GODJonez
Free Audigy
2008-12-11 5:18 PM PST
In some previous blog posts I have shown a classic CD-ROM drive and Compaq Armada with missing parts among other things found from the University, free to take. This time I got Sound Blaster Audigy 2 PCI card. It had a glue tape on it saying "Broken?" (here translated to English for your understanding, the original text was in Finnish). That question mark really brought my interest level up; what if the card still works...
First as a precaution I tried the sound card in older Linux server computer. Sure enough it detected the sound card and even the firewire and game ports on it. So at least the card was not that badly broken, it could at least identify itself.
Next step was to move the card to my main computer to compare if the sound quality in a PCI sound card from 2002 is better than the quality of integrated Realtek HD Audio codec AC883 from 2006.
There wasn't a free place for the card in my computer case. Two out of three PCI slots were free (one is taken by AGEIA PhysX 100), but the back panel already had extra USB stuff at their place, so some re-ordering had to be done. While doing that, I also removed the fan speed controller of my Zalman cooler for Radeon X1900 and connected the fan directly to motherboard. Or at least I tried to connect it...
Unlike the old Linux installation, Windows XP couldn't find drivers to the card out of the box. However, as I allowed the driver wizard to access Windows Update, it did eventually find some kind of drivers for all of the components. And to my surprise and delight, I did get sound out of it and even in 4 channel mode (it supports more but I only have 4 speakers).
Of course I wanted to test if Xfire's video capture with sound would work with this card. I started up Portal, only to find out I had old settings on it, so I started adjusting the graphics settings for my new widescreen monitor. Just when I was about to start up the game, my monitor suddenly lost signal and it appeared as if my computer just died.
The first thought was that maybe the card was faulty after all and now it broke my motherboard. After pressing Reset the computer booted up normally, so it was to my relief that the computer is still working. But why did it do that? Was it the sound card or something else?
I checked through Event Manager and found some interesting events there, but nothing related to the crash I had. Then, for some reason, I accessed Catalyst Control Center. I don't know why I opened it, but I am glad I did. It revealed the problem quite fast: it showed my GPU temperature to be near 100 degrees Celcius, while it normally should be around 50 or less while idle. Immediately I thought that maybe the GPU fan wire didn't get properly plugged to the motherboard. Using a flashlight I saw that indeed it was about 3 mm off from the surface. Pushing it deeper the fan started humming and immediately temperatures drop to normal figures.
Now that the crashing problem was fixed, it was time to try Xfire video recording again. Now next problem, there was no sound in Portal and there is no option in the game to choose which audio device I want to use for it (I still have the Realtek one enabled). Audigy2 was set as default in Windows settings, though. Next I tried with Winamp and couldn't get any sound out with it either. Next thing in mind: maybe the card was faulty after all, just working randomly sometimes.
I still were optimistic and decided to try to install official drivers from Creative Labs in place of the ones Windows itself downloaded from somewhere.
Now while I am writing this blog post, I am listening to music from Winamp using 4 speakers, plugged into Sound Blaster Audigy 2 PCI card. Yes, reinstalling the drivers got me the sound back. Now the next question is, do I need to reinstall drivers each boot, or was it just a problem with the Windows drivers and these official ones will work better. I'll see it after next boot.
I still have to do the video capture test. Recording settings I have prepared already, though. I see that using Wave as the selected mixer works best with this card for the purpose, instead of using "What U Hear". (Why is it in double quotes and using U instead of You is beyond me)
As for the sound quality, at least it is not worse than Realtek's integrated, but I haven't yet found very clear marks that it would be better, either. But as I use it for longer time, I believe I can make a statement then. That is, in case the sound card does last longer than this session.
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First as a precaution I tried the sound card in older Linux server computer. Sure enough it detected the sound card and even the firewire and game ports on it. So at least the card was not that badly broken, it could at least identify itself.
Next step was to move the card to my main computer to compare if the sound quality in a PCI sound card from 2002 is better than the quality of integrated Realtek HD Audio codec AC883 from 2006.
There wasn't a free place for the card in my computer case. Two out of three PCI slots were free (one is taken by AGEIA PhysX 100), but the back panel already had extra USB stuff at their place, so some re-ordering had to be done. While doing that, I also removed the fan speed controller of my Zalman cooler for Radeon X1900 and connected the fan directly to motherboard. Or at least I tried to connect it...
Unlike the old Linux installation, Windows XP couldn't find drivers to the card out of the box. However, as I allowed the driver wizard to access Windows Update, it did eventually find some kind of drivers for all of the components. And to my surprise and delight, I did get sound out of it and even in 4 channel mode (it supports more but I only have 4 speakers).
Of course I wanted to test if Xfire's video capture with sound would work with this card. I started up Portal, only to find out I had old settings on it, so I started adjusting the graphics settings for my new widescreen monitor. Just when I was about to start up the game, my monitor suddenly lost signal and it appeared as if my computer just died.
The first thought was that maybe the card was faulty after all and now it broke my motherboard. After pressing Reset the computer booted up normally, so it was to my relief that the computer is still working. But why did it do that? Was it the sound card or something else?
I checked through Event Manager and found some interesting events there, but nothing related to the crash I had. Then, for some reason, I accessed Catalyst Control Center. I don't know why I opened it, but I am glad I did. It revealed the problem quite fast: it showed my GPU temperature to be near 100 degrees Celcius, while it normally should be around 50 or less while idle. Immediately I thought that maybe the GPU fan wire didn't get properly plugged to the motherboard. Using a flashlight I saw that indeed it was about 3 mm off from the surface. Pushing it deeper the fan started humming and immediately temperatures drop to normal figures.
Now that the crashing problem was fixed, it was time to try Xfire video recording again. Now next problem, there was no sound in Portal and there is no option in the game to choose which audio device I want to use for it (I still have the Realtek one enabled). Audigy2 was set as default in Windows settings, though. Next I tried with Winamp and couldn't get any sound out with it either. Next thing in mind: maybe the card was faulty after all, just working randomly sometimes.
I still were optimistic and decided to try to install official drivers from Creative Labs in place of the ones Windows itself downloaded from somewhere.
Now while I am writing this blog post, I am listening to music from Winamp using 4 speakers, plugged into Sound Blaster Audigy 2 PCI card. Yes, reinstalling the drivers got me the sound back. Now the next question is, do I need to reinstall drivers each boot, or was it just a problem with the Windows drivers and these official ones will work better. I'll see it after next boot.
I still have to do the video capture test. Recording settings I have prepared already, though. I see that using Wave as the selected mixer works best with this card for the purpose, instead of using "What U Hear". (Why is it in double quotes and using U instead of You is beyond me)
As for the sound quality, at least it is not worse than Realtek's integrated, but I haven't yet found very clear marks that it would be better, either. But as I use it for longer time, I believe I can make a statement then. That is, in case the sound card does last longer than this session.
GODJonez (godjonez)
2008-12-12 4:25 AM PST
More information.
Hibernation didn't seem to work, Windows just stopped at "Preparing to hibernate..."
But I still have sound after reboot, so I guess the card is working and the problem before was just due to the drivers Windows itself downloaded from somewhere.
Hibernation didn't seem to work, Windows just stopped at "Preparing to hibernate..."
But I still have sound after reboot, so I guess the card is working and the problem before was just due to the drivers Windows itself downloaded from somewhere.
Xfire selecing audio mixer with compatible devices works in Windows XP (it is broken on Vista), and using Wave as the mixer didn't work in case of Portal. It may work with some other games, though. The option "What U Hear" did capture audio, although the quality was not the best possible. It may be due to the video lagging otherwise and/or volume settings that I have yet to perfect.