Just checked the Creative site for new drivers and BAM. I can get SPDIF Bypass to work properly now and can enjoy Dolby Digital with my Z5500!

They good drivers then??
I have been thinking of getting one of them cards but wasn't so sure due to all the hassle with Vista. Not that we have Vista installed on any PC yet but will have most likely soon after the release of SP1.
Our hardware is around for years going from the better new PC's to the old only run older games ones so been holding off buying of soundcard.

About time, I'll have to let my dad know.

No update to XP though... Creative are going down hill with driver and software support im afraid.

Wouldnt be suprised if Auzentech had something to do with creatives new drivers for vista either

Do the x-fi cards support hardware acceleration yet? I heard when vista came out that this was broken, but I haven't heard anything about it since.

There is a work around where you can get your hardware acceleration back in Vista. It's called the
ALchemy project which is not maintained by Creative.


More info can be found here

It is supported through Alchemy (free with X-fi exclude the Xfi Audio) long ago, you can get it on Creative. Or you can get this modded version it (may) works on anything from Live! to X-fi.
http://forums.creative.com/creativ [...] ing&page=1

Wow, they work and i'm FINALLY using my xfi plat. Been waiting for AGES for these!. WOOT.

Yay, good drivers that work Also fixed some problems I had in some games, such as Armed Assault ^_^

@Trunkz_Jr

Did you like sorta get the idea for your name and avatar off me? nice co-incidence hehe

I installed them, but I still get choppy sound every now and then just like before. Is it only the SPDIF bypass that was fixed or were all the problems solved?

I have an onboard x-fi card with Vista 64 installed and it doesn't see the card at all. All it says in the control panel is High Def Audio Device. I tried installing the correct drivers and it doesn't recognize it. Anyone heard of this?

thanks for link, I don't blame Creative for FU'ed driver problems with Vista, I blame Vista for problems with Vista (MS). That OS has NO business deciding it has to process all audio through software, and this is why my main OS is still XP.

Dose this fix the static problem?

I noticed that since I have oced my processor that every now and they there is a loud staticy noise the reaks from my speakers and blows a hole in the wall. I am missing both my arms now because of this sound... PLEASE TELL ME THEY FIXED THIS ERROR!!!!

Hmm...I've been using my Xi-Fi card with Vista since May with Creative's vista drivers, so I'm not sure what this is. It works with Creative Alchemy as well, so hardware acceleration has worked and full EAX support on all my games again since May of this year. What is this about? Really???

By the way, here's a small portion of the release notes:

"Known issues:

This driver does not support the following:
Decoding of Dolby® Digital and DTS(tm) signals
DVD-Audio
DirectSound®-based EAX games
6.1 speaker mode
Applications from the original Sound Blaster X-Fi CD (for Windows XP) will not work with this download."

Nope. Copy those dsound.dll and dsound.ini files to any folder with game executables you want to hear eax and hardware effects in...just like the April Vista driver release.

That's because you don't understand what you are talking about. All Vista eliminated was the DirectSound hardware absrtraction level, whchi ran at the same privilege level as the kernel (although some diagrams show it below kernel, but I don't think there's a sub-kernel level). As a result, if it crashed, it crashed the entire system. Also, with Creative, it was one of the leading causes of system instability, which is something that people complained about. Since MS can't fix that (it is Creative's code), it crashed the system, MS's goal was to make the system more stable, they moved the API to the user level entirely. Now it only crashes the app that uses it. It was not just the sound, either. Similar changes came about with WDDM (display drivers).

OpenAL is an API that many consider superior to DirectSound, and it is still present in Vista.

Blame Creative.

It's far more likely it was DRM that was the reason for that change.

Can you please cite the source / rationale for this statement that seems to be proliferated all over the place. And don't reference the Gutmann idiot. And while you're at it, please explain how come that goal is accomplished by eliminating DirectSound direct hardware path but maintaining one for OpenAL, which accomplishes a similar end.

I highly doubt there's an official statement from Microsoft that would confirm that. (Though, how about you tell me where yours came from?) However, leaving OpenAL as an option could've been like letting users still disable enforced driver signing in Vista x64. After a little incident not too long ago, Microsoft put out a few updates that strictly enforced driver signing requirements, and it would not surprise me if they would do the same with OpenAL should an issue come up relating to it, assuming they're not worried about a lawsuit from Creative.