Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium PCIe support

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium PCIe support

[nidujay]

Hi all,

I've got a Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium PCIe sound card which I
purchased for the following 2 reasons:

1. It supports sound fonts
2. I require an SPDIF optical input

My OS is UbuntuStudio 10.04 which I believe uses alsa version 1.0.22.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get either of the above working (Ok I
haven't investigated (2) very deeply yet).

Any idea what I can do?

P.S. I'm willing to get my hands dirty if there's actual development effort
required.

Thanks
D

Re: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium PCIe support

[Clemens Ladisch]

nidujay wrote:
> I've got a Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium PCIe sound card which I
> purchased for the following 2 reasons:
> 
> 1. It supports sound fonts

Not in Linux.

> 2. I require an SPDIF optical input

Apparently not supported in Linux.

The driver was written by Creative, and they obviously don't bother to
extend it to support all hardware features.

> Any idea what I can do?

Don't buy Creative.


Regards,
Clemens

Re: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium PCIe support

[Thor Kristoffersen]

nidujay <nidujay@gmail.com> writes:
> I've got a Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium PCIe sound card which I
> purchased for the following 2 reasons:
>
> 1. It supports sound fonts
> 2. I require an SPDIF optical input
>
> My OS is UbuntuStudio 10.04 which I believe uses alsa version 1.0.22.
>
> Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get either of the above working (Ok I
> haven't investigated (2) very deeply yet).

The SPDIF input actually works.  The problem is that it isn't possible
to do capture with that mixer control muted, becuase muting the control
also turns off capture.  See my post about a month ago for more
information about this issue.  For some applications this bug may not
matter much, but it makes the X-Fi Titanium unusable for real-time audio
processing applications.

Thor

Re: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium PCIe support

[Thor Kristoffersen]

Clemens Ladisch <clemens@ladisch.de> writes:
> nidujay wrote:
>> Any idea what I can do?
>
> Don't buy Creative.

Ok, I have the following requirements to a soundcard:
 - PCI Express
 - 96kHz/24-bit
 - Optical SPDIF I/O
 - Works correctly in ALSA

Do you know of any card that fulfils these requirements?  (Preferably
less than EUR250.)

Thor

Re: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium PCIe support

[nidujay]

That's what I'm using at the moment. But I was hoping to delegate that job
to the hardware and let the main CPU concentrate on Ardour and a sequencer.

BTW as I mentioned earlier, I'm willing to do any necessary dev work, so if
there's anyone from Creative watching, how would I go about getting some
info on the EMU20K2?

P.S. I'm aware that many a giant may have attempted this before me, but for
what it's worth...

Thanks
D

On 3 October 2010 02:49, Thor Kristoffersen <thorkr@gmail.com> wrote:

> nidujay <nidujay@gmail.com> writes:
> > Ignore my last post. I got it thanks.
>
> I'm glad you got it to work.  By the way, regarding your first Titanium
> issue about soundfont support, I recommend that you install Qsynth.  It
> provides full soundfont support in software.
>
> Thor
>

Re: [Alsa-user] Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium PCIe support

[Clemens Ladisch]

Thor Kristoffersen wrote:
> James Le Cuirot <chewi@aura-online.co.uk> writes:
> > Sounds like the ASUS Xonar D2X could work for you.
> 
> Is it known to work perfectly in ALSA?

Yes.


Regards,
Clemens

Re: [Alsa-user] Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium PCIe support

[Thor Kristoffersen]

Clemens Ladisch <clemens@ladisch.de> writes:
> Thor Kristoffersen wrote:
>> James Le Cuirot <chewi@aura-online.co.uk> writes:
>> > Sounds like the ASUS Xonar D2X could work for you.
>> 
>> Is it known to work perfectly in ALSA?
>
> Yes.

Okay, that's one candidate.  I did a bit of searching, and I found that
if I relax my requirements a bit to include PCI cards, there is another
card called HT-Omega Claro that would seemingly fit the bill, and it's
significantly cheaper than the Xonar.  Do you (or anyone else) happen to
know if this is also fully supported by ALSA?

By the way, does the volume control work on the digital output stream on
these cards?  That's one thing I like about the X-Fi Titanium; no need
for a softvol plugin.

Thor

Re: [Alsa-user] Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium PCIe support

[Clemens Ladisch]

Thor Kristoffersen wrote:
> I did a bit of searching, and I found that
> if I relax my requirements a bit to include PCI cards, there is another
> card called HT-Omega Claro that would seemingly fit the bill, and it's
> significantly cheaper than the Xonar.  Do you (or anyone else) happen to
> know if this is also fully supported by ALSA?

http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Matrix:Vendor-HT_Omega

> By the way, does the volume control work on the digital output stream on
> these cards?

No; on most cards (including these ones), the digital output does not
have a volume control because this would reduce the precision of the
samples; the volume is supposed to be controlled by whichever device
does the digital-to-analog conversion.


Regards,
Clemens