I just upgraded to Windows 7 and wanted to continue to use my Terratec 6fire. In Windows XP I could playback sounds and the Terratec Control showed me 44,1 kHz master clock when playing lossless files with foobar. Now if I select the Terratec in the device manager of Win7 the playback settings are hardcoded and greyed out on 32 bit 48 kHz. Now playing back lossless files like a flac rip from cd, the control shows 48 kHz for the master clock. This should be the bitrate the soundcard's clock is set on, right? Does this affect quality because of some resampling being required?

The digital out spdif from my motherboard sounds different than the analogue out from the Terratec. This could be because of the different volume level (although set to 100% in both drivers). Should the the difference in sound quality be negligible or could there be a perceptible difference?

Could Win7 have problems with the driver of the Terratec? Only solution to circumvent this is buying a new card?

br
foo_on_air

Win7 should be able to use Vista drivers no problem.

Since you upgraded to Win7 from XP, maybe it's trying to use the XP driver and only partially works.

Try locating a Vista/Win7 driver.

Is this it?

http://www.terratec.net/en/products/driver...r_en_19875.html

Unfortunately not. I have the PCI version of the Terratec DMX 6fire LT 24/96. Win7 didn't ship with any driver for this card so I installed the WDM driver for XP. With the result I described. Maybe XP and 7 have more architectural differences than I thought. I am currently using the latest one from Terratec which is online on their FTP too - the WDM 5.40 for XP. Nothing for newer OS. Is there a solution to getting all bitrates back?

From my experience, most Windows XP drivers running under Windows 7 will either not install at all, will install but won't work, or won't allow full functionality of the hardware. There are many differences between Windows 7 and XP that cause a need for new drivers. However, I haven't had issues with Windows Vista drivers running under Windows 7. In fact, some of the drivers that HP supplied for my netbook are mainly Windows Vista drivers that were patched to say "Windows 7 Compatibility." The drivers for my touch pad and Broadcom wi-fi module are like this.

I suggest that you start looking around for Windows Vista/7 specific drivers. Check forums that are dedicated to Terratec devices as there might be user created drivers on those forums (use at your own risk though). Either that or you can wait for Terratec to start supporting Windows 7. In all honesty, there really is no excuse for a company not to support Windows 7 given the long times that alpha, beta, and RC copies of Windows 7 have been out. That and drivers for Windows Vista work too.

There's a Vista Driver for a long time on Terratec's FTP:
ftp://ftp.terratec.de/Audio/DMX6fire2496/Update/
ftp:||ftp.terratec.de/Audio/DMX6fire2496/Update/DMX_6fire_2496_App_Drv_Vista_XP_5.53.3.144.exe

Could you try this?

It appears that the PCI version of that 6fire audio device came out in 2002, and thus Windows XP drivers would make sense. It also seems that the PCI version has been made obsolete by the USB version, and thus, no official Vista/Win7 drivers will ever be made available by Terratec.

However, digging around on the Internet, I think I found a set of Beta Vista drivers for it from OpenDrivers. You might see if those work. Remember though, they are beta and are 3rd party, so be careful.

http://www.opendrivers.com/driver/237303/t...e-download.html

They are version 5.51c dated March 25, 2007.

EDIT: Ooops. Looks like guruboolez beat me to the post with a more official and newer version.

I can confirm that the drivers linked to by guruboolez worked for me in Vista x64 and continue to do so in Windows 7 x64 (Home Premium).

EDIT: Hardware is a DMX 6Fire 24/96 with the DX6F Extension and a YAMAHA DB50XG daughter-card.

Did you tweak something on W7 x64?
I tried once the 64bit version of Windows 7 (Release Candidate), and music playback was heavily distorted. It's maybe linked to my VIA chipset (used to be source of several issues with the DMX). On Windows 7 32 bits (both RC and final) I don't have this problem.

No, I didn't have to tweak anything. It's an Intel chipset based system though (P45).

Thanks for the link. I wasn't aware of the Vista beta driver. I installed it and now I get the options to set the SR in shared mode to 24 bit only and a frequency of either 44,1 / 48 / 96 kHz. I could imagine even better but it's still a huge improvement over the situation before. I have set it to 24 bit 96 kHz since this is the highest range my card supports, telling from the tech specs. Resampling CD source files (like my flac encodes for example) shouldn't sound worse and I have enough headroom for playing back higher resolved material like DVD. Or am I wrong?

Unfortunately this beta driver works only partially with my 6fire LT 24/96 (the hardware is identical to the 6fire 24/96 said the technician from Terratec). I have these sound related problems:

* When I pause and resume playback I suddenly have no sound.
* When I start audio playback the sound is totally distorted and plays much slower than normal.

These symptoms appear in a random pattern, sometimes the PC is on for hours and everything's fine, sometimes I can pause/stop/play many times and then the sound suddenly vanishes. The only way to get the sound back is to restart the system. There are no W7 drivers for my 6fire LT from Terratec and they say they don't support development anymore. Makes me think twice before buying any Terratec product in the future!! In my opinion an unsatisfiable answer.

br

I guess the driver is the reason. EOL means no support. Bad luck for me.