Creative Tries Again At Linux Drivers

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Creative Tries Again At Linux Drivers

Next to drivers for graphics cards and (Atheros and Broadcom) wireless chipsets, the Creative Labs X-Fi series is one of the most complained about pieces of hardware for its Linux support or there the lack of. The Creative X-Fi sound card series is a few years old, but it wasn't until a few months ago that open and closed-source drivers started coming about for this hardware. However, this sound card has still been left in a sorry state, but this week Creative Labs has finally pushed out another Sound Blaster X-Fi Linux beta driver. But does this driver correct their wrong doings from the past?

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=12231

[apaige]

the Creative Labs X-Fi series is one of the most complained about pieces of hardware for its Linux support or there the lack of
or lack thereof.

[timofonic]

It has the most ridicule package ever I've seen: a tar.bz2 inside a tar.gz

So this is "Open Source" finally? Where's the "GPLv2 or later" license text in the code? I see a few details weren't so well explained in the news or maybe it's my inaccurate English :P

If not (it seems they use a binary blob somewhere), I find the name of the side quite ironical. Where's that "Open Source"?

What's so confidential about them in the source code? Being a bunch of incompetents with overpriced and underpowered hardware?

It's legal using a binary blob with ALSA? I'm against binary drivers at all, don't understand why being permissive at them as they gives lots of problems to users and FOSS projects depending on them.

[deanjo]

It has the most ridicule package ever I've seen: a tar.bz2 inside a tar.gz

So this is "Open Source" finally? Where's the "GPLv2 or later" license text in the code? I see a few details weren't so well explained in the news or maybe it's my inaccurate English :P

These drivers are not GPL. You will have to wait for the native ALSA drivers for that or the OSS drivers.

[timofonic]

These drivers are not GPL. You will have to wait for the native ALSA drivers for that or the OSS drivers.

What's the point of duplicating the effort? Why not just making their developers work into the GPL ALSA drivers directly? :P

[deanjo]

What's the point of duplicating the effort? Why not just making their developers work into the GPL ALSA drivers directly? :P

It's because Creative wants to incorporate the EAX extensions into their drivers. the opensource drivers will not have that support.

[jackflap]

It's because Creative wants to incorporate the EAX extensions into their drivers. the opensource drivers will not have that support.

Why do they want to do that? What do they gain by not including EAX in the ALSA driver?

[Malikith]

Why do they want to do that? What do they gain by not including EAX in the ALSA driver?

I don't know, it wouldn't really benefit them I don't think. I mean nothing in Linux uses EAX, and there probably will never be anything that will use EAX. I mean Creative has never released a EAX compatible driver outside of Windows, the only reason why you would do that is if you're getting ready to shift to another market or Creative thinks/knows that the Linux market is worth betting on. I don't know, its all speculation right now.

[seeker010]

I don't know, it wouldn't really benefit them I don't think. I mean nothing in Linux uses EAX, and there probably will never be anything that will use EAX. I mean Creative has never released a EAX compatible driver outside of Windows, the only reason why you would do that is if you're getting ready to shift to another market or Creative thinks/knows that the Linux market is worth betting on. I don't know, its all speculation right now.

openal can support eax, and it is platform agnostic. it also happens to be pioneered by creative.

[Svartalf]

openal can support eax, and it is platform agnostic. it also happens to be pioneered by creative.

OpenAL can support anything that handles the effects, given appropriate drivers. Considering this, it would behoove us to evaluate handling OpenAL in a SH stream, in a separate DSP piece, or in some sound device that hands us a DSP edge to work with.

Creative needs to provide us with EAX or become irrelevant.

We don't need EAX, though. :D

[deanjo]

We don't need EAX, though. :D

Agreed before we get another Doom 3 / EAX fiasco.

[KohlyKohl]

About time they released a 32 bit driver. Although, I see it has been a few weeks now. I wonder if my X-FI card will sound any different that my on-board Intel HD?

[timofonic]

So they still care of EAX? They are envy of Microsoft and their propietary de facto standards.

I think they must learn from other companies, they don't understand the Free Software way of doing things. Things like this makes me to not buy Creative Labs hardware at all and choose alternatives.

[Malikith]

Yeah, EAX is pretty much useless with the existence of OpenAL, it can do everything on the software level EAX can. And with dual core and cpus out there on about half-75% of gaming rigs, there really is no point of EAX anymore. Its kind of the same argument as hardware accelerated physics.

Its best for the game industry and the open source community to have a open standard that everyone can use. EAX has always been a pain, because if you didn't have a Creative card, you were left out of some of the features of the game like all those cool echos and positioning we got in the original Unreal Tournament back in 1999.

With OpenAL though, you don't have to worry about it. Yeah you can argue that Creative has a hardware accelerated solution but again, any modern processor nowdays is more than enough for the task for the software level of things. Plus, OpenAL gives other sound card manufacturers the same opportunity of hardware acceleration if they chose to do it anyway.

[SarahKH]

OpenAL gives other sound card manufacturers the same opportunity of hardware acceleration if they chose to do it anyway.

Yep, thus Creative need to go balls to the wall GPL (IMHO of course) the whole lot and beg for us to continue buying their overpriced tat.

Sound cards are no longer something the majority of people think or care about, onboard is good enough and continuing to improve all the time; Creative need to do *something* newsworthy or become a relic of times when people actually gave a damn about sound on the PC.

By 'something' I don't mean "sue random developer who cottoned on to your scummy tricks" although feel free to do that again, it was funny and caused a lot of people to strike Creative from their list of component suppliers.

[Panix]

Why buy one at all? If the support is so shoddy and it's a royal PITA to set up, why not just buy a used Audigy 2ZS? I bought one of these sound cards (Creative, ironically) for a computer that had crappy onboard sound that was giving me problems. That sound card solved my sound problems and gave great sound. I read that some people can hardly tell or can't tell the difference with the new Creative sound cards. I guess there are extra features but is it going to matter that much? My Audigy 2ZS works out of the box in any distro I tried and it gave me more equalizer settings compared to my onboard sound.

It might be difficult to find that particular card considering it's a previous generation but I think the challenge/trouble is worth it. You are not giving money to Creative as someone else did who originally bought the card. Isn't it better to give your money to a manufacturer who at least provides some half-decent support and seems to be making a genuine effort in developing/improving that support? Just a thought...

[NeoBrain]

Why buy one at all? If the support is so shoddy and it's a royal PITA to set up, why not just buy a used Audigy 2ZS? I bought one of these sound cards (Creative, ironically) for a computer that had crappy onboard sound that was giving me problems. That sound card solved my sound problems and gave great sound. I read that some people can hardly tell or can't tell the difference with the new Creative sound cards. I guess there are extra features but is it going to matter that much? My Audigy 2ZS works out of the box in any distro I tried and it gave me more equalizer settings compared to my onboard sound.

It might be difficult to find that particular card considering it's a previous generation but I think the challenge/trouble is worth it. You are not giving money to Creative as someone else did who originally bought the card. Isn't it better to give your money to a manufacturer who at least provides some half-decent support and seems to be making a genuine effort in developing/improving that support? Just a thought...

Just by the way, I have always been curious about Audigy 2ZS support under ALSA.
There's the emu10k1 driver, which works quite good for me. However, why is it called "emu" and what features does this driver actually give me compared to the official Windows driver?

[deanjo]

Just by the way, I have always been curious about Audigy 2ZS support under ALSA.
There's the emu10k1 driver, which works quite good for me. However, why is it called "emu" and what features does this driver actually give me compared to the official Windows driver?

emu is referring to dsp name on the card. E-mu is the professional audio division of Creative.

[d2kx]

Well, I've got an Audigy 2 ZS, the sound is great, but is still a lot better under Linux with ALSA than it is with the original Creative Windows drivers, even when playing games ;)

But to be honest I consider buying the ASUS Xonar DX 7.1...

[Melcar]

Well, I've got an Audigy 2 ZS, the sound is great, but is still a lot better under Linux with ALSA than it is with the original Creative Windows drivers, even when playing games ;)

But to be honest I consider buying the ASUS Xonar DX 7.1...


Really? I got the Value version of the card (which is basically the same) and it sounds better under Windows (XP) than in Linux with ALSA. I'm no audiophile, but it seems to have much better bass and "richer" sound with the Creative driver.

[Redeeman]

Really? I got the Value version of the card (which is basically the same) and it sounds better under Windows (XP) than in Linux with ALSA. I'm no audiophile, but it seems to have much better bass and "richer" sound with the Creative driver.
it probably does various extremely invasive filters which you like more..

[seeker010]

it probably does various extremely invasive filters which you like more..

CMSS is enabled by default I believe under Windows. also I find ALSA and WindowsXP drivers aren't volume matched. at equal volume I find little difference between the two.

The new drivers work... for the most part. I still have a rather aggravating OSS under ALSA issue; cat (wav) > /dev/dsp results in pretty loud screeching instead of the right sound. I hope my tweeter isn't blown. 5.1 sound doesn't work, and dmix results in a bad hiss. Not that there's a reason to use dmix, but it shouldn't be hissing either. There's also been no approval activity on the Creative bugreport page for over a month, but if you look at the RSS feeds, bug reports are still being made.

My modded Elite Pro sounds much better than the Prodigy 7.1 HiFi I had in this box, but I might go back to it because of the killer OSS issue (vmware sound doesn't work).

I haven't seen any emu20k1 code in the alsa repositories, so I'm wondering if it might even be in 1.0.18.

[deanjo]

My modded Elite Pro sounds much better than the Prodigy 7.1 HiFi I had in this box, but I might go back to it because of the killer OSS issue (vmware sound doesn't work).
.

VMWare's crappy sound support is well known. There is currently a big push for then to finally adopt a native alsa output and according to their devs is a high priority. Hopefully the final of 6.5 will finally include it.