Creative Labs SB0886 PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional Series Sound Card - PC Components | Computer Hardware

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A. Zimmerman (Alaska) –

  

Sound card started crackling the day I got it due to the Nforce motherboard.
This should be explicitly warned by the company. This is happening to everybody, and not just with the Nforce mobo.
Spending money on another motherboard should be unnecessary.
No fix has been implemented. The official thread even lies regarding the nHancer “solution”.

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G. Loera “Med Student” (Dallas-Ft. Worth, TX USA) –

  

This is an awesome product. Simple to install. Lots of features. Nice looking. Amazing sound (specially the surround sound created for headphones). Runs all my games with crystal-clear clarity, excellent effects and positional audio without a glitch.

This is not my first Sound Blaster, so I already know that the included drivers CD is outdated and loaded with bloatware. So, for those having problems with the card I suggest that you leave the included CD unopened and instead head to Creative’s web site to grab the latest x-fi driver for your card, the latest control panel and the latest alchemy version. Install them in the following order:

1. Driver.
2. Control Panel.
3. ALchemy (Vista only).

Forget anything else included in the CD unless you really need it or want to try it.

I did that and I didn’t have to activate anything. The activation is only needed if you plan to use the included software and I think it is because of some Dolby and DTS codecs but I’m not sure. With just those 3 things right now my X-Fi is running perfectly fine under Windows Vista 64-bit edition. I haven’t found any incompatibility yet.

***UPDATE***

So far so good. I just wanted to include a few extra tips for those having problems.

I have a motherboard with Intel chipset (MSI X48 Platinum) and I haven’t had any problem, but I’ve heard that people with nForce motherboards are having sound problems so I would like to suggest the following actions:

1. Download the latest BIOS file for your motherboard (if available) and update it. (See your manufacturer’s web site for more information on this and be careful. You could brick your motherboard if it’s not done properly.)

2. Download the latest chipset driver for your motherboard. It’s gonna be either from Intel, from nVidia, from AMD or from VIA. Check their websites for instructions.

3. Download the latest Windows updates.

After you have done that then you can head to Creative’s web site and grab the needed files. Finally install them in the mentioned order:

1. Driver.
2. Control Panel.
3. ALchemy.

The previous recommendations can also work for people having problems with this card, but who don’t own a nForce motherboard.

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I’ve had a Sound Blaster “Fatal1ty” Pro sound card installed in my custom-built Core i7 920 series CPU-equipped PC since April, 2009, so at this point have been ‘around the block’ with the product, and feel well qualified to comment about what makes it tick, where there are issues, if any, and give an overall view of how it functions.

I am running the card in PCI-Express Slot No. “0″ in an EVGA E760 Classified motherboard, the Single-Lane slot (1X) which is right next to Slot No. 1 where my first EVGA GTX 285 1GB SC video card is located. I am running two 285′s in SLI Mode, along with a D-Link “Extreme N” PCI-Express network card, plus an Areca 1680IX-8 PCI Express SAS to eSATA/SATA/SAS RAID Controller, so each and every slot is filled, (or negated by the twin-lane video cards) the entire bay packed full of the finest equipment $$ can buy. Cooling and keeping the integrity of the various cards is “assignment No.1″ when you are running this much equipment in a PC, and placement of the various cards is strategic, and specific to each one’s needs, it goes without saying.

The Sound Blaster card is a piece of work! I have a set of Logitech Z-5300 (predecessor to the Z-5500 setup, today’s top line speaker system) speakers, that would be five (5) 28W RMS Satellite speakers, and a 240W RMS sub-woofer driven by discrete amps, with peak power approaching 600W at full song, a most impressive sounding speaker system. The Fatal1ty card drives the speaker system in 5.1 mode (Dolby 5.1 it is more commonly known as), and the sound is full, clear, clean, and can be deafening at any setting past “5″ on the Logitech controller. I never have it past 3-4 normally, as that is PLENTY of volume!

The speakers are hooked up to the Black, Orange, and Medium Green colored ports of the sound card, ie 3 speaker wire output, not 4. Orange and Medium Green are apparently left and right primary channels plus the sub-woofer, while Black is main power, ground, and discrete channels (surround sound), or so I have discovered experimenting with various connections. The Light Green/Grey port is not used with my setup…if you had a 4 speaker cable setup you would utilize the Light Green/Grey port for the 4th channel in a Dolby 7.1 setup, for example, but my system is not that sophisticated…it has left, right, left rear, right rear, middle and sub-woofer channels, which is all there is to a 5.1 speaker setup.

Key to establishing good sound in any setup with the Fatal1ty sound card is disabling the onboard sound from the motherboard, and by that I mean you must go into BIOS and disable it, not just “turn it off” via the Sound Control Panel in Windows. Presently I am running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit OS. Previously I ran Vista Ultimate 64-bit, with equally fantastic sound output, no issues at all to speak of but the onboard sound having to be defeated 100% for the Fatal1ty card to function correctly.

I also use the Fatal1ty sound card as a “sound in” device for audio recording. I master tapes and records with a DAK PC-2800 Mixer, and the sound card functions as the “line in” through the Blue port of the card, ie that is where you plug in the “line in” from the mixer. One must go into the Sound Control Panel in Windows and choose the “Line in” function to be able to do mastering, and disable the microphone and any other possible “line in” connections for the mixer to function properly, and the same goes for any other type of “line in” into the Fatal1ty card…you must go into the CP and choose the correct input before your “line in” device of any type will function.

As for how the card functions doing mixing, it does great, no issues whatsoever! I don’t have distortion, carry-over sound, non-discrete interference, none of the typical maladies that can plague a sound card as the “line in” device, with this card, it just works, as long as you go into the CP and choose the correct input for what you are doing. You can, of course, have the speakers and the “Line in” function hooked up simultaneously without issues also, so no problems there either. In fact, I use a set of Audio Technica headphones, plugged into the Orange and Green ports of the card (leaving the Black port for the speakers alone), and a Rolls HA43 Pro headphone amp so that I have unexpurgated sound control during mixing, ie CLARITY! It all works seamlessly with the Fatal1ty sound card, no problems at all.

What are the difficulties with this setup, if there are any at all? I can think of some issues that plague the system, and you must observe these shortcomings and not go against them or you’ll have problems:

1) You cannot “adjust” the Mode of the Creative Sound Control Panel “live”…ie going from “Game Mode” to “Entertainment Mode” with iTunes open, for example, is impossible…you may crash the computer, or you may crash iTunes or the Control Panel may turn white and crash…

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