While out grazing the herd, I came across this handly little tweak for Creative sound cards. It seems not only did Creative remove support for Dolby Digital and DTS in their Vista drivers, but they also removed a few options for Windows Media Player 11 and Audio Environments, which are very handy for MP3 players or anything else routed through the Line-In socket. I have tested this method on all Audigy series drivers, but may work on other Creative sound cards such as Live! or X-Fi.
This tutorial will involve modding driver files and registry entries, so it won’t be suitable for all users. Try at your own risk, and don’t whine to me if it doesn’t work or turns your PC into an atom bomb! It will require that you have WinRar installed also. It also goes without saying, that UAC must be disabled. It’s also worth noting that “Allow Unsigned Drivers” must be enabled. To enable unsigned drivers, simply hold F8 before Vista starts to boot.
Firstly download the latest working Creative drivers. I used SBXF_PCDVT_LB_2_15_0002.exe (2007-05-10) . Once downloaded, right click on the SBXF_PCDVT_LB_2_15_0002.exe icon and “Extract to SBXF_PCDVT_LB_2_15_0002“
Once extracted, open your newly created folder and enter the folder named “wdm” and then locate the file “wdma_emu.inf“. Open this with Notepad.
Add a semicolon “;” in front of the two “Catalog…=…” entries (Otherwise Windows will read the digital signature, see that the file was edited and refuse to install it) For example CatalogFile.;NTX86=wdm_emu.cat and CatalogFile.;NTAMD64=wdmemu64.cat
Now scroll down the document until you reach the “[Live2K.Interface.Topology]” section.
Add “MSSysFX.AddReg” to the “AddReg=…” entry. (It should then look like this) AddReg=Live2K.Interface.Topo.AddReg, CTSysFx.AddReg, OEMSettingsOverride_Speaker.AddReg, MSSysFx.AddReg
Save the document, and then run the setup file located in the SBXF_PCDVT_LB_2_15_0002 folder. Don’t forget to use the Dolby and DTS Fix before you reboot either. You don’t want to lose that at any costs!
Upon reboot, you will find that all enhancements are available. An extra tab will appear in the “Speaker Properties” dialogue, allowing for various sound compensations and adjustments. Good Luck!
No More Goat Soup 
Spent all evening messing with this. Could not get it to work with the driver version mentioned. Had to used the current one for my Audigy 4 card from creative, 2_12_0002. Also had to add mssysfx to the [XFi.Interface.Topology] entry as well to get it to work (was commented out with ;; in this entry as well).
After all that though the ‘speaker fill’ function, that was the reason I went to all this trouble, seems to do nothing anyway. Stereo music or movies just come out of the two front speakers only. Tried playing them in media player, media player classic and VLC.
I though this function was supposed to give you some echo or repeat the sound from the front speakers to the back.
Has anyone else seen any effect from the ‘speaker fill’ function? And make sure you don’t sit there thinking ‘this speaker fill function is great’ only to find that cmss is enabled, like I did…
Mat
Vista Home Premiun 32 bit
Audigy 4 Card
And 5.1 speakers
The effect worked great for me on my Audigy 2.
I did use the 2_15_0002 drivers and not the 2_12_0002 one, though. 2_12_0002 is an evil driver, with a multitude of sins.
Is your Audigy4 displaying correctly in the device manager?
Displays as ‘creative SB Audigy 4’ in the device mgr. Belive this is correct? What effect do you get ?
Also when you run the setup.exe in the SBXF_PCDVT_LB_2_15_0002\Drivers directory do you select ‘Overwrite existing shared Creative audio drivers’?
Yes overwrite the files, or else your wdma_emu.inf editing will be lost.
As for the effects, I have bass management, speaker fill and room correction working.
I’ll plug in an Audigy4 when I get home and see what happens.
For ‘effect’ I meant what do you get when you enable the ‘speaker fill’ function (without cmss enable)? Does ith send sound to the other speakers? Am I missing that it only works with certain applications which I am not using?
I also get all of the other funtions you mentioned, ‘room correction’, etc…
Speaker fill upmixes my 2 channel audio to 5.1 regardless of CMSS setting. I have 2 channel software (such as emulated games with 2 channel audo) to upmix into 5.1 and the same can be said for Window Media Player with enhancements.
This works for me with Audigy2 and Audigy4.
Oh well just my luck then. Maybe next time I rebuild my vista it will work…
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