Vista - Vista x64 front panel problems with X-Fi extreme

Hi Guys,

I have a weird problem with my Vista partition and my creative x-fi xtreme PCI express card.

Drivers / control panel can detect my headphones being plugged into the port in my front panel. If I do a channel test I can hear the "left channel" / "right channel" test audio track play through the headphones.

But for the life of me, no matter what I do, I can not get normal windows sound (media player, power dvd etc...) to go through the head phones when they are plugged into the front panel and it's driving me crazy. I've set headphones to be the default play back device but nothing.

What kills me is that if I boot into my windows XP partition, everything is fine. The speakers are even muted when I plug my headphones in and sound comes out of them perfectly.

Am I doing something wrong? or is it just a driver bug? I'm using the latest vista drivers (via creative update).

I'm running 64 bit Vista business by the way and any suggestions would be greatly appriciated.

Thanks for reading.
James

Hi wallacej,

Welcome to the Forums.

Just out of curiosity do you have anything plugged into the back audio ports while trying to listen audio from Windows Media Player to get sound from the front audio ports? Maybe with Vista you got to have only a device plugged into the front so the sound will route? Not sure.

Raj

Hi, wallacej, and welcome to the forums.

Does your machine have a built in sound card as well? If so, is it possible that the front panel is attached to the onboard sound card as opposed to the PCI card you have in there?

Hey Raj,

I do have the speakers (5.1 system) plugged in to the back at the same time as the headphones.

Normally it wouldn't be an issue but my tower is position is such a way that unplugging the speakers at the back to hook in the head phones is a hassle.

I find it strange that in Windows XP, everything is fine and the speakers are even automatically muted when the head phones are plugged in which leads me to believe it's a driver problem.

I'm going to install vista again on a yet another drive on the weekend just to experiment. If I make any progress I'll post it here.

I really should have tested the default drivers from the CD before applying any updates because if it isn't broke, don't fix it!


thanks for your reply.

James.

Hey johngalt,

Rare as it is these days no, my machine does not have an inbuilt card. It has a MSI P-45 Diamond mother board that was actually bundled with the creative x-fi xtreme PCI-Express card.

thanks for your reply though.

James

Hi Wallace,

You said that your computer detects the headphones being plugged, but does the output change to the front ports? I have an Asus Xonar Dx, and I have to manually select the sound to output through the front ports.

Hope this helps

This might be of use as well - it is building on what Spd2Lst mentions.

I have a set of Logitech Laptop headphones (USB, with 1/8" mini jacks plugging into the USB dongle) that I use at night. The first time I plug them in all is well, but after a reboot, when I plug them in they are detected but the sound device does not make them the default since my STAV receiver, which I use for sound, is connected to the back of the machine at all times, and it is set as default. What I do is connect the headphone,s and make them the default. Then, when I disconnect the headphones, the STAV receiver takes over as default, and when I next connect the headphones it automatically becomes the default again.

The reason I suggest this is that, as Spd2Lst mentioned, unless the system (or I do it manually) changes the headphone as the default, I cannot get sound out of the headphones.

See i this helps at all.

Thanks Guys, you've lead me to the solution.
1. With Vista it is a manual process, you must manually set the output device.
2. Currently running apps will still output to the existing output device, only newly apps will go out through the newly selected output device.

So that's where I went wrong, I'd switch the output device to head phones with an mp3 running, when nothing changed assumed it didn't work.

Guess I shouldn't assume that what's in XP should be in Vista. You've saved a weekend if pointless testing.

Cheers,
James

I'm glad we were able to help you figure it out.