Windows 7: No Sound Windows Seven ultimate x64 soundblaster/onboar

Hi everyone,

before i reinstall windows 7, maybe one of you guys can help me out

I just installed windows 7 ultimate 64 bit on my dual core E6600 / P5B system

Fresh installation. Before that i had XP pro SP3

I have 2 soundcards, i use the PCI creative soundblaster live! 5.1 but there is also the onboard one

Both are detected by windows 7 and for both i found some drivers (after some research)

- Creative : i installed the kvx drivers latest version
- Onboard : its activated in the BIOS and i installed the latest soundmax drivers (seven drivers)

both show up in the computer hardware listing and in the audio mixer. I even get the green levels showing that there is an audio output. However, i get absolutely no sound from my speakers (and its working, checked on my ipod right before, i also used my headphones) from the creative nor the onboard audio cards. Nothing (which is why i suspect it might be related to the windows audio interface and not the drivers themselves ? But i might be wrong about that)

So what can i do now? Anyone faced the same situation before ?

PS : i work in IT so i tried all the basic stuff, but please speak away if you think i might have forgotten something
PPS : yes also i checked the other threads and didnt find anything so far but maybe i skipped something important

Aral

Hi and welcome. I have a sound blaster around here soomewhere. Let me see if I can replicate the problem. mine 64bit win 7 ultimate, 4 gigs. take me a bit so if I dont come back PM me. Im working win 7 and vista so I dont wnat it to fall thru the cracks.

Nicely writen first post btw. I assume you have checked all the usual stuff, so completely out of left field: are you using the default win 7 sounds? Im feeling if the system sounds work and you are getting response on the green bars that the cpanel has to be installed correctly but check device manger. maybe even see if there is an older vista driver just in case.

Let me go find that sound blaster while its still light.

Ken

Hi Ken ! Thanks for your reply, and thanks for considering plugging in your soundblaster =p

Not sure what you mean by the "old vista driver" since i never installed vista. Do you think there is something in there i could of missed ?
I remember back then i had an audio problem in XP where i had to disable and enable some weird audio device linked to XP (and it was not related to the drivers of the soundcard) so i'm guessing it might be something like that. In the end, the only way to solve the problem was to reinstall XP.

Anyway about the older drivers you mentionned, i tried uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers several times, it didnt change anything so far

Tomorrow i will try removing the soundblaster and see if the onboard behavior changes (could it be a conflict of some kind? I doubt it though).

Thanks again for your help

MY pleasure. I dont think you missed anything, and of course you want to use the win 7 driver if you can but all it would take not to work would be one bit set incorrectly. tahts why I said try the vista driver. Install it in compatibility mode. Its not a great deal of work and who knows.

Throwing a sound card in an old box isnt a biggy. today its a bit tough because of the win 7 release.

I only have 1 question why would you want to have 2 sound cards and wouldn't they conflict? That's 2 questions. I disable my onboard in the bios to run my soundblaster 2ZS. I'm just curious to the possible applications of using 2 sound cards

Hi thefabe

Yes, its a good question, but infact no reason in particular, i was just using the soundblaster for a reason i forgot (probably some annoying feature with the onboard one)
When i was on XP, both were activated but only the soundblaster had the drivers and it was working just fine.

Anyway like i said, i will try to remove the soundblaster and see if it works, or disable the onboard ones.

Even though it seems to me that 7 has the capacity to deal with multiple audio outputs without problem, so there's definitely something bugged out there.

@Ken : You mean the vista drivers for the onboard or for the soundblaster ? or both ? I saw something about creative having vista drivers for the soundblaster but only for the xfi edition, but i might be wrong.
And i think i tried to install the vista drivers for the onboard and it didnt work (right click on the setup.exe and enabling "use compatibility mode for ..." thats what you mean?)

No, they will not conflict. At any time, one could choose which is the default for Windows to use. All programs will use the one selected then, unless a specific program is set to do otherwise.

I have my MOTU Traveler firewire as my default device. When I play games, that causes a fps decrease. So before I start a game, I make onboard the default device. I have the output of onboard audio patched into my MOTU 5 + 6 analogue inputs. So I don't have to do anything else besides possibly making sure they're not muted in MOTU's mixing panel. Just use onboard for games and otherwise, my MOTU is default.

For anyone curious, inputs 1 + 2 are for my guitar inputs, stereo from Digitech RP-12. 3 is a mono channel which a Shure SM-57 mic is connected to.

Just don't tell anyone that it will cost them over $800.00 to get one,

[ame="http://www.amazon.com/MOTU-Traveler-Firewire-Audio-Interface/dp/B00070IQ3Q"]Amazon.com: MOTU Traveler Firewire Audio Interface: Musical Instruments[/ame]

Since I decided to change from Vista x64 to Windows 7 Pro x64 I encountered the very same situation:

1. Neither Windows Update nor the "old" Soundblaster Driver seemed to recognize the Multimedia Audio controller (sorry if my translation does not reflect the precise device description) as the Soundblaster.

<side information>
During my research I stumbled upon the fact that some "basic communication device" came out to be the gameport with is built onto the Soundboard itself.
Since Windows Vista, the gameport is not supported anymore, just to let you know. The solution which brought me on the path of identifying the device was to list the "Hardware ID". This information can be found when opening the device manager and opening the faulty device's preferences->Details->PulldownMenu->HardwareID. I copied the lowest situated, block in pieces into a search engine and voilà, here we go !
</side information>

2. The solution which helped my when running XP x64 and Vista x64 was to get a hold of the x64 SB Audigy 24-bit driver (similar Audio Processor). This archive is known to be listed as SBAX_2_12_0001_20 holding the correct x64 drivers for the EMU10K Chip. When Installing the device everything went fine which made me confident. When running Winamp and selecting the "SB Live! Series" as output I heard the magnificent NOTHING.
It is commonly spread that one has to do some weird config in order to have the SB Live playing proper stereo Sound but I am not going into this, now. I tried this weird settings (7.1 Sound, diabling stuff....) but still no sound.

3. When reading about SB Live and Windows 7 x64 I found out that there are two alternative drivers which can be applied. One of them is the "Daniel_K" driver which is supposed to choke on >2GB RAM, the other one is the KxDriver. When installing the kxDriver (w/ admin rights) and explicitely following the instruction orders I found about 3 new devices in my sound config in Windows' control panel. Doing the trial-and-error method I achieved to have my Soundboard play sound (green jack->front speakers)
when I activated the "wave out 4/5" device.

Since I was 3ms before buying a Creative Xi-Fi gamer Soundboard with proper Windows 7 support, I now will transfer the costs for a case of beer
to the developer of KxDrivers, these guys did an awesome job !

Usage of 2 Soundboards: Virtual DJing :-)

Greets from Germany, Wurstschredder

Hi everyone

I finally solved my problem. However i'm not 100 % sure how.

- For the onboard drivers, i didnt get the sound back
- For the soundblaster, after uninstalling the drivers, disabling the onboard audio and reinstalling the KxDrivers (i dont have the exact version in my head but i will add it later) and using the "wave out 4/5" device, the sound came up.

So in short

- it was not due to Windows 7

- When you install KxDriver make sure you test every output in the list and make sure you test your headphones or speakers with every jack on the back of your soundblaster

Thanks everyone for helping and congratulations to Wurst who solved the same issue i had at the same time with the same solution (definitely a proof that there is probably other people with the same issue