Horrible Sound output on Creative X-Fi

A while back I had picked up the Kontakt 4 Player, and had tried it on a pretty old machine, with absolutely HORRIBLE audio output. I mean, just terrible. Staticy and noisy, and barely any audible sound to it. I picked up a creative X-Fi for not that much, but never did try Kontakt with it again. Now, I am trying to use Maschine, and I get the same thing coming out on the X-Fi. The cheap integrated card plays back fine, but my X-Fi puts out nothing but noise. I cannot figure out what the problem is. I have tried playing with all of the changeable settings, to no result. Has anybody else encountered a problem similar to this?

Edit:
I seem to have figured out the problem, but, it requires a change I am not happy with. This happens whenever the audio settings in Maschine do not exactly match those of my card. I have had my card in a 5.1 setup. Since maschine cannot do 5.1 output, those settings did not mach, resulting in the terrible sound. Is there any way to fix this?

 

please download and install asio4all.

sowari

 

No need for ASIO4ALL as the x-fi has its own proper ASIO driver, which I am now using. It is a little buggy, as I think the 64bit one is quite new, but, it works well, and it is working much better than the ASIO4ALL ever has for me on another machine.

 

lmao I remember my first audio interface. Sound Blaster Platinum lmao that thing was a piece of ****. I got rid of it and grabbed an M-Audio which was ok but also pretty much a p.o.s. Then I got my RME Multiface now PT9 will let me use it finally I can stop using adat from my MF to my Digi002.

 

bman22, to clarify.... maybe you need to purchase a decent soundcard/Audio Device. something that is there to make music with.

sowari

 

Just to be clear, for $100 you cannot get a better card. My x-fi works better than the M-Audio 2496 that I have tried, and is good for much more than just audio. And seeing as I don't have good reference monitors, but just a decent consumer speaker system, there is no reason to buy an insanely expensive sound card. I do plan on upgrading eventually, but seeing as right now, my desktop already has trouble running Maschine well, and I don't have a good speaker system, I see no reason to upgrade. For future reference, can anybody give me some suggestions for the best sound card, and possibly a good reference speaker and subwoofer. I have been looking at the M-Audio DSM's and their reference subwoofer, but they are way out of my price range (I am not a serious audio person, just a serious enjoyer). Also, the only audio cards I really know are the M-Audio Delta and Audiophile line, but they are still old PCI, and don't seem to be anything that recent.

 

Join the club Vince ... My first "sound card" was SoundBlaster 16 ... pre PCI days!
What a horrible piece of crap but I remember being pretty amazed the first time I recorded a chunk of Ministry's Jesus Built My Hotrod into an ancient version of SoundForge on my 486SX25 with 4Mb of RAM.

Then over the years I went Sound Blaster AWE32 (didn't learn my lesson the first time) -> TurtleBeach Pinnacle Multisound card (neat onboard hardware sampler but no ASIO) -> SoundBlaster Live (well - finally at least ASIO was possible even if fixed at 48kHZ) -> Echo MIA (finally something decent!) -> Echo Mona -> Nuendo AudioLink (RME Hammerfall rebadge very nice) ...

I then started using laptops for audio as well as desktops (finally laptops were up to scratch!) and so "cards" had to go the way of the dinosaur in favour of CardBus, Firewire or USB solutions ... so then I went: Echo Indigo I/O (great low latency card but really crappy build quality using 3.25mm minijack connectors mounted in a plastic chassis = fail!) -> mLAN rig comprising Yamaha 01X + i88x + ADA8000 (although it tested my patience over the years it's a bit oldschool now and simpler solutions work better!) -> Steinberg MI4 (total fail - 3rd party ASIO drivers over USB1.1 = FAIL), Korg Zero8 (noisey analogue output stage) -> Line6 Toneport KB37 (an interesting diversion for mobile use - nice to service MIDI control and audio interface with one device) -> .... Nowadays the Audio Kontrol 1 is my all-round workhorse where tracking requirements demand minimal inputs.

I'm getting into a Phonic FireFly808 next - amazing sound and performance for the money ... too good to be true almost!

Anyhow there's the history of my soundcard learning curve over the past 18 or so years!

Cheers!

 

forgive me but you need to do a bit of internet research Re: Soundcards. i suggest you look at website that sells music gear. there you will see a whole range of Audio Devices by companies other than M-Audio

btw, NI sell the Audio Duo for $100.

you haven't given details about your computer. are you sure that it is powerful enough to make music with?

if you are a serious enjoyer, you need to make sure that the sound coming out of your computer is good before you think about your Sound System that you play it back on.

sowari

 

My computer does have some issues with Maschine, which is too bad, because my laptop handles it fine. My laptop is an i7, but my desktop is a rather old Dell Precision 670. It has 2 3.4GHz Xeon's, both have Hyperthreading, and I am running Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 on it. I only have 2GB of ram, which is probably a large part of my issue. Maschine uses up to 512MB at a time, which, on top of the other stuff, will put quite a strain on the ram. Other than that, the machine seems like it is powerful enough, but I really do not know.

Also, I will NEVER buy a USB based soundcard. Knowing that USB 2.0 is only 480Mb/s, and PCIEx1 even on old PCIE is 2Gb/s, and on new, 8Gb/s, I would never purchase a USB card. PCIe is capable of WAY larger ammounts of data, much quicker, thus, it would be much better for soundcard use.

Any reccomendations for a PCIe or PCI-X audio card that isn't excessive, or excessively expensive, but still a good card? I would love the same for a good reference monitor. I had been looking at the M-Audio DSM line, but they are extremely pricey.

 

i am a Mac person but your desktop does not sound like it is suitable for music making.

fwiw, professional artist/producers all over the world are using USB 2 Soundcards and getting great results but $100 would be the cheapest decent device and would only have 2 x ins and 2 outs.

i have no advice for you regarding PCI cards. sorry.

sowari

 

I'll take your Dell. USB2.0 cards work fine. If you are thinking of doing anything I would get a new card and some ram.

 

E-MU 1212m look at sweetwater but its 169.00 I have one in my computer.

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/1212MPCIe

you could look at firewire sound cards if you want to stay away from usb.

 

Im not sure why you think it isn't suitable. I have two physical processors, both significantly faster than most on the market, and both are designed for heavy server computing. The only thing I see wrong is the lack of ram, and the fact that the Netburst architecture that those Xeons are based on is quite inefficient.

Im afraid both USB and Firewire are worryingly slow to me. I simply don't trust a bust that slow to be reliable. Plus, most of the usb stuff that I have doesn't last very long.

 

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/1212MPCIe

that is a PCIe card it works good you should look at it. NO usb or Firewire.

 

i have an old sound blaster audigy 2 zs that works fine. in FL i can set the latency as low as it will go (2ms) without stutter using the sound blaster drivers.

i got this sound card back in 2002... i think. no problems. maybe it is your computer. i dont know. i have a i7 930 wi 6 gigs of ram an an asus III extreme mother board

 

No. Either buy a new card, or set you X Fi settings to match Maschine.

 

I have been looking at the E-MU 1212, but I realized, its absolutely hilarious how much people trash on the X-Fi cards, when creative is making the chips that go into the products made by E-Mu as well as many others I have seen. Also adic27, yeah, my desktop is no i7, and i have only 2GB of ram. It turned out to be a problem with the WDM drivers, and ASIO fixed it fine though. I still cannot achieve the advertised 2ms, and I have had to set it at 10 to completely remove all stuttering, but, it could just be my computer.

 

to be honest, i am puzzled why you refuse to buy a decent USB 2 or Firewire Audio Device when when professional artist producers are doing exactly that all over the world.

i am afraid that many people do not recommend the sort of audio device that you are using, for serious music making

and a decent USB Audio Device can be used with both of your computers.

and 10ms latency is pretty good. not sure what "the advertised 2ms" is?

sowari

 

I'm also puzzled that you assume a pci card will work better than a firewire or usb interface... From my experience i've had better results with usb cards..

I remeber reading on a forum somewhere a couple of days ago a guy did a test between a rme pci soundcard, firewire 400 and the uc(fire400 but usb).. Suprisingly the usb out perform all three....(They all had the same buffer settings. And he rekoned he used the same daw for each card using a little program that measured the actual roundtrip latency)


Could be your os .....

Whats the actual compatible os's for maschine....

windows xp upwards and mac osx
I would'nt think windows server 2008 would be 'fully compatible'...

Your HArdware system is more than sufficient i;d think...

Do you have a wireless card in your desktop?

 

USB or Firewire could no way in hell outperform a PCIe as it is WAY faster. It had to have been the specific devices.

Server 2008 is basically windows 7, but faster, and more powerful. My hardware should be sufficient, other than the ram, and I would get more, but this machine will not boot if you have 4GB of ram, and no ram cooling shroud. Its all really expensive Registered ECC ram too, so i can barely afford the stuff. I do have a wireless card.

The advertised 2ms is what creative says the x-fi is capable of. Mine can almost pull it off, but not quite. I am disappointed that i have to run the x-fi at 48kHz, when its capable of 192kHz. I think my computer isn't' powerful enough to do that though. It plays back slowly, and maxes out my cpu constantly at anything higher than 48kHz.