A1 drivers at that.

I'm just using a Sennheiser HD 580, plugged in the card.
I'm not sure if this could be called "very good equipment"...
... but it sounds CLEARLY better (no placebo effect here).

I can say the spatialization is higher (wider), better definition (details, sharpness).

Are you totally sure? What measures have you taken to be 100% sure it's not just the placebo effect?

Affirmative.
100% sure.

I'm highly trained with my old SB Live ! and my favorite tracks sound different:
I can pick up more details, hear wider sound.
100% sure.
Compared later with another Live ! card with Live ! drivers.
The metallic effect is gone.

The control panel / multimedia (or sound) / audio / playback / advanced / sample rate conversion quality is probably on "good" with the live drivers and "best" with the audigy ones, or maybe the Audigy ignores the setting. Set the live/live setting on "best" and it should sound quite the same as the live/audigy one.

Both were to "Best".

Trust me or not Pio2001, but there is a big improvment !
Maybe you can try yourself this tweak !

"wider sound" sounds more like some kind of 3d effect enabled by default.
uninteresting.

It has nothing to do with a 3d effect:
i've said wider because the stereo separation seems to better.

the best way is to try yourself if you own a Live! card.

Stereo seperation has nothing to do with any drivers! At least not if didn't scew something up.

Actually I think it's quite impossible to wreck the stereo seperation on soundcard/driver level...

dev0

I can't, I gave my SBlive away.
The SB live is full duplex right ? Disable the line input in the playback mixer to avoid larsen, and plug the output back into the input. This way you can record the sound of the playback and post short samples. If you are right, there must be a serious problem with the SB Live / live sound.

What people call "stereo separation" is actually "soundstage", and can be affected without affecting stereo separation, adding noise, for example, or changing phase information.

or perhaps you used some kind of screwed settings with your sblive drivers.
uninteresting anyway.

No.

Pio, do you mean I have to loop back the card to itself ?
I should use RMAA ?
or some samples ?
if yes, let me some hours to upload those files.

Yes, if you've got the two setups at hand (with and without Audigy drivers)


Kode54 asked for it. I'd prefer ABX results on your samples, then the samples themselves, if the results are positive and the sample have exactly the same volume.


No problem, take your time.

get ASIO playback working.. I am using the kx drivers for that.. now that is a BIG improvement.. and you can compare by changing output modes...

i am sure this may help but saying things with such certainty when it must of been at least 30mins since you last heard what it sounded like with the old drivers... it reminds me of the kind of "it sounded 10x better" thoughts that fueled my purchasing of expensive hifi equipment...

interesting though.. do they enable ASIO playback??!

Hell !!
I haven't the 1st setup anymore, at this time, just the A2 drv...
I think I have to reinstall the Live drivers...

I'll try to upload A2 files first.

I went and tried this myself and put up some results here. The other 15 results for each card didn't vary too much from what I put up there, though I did get one freak 29 dB SNR result with the Live! drivers and one IMD of 2.008% with the Audigy 2 drivers. All tests were done with resampling quality set to "Best" even though I was using the Wave mapper and all inputs other than Wave and MIDI muted. I also did both using the same crappy Radio Shack cable :p. CMSS was disabled with the Live! Drivers, but I have no idea if it's on right now because the control is in one of the applications that either didn't get installed or doesn't work right now.

The results both interest and worry me, since I wouldn't think drivers would have an influence on frequency response. Unfortunately, I didn't record loopback samples earlier and my memory isn't good enough to tell me if I can hear a difference or not >:(.

[EDIT]: I'd just like to say as a disclaimer that running drivers not made for your hardware is inherently dangerous and not recommended unless you have a perfectly functional Linux install on your other hard drive :D.

Well, surprisingly, Bleh's results prove completely otherwise !

Do you think that the Audigy drivers can use digital negative feedback in order to cancel the hardware crosstalk ?

It is very easy to get different result out of the same hardware. I got a SB MP3+ USB box to replace my laptop's SoundMax hardware.
Hooked the line-out back to the line-in and run RMAA.
I made four measurements, with line-in level settings of 4, 2, 1, and <1 on the scale of 6. It was not possible to set the output levels exactly -1.0dB all the time, the last one had the output levels set to max.
Both the dynamic range and distortion changed with different line-in settings. Got a spread of over 6dB in noise/dynamic range numbers and distortion/IM products varied by a factor of two.
The best overall noise/dynamic range was with the lowest line-in setting, but the distortion values were higher at that.
So just by reinstalling drivers and not setting the line-in levels exactly to the same, one can have that much variation as much was shown here.
Probably the best way to do is, not to do a loop-back but have a separate good quality card/machine for recording.
Does the A2 drivers replace the on board DSP code? So it could sound better, but these numbers do not support it.

Testing now with the line in and master out mixers full open doesn't change the current results much, but I remember the mixers being set somewhat lower when I had the Live! drivers installed to get the same levels in RMAA. It's very possible that the Audigy 2 drivers tweak the ranges in which the mixers operate and that this could have some effect. A driver update I did a while back (Live! drivers, not Audigy) did noticeably lower the output volume. The alternative is that some signal processing is going on at the driver level and the newer drivers either don't cause as much damage or try to do counterdamage to mask shortcomings of the hardware. It would be fun to see someone install Live! drivers with and Audigy 2 and see if things get worse.

In any event, if my system locks up again while shutting down, I'm reverting to drivers made for my card.

am I the only one to see that this kind of testing is actually enhancing placebo effect and no canceling it ?

you nned to do blind teste..bee in a objective stat /unaware of the current setup. to do propper testing

Audigy 2 + latest drivers is my best choice

No, I was about to suggest to have two computers together, one with the live drivers and one with the audigy ones, each one plugged into a line in of an ampli, and to have a friend blindly switching the sources on the ampli, but I finally thought that doing some loopback recordings and comparing the samples would be easier.

How is this possible??
I switched to A2 drivers on my old SB player and was not impressed at all.
So i went back to KX-drivers and did a RMAA test, and guess WHAT!!
I have never had better results, I don't belive them. Something is wrong!
http://hem.passagen.se/pgk/prog/kX%20Wave%...00%5d%200_1.htm

They look like pure digital results. Are you sure that you recorded the line in channel, and not the wave out instead ?

Oh!
I was recording internal signal, shit..
I did a new test and I regain the old crappy SB player card.

The Creative drivers use something Creaf calls "spatializers" on all output, if the sound card runs in a mode other than plain stereo mode. There are "spatializers" for headphone mode, 4channel and 5.1 channel mode. The headphone ones modify the output to sound like you're listening to two speakers. I guess the A2 drivers have better "spatializers" than the Live/A1 drivers (yes, they get loaded into the DSP when the driver inits or you change the mode). If you really run your Live in headphone mode, I urge you to put it into 2channel mode, where it doesnt apply these "spatializers" and runs like every other soundcard, and outputs the sound unmodified.

Hi Tripwire !
good points but a little off the mark...
my test was done with the "2-Loudspeakers" setup to get the most neutral setting as possible:
I get always the same conclusion:
all sounds better: DVD,MP3...

tested w/ HD 580.

Better in what ?
the sound has this mettalic effect no more, more natural, smoother.
100% sure.

Sorry for not giving you samples but I haven't 2 PC w/ 2 Live! to do a serious loop back record...

I tried both a Live and an Audigy1 with Audigy2 driver in the past, can't say that they sounded better. Maybe a bit, which I however put off as placebo (yes I use headphones). Only thing I can say is that the Audigy2 sounds way better than the older cards. Heck I even think it sounds better than that Aureon7.1 I had for a short time.

All these differences might come from different levels. An output playing 1 dB higher than another can seem to have a better sound than the other.

Thank you for mentioning the possibility, Nick JrIII, but we'll have to wait for someone else to do some measurement,s recordings and/or blind tests to discuss the possible improvement.

maybe you'r right Pio2001

but can you discribe how a test should be done to see if it's just placebo or the reality...
what software ?
what kind of samples ?
loopbacking or not ?
...

I've launched this topic, it's up to me now to do this blind test !

Loopbacking and comparing samples in an ABX fashion (see FAQ, and http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....topic=12118&hl= ) after having matched the levels is a suboptimal solution. If the samples can be ABXed (to hear the difference in a blind test) it's OK, but if the ABX fails it can be blamed on the recording quality that masks the subtleties of the playback, or that compensate for the differences.

However it is the best solution. If you can hear it 100 % of the times, you might achieve the ABX test.
Using two computers plugged into the same ampli is more rigorous, but more difficult to setup (need two SB Lives, two computers... and after all some may argue that the power supply can make a difference !)

Use a track where the difference is obvious. Loopback the soundcard (set the record device to line in, not wave out , play the track (in Winamp, for example), while you record it (with CoolEdit for example), then do the same with the other drivers, then in CoolEdit cut both recordings at the exact same place (sample wise if possible) to make short samples, then ask for their RMS levels, if they are different, make them match with a volume process (better processing both files to a common level to avoid reducing the quality of one of them only in the process), then the samples are ready for ABX.

Use a program like WinABX, Foobar2000, PCABX... there are links near the top of the FAQ.
You must choose a fixed number of trials in advance. 8 if the test is difficult and you don't have much time, 16 otherwise. Then if you get 7/8 or 13/16 at least, it's ok, there is an audible difference between them.

EDIT : Bleh already made measurments and showed a noticeable difference in sound quality. So it is possible that it is audible.

Pio, could you check with kX drivers too and post measurements?

Sorry, I don't have an SB live.

Why does everybody sell/give/trash that card? ;-)

IMHO, it' like Norton AV:
the live! is a good card, it's cheap, it provides a not to bad quality but it suffers from drawbacks:
- 48 kHz bug
- AC'97 front output DAC (I2S would be a better choice).

but for the money, you get a quite powerful card (emu1k1), easily tweakable (digital out even for the most basic live!).
but when it comes to the sound quality, it has nothing to do with those top-notch cards like terratec/m-audio.

Edit: Pio, thank you for your help !

You forgot to add incompatibilities.
Just like NAV.

BTW, I thought I can hear the difference between LiveWare 1, 2 and 3.
LiveWare 2 sounded best IMHO, just like kX.

Tried Audigy 2 drivers too, were okay, but I prefered rear output of the card - cleaner sound.
They sound exactly same as kX on front output.

hum hum ...

do you have E.T. ears, like guruboolez ?
the difference should be really small...

Har har, good one.
No, there really is a small difference - at least when playing 44kHz files.

Soundwise, kX drivers are best (due to using rear output's I2S).
ABXed front/rear once, recorded with Aureon 7.1.

Don't know about those LiveWares, that was few years ago...

i tested this thing when people started talking that you could transform you sblive in a audigy, IMHO there was absolutely no difference in both music or games (didnt test the fps tho), but if anything it was worse, since lot of the creative utils stopped working maybe for people with 5.1 speakers it MIGHT be better but for regular 2 speakers/headphones i saw no difference, i really think the placebo effect is strong on Nick Jr III