# Creative Xi-Fi

## Magnum_

Hi there,

I'm planning to install gentoo on my new box as well. It has a xi-fi platinum card installed, which I currently use for optical digital output to my 5.1 surround amplifier. 

Is there any chance of getting the xifi to work in linux, or should I give up hope and start looking for analog cabling for my onboard realtek soundcard?

Thank you in advance

----------

## boniek

Not a chance unfortunately   :Neutral: 

----------

## nukem996

Currently it is unsupported by ALSA and OSS but I wouldnt be surprised if in the future there are open source drivers released for it(although I dont know of any being worked on). Keep in mind that from what ive read the X-Fi driver is crap on win, creative is probably working on fixing that.

----------

## XenoTerraCide

the best you could do is go to alsa and try to get them to start working on it... I'm not saying it would... or even advising it... do at your own risk. but you might just try seeing if an older driver like emu10k1 works... I'm not sure did any prior creative cards have optical... I'm not sure if mine does, so it might be completly useless. because an older driver won't contain the optical support if that's the case.

----------

## Magnum_

I don't think the emu10k1 will work, I was hoping on some other trick. This driver is for live/audigy/audigy2 cards, and does his job fine.

But all these cards are based on the same architecture. The audigy is an improved live, and the audigy 2 is a slightly improved audigy.

The XiFi is another story, it's a completely new card. So I think there'll be virtually no chance of getting it to work... And there are no drivers from creative either !  

Previous cards have also optical connectors (on the platinum drive)

----------

## XenoTerraCide

ur prolly right... be worth a try though. I would go to alsa however and ask on the status of it...

----------

## Jazz

but can i atleast play sound on the xi-fi card via analog outputs via alsa ?

what chipset would i need to select ?

emu series or is there a seperate xi-fi option available yet ?

thanx,

jazz

----------

## nukem996

 *Jazz wrote:*   

> but can i atleast play sound on the xi-fi card via analog outputs via alsa ?
> 
> what chipset would i need to select ?
> 
> emu series or is there a seperate xi-fi option available yet ?
> ...

 

You cannt play anything from the X-Fi. There is currently no driver for it so there is no way that Linux can tell it to play any sound. If you want to get Creative to write an open source driver or release the specs of the X-Fi so someone else can goto the Creative open source page.

----------

## Jazz

I checked the page, atleast they know that the xi-fi series is the main audio card that is not yet supported.

I believe people must be working on this big time, to atleast get sound working on xi-fi in linux, cuz if nothing works then that alnoe can be a very big factor limiting the sales of the xi-fi series of soundcards apart from the price ofcourse  :Wink: 

Ahh, this has got me into some thinking now. Whether i should i get the Audigy4 for 115$ AUD or get the Xi-fi for 208$ and wait for the linux support to come by in months time..

Considering that Audigy lived a very long life, and that Xi-fi is 24times powerful than audigy it only makes sense to go for xi-fi., 

Lol, that means till then i either keep on switching between onboard and xi-fi for linux/windows, or just stick to windows till ALSA kicks in Xi-fi support   :Evil or Very Mad: 

Damn this incompatibility issues !

----------

## PrakashP

There won't be Alsa support for Xfi in short term, as the chip is completely different to the emu chips, and Creative doesn't give out specs, so go figure...

----------

## XenoTerraCide

I wish that they would hurry it... hell, if they would give them the source for the drivers that would be the best. don't they realise that we would, and may still be the first to take advantage of the ram on the models that have it. the top 3 so far there is no use. well if they would open source their drivers we would make them better and we would put apps out for them. I don't understand why hardware manufacturer's don't open source there driver's. we pay for hardware. not for drivers. ugh... if they would start doing it they would increase their sales because the one who had open source drivers would have the best drivers with the fewest bugs and when their were bugs they would get fixed faster. and when you have new features on a card that require drivers. guess what new software to take advantage of those features would come out real fast.

----------

## Jazz

Lol, nvidia sells more than ATI on linux cuz of their better drivers, so that makes sense !

But atleast Nvidia does its job by providing something !

Creative on the other hand, seems to like the policy of locking the use of its sound cards to windows envoirnments only !

If only their sound cards werent as good as they are, i wouldnt even bother !

But AHH, audigy has always been my dream, and now come the Xi-Fi which i just want.. seems i'd still be gettin it no matter what.   :Evil or Very Mad: 

----------

## XenoTerraCide

as far as the nvidia ati on linux argument goes. I have an ati. and it works fine. but I'm not trying to play games with it. but these xi-fi cards are the first or at least the first in a long time, not sure which, to have ram on them. no application have been made to use this ram. what could is it. like I said I don't buy hardware for drivers. I buy it based on how good it is. like intel makes better 32-bit processor's, but amd is the only way to go if you want 64-bit. now supposedly nvidia has better opengl drivers and ati has better directx. 

I know why they don't make their drivers open source. they're afraid that their hardware isn't actually as good as their competitor's. lol. I wouldn't blame them for keeping their driver's closed sourced until the day the card's were released but I think they would make more sales if they open sourced them at that point. like I said who buys for driver's? if both ati and nvidia open sourced there drivers would you still pick nvidia? or would it depend on which card was on sale? or maybe which card is currently on top (right now it's nvidia, but it's been ati for the last 3 years or so up untill 2-6 months ago)? who knows.

----------

## Jazz

Just got a reply from the creative support team, heres what he said..

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> X-Fi support may take quite a while. I've supplied a developer who does ALSA drivers with a card, but that's pretty much all I can do for him for now. Since the chip on the card is quite different from prior Creative chips, I think figuring it out will take quite a while. Support will eventually come under Linux, but not before the end of 2006 at the earliest.
> 
> For Linux work with a Creative card, you're much better off with something other than an X-Fi. Which model you'd want would depend mainly on what you want on those occasions you boot Windows -- an Audigy 2 or Audigy 4 is good if you want accelerated audio support when running Windows, otherwise a SoundBlaster Live 24-Bit would be less expensive than the X-Fi and perfectly good under Linux.
> ...

 

MAN ! end of 2006 at the earliest ? WTF ? why do people at creative have to be so lame !

So, i guess i'll just stick to Audigy4 then ! DAMN.

----------

## d3vlin

hehe that's not a good prospect (given that I'm just rebuilding gentoo on my new AMD64 box with... guess what... Creative X-Fi ExtremeMusic card in it..   :Rolling Eyes:  )

----------

## Harrold

I found this quote from the Creative OSS Site:

 *Quote:*   

> The X-Fi series of products are not supported under Linux, and probably won't be for quite a while.

 [/quote]

----------

## bos_mindwarp

lame...

so what other audio cards are out there with similar quality/features that DO work with alsa?

----------

## nukem996

I have a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 that works great.

----------

## bos_mindwarp

 *nukem996 wrote:*   

> I have a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 that works great.

 

Yeah I have audigy 2, I was thinking of a sound card in class with x-fi tho   :Cool: 

----------

## XenoTerraCide

I don't think anyone else makes audio cards in the class of the xi-fi. has anyone checked the status on the development for these drivers yet?

----------

## micmac

Buy a card that doesn't resample and has a bit-perfect spdif-out in case you connect via spdif. Why waste money on the xfi for this? All the decoding and DAC is done in the external amplifier anyway. For instance Terratec PCI Fun with SPDIF-In/Out seems bitperfect for 44,1 and 48kHz and costs ca. 18¤. Plus there is of course an ALSA driver and AC3-passthrough works. If you want even more sampling rates there's always an Audiophile 2496 (Midiman).

mic

----------

## linuxtuxhellsinki

Latest news from there   :Mad: 

```
 May 18, 2006 -- Creative plans to make proprietary (closed source) drivers available for the X-Fi series of sound cards in the second quarter of 2007. These drivers will have full support for ALSA (playback, recording, mixer, MIDI, synthesis) and OpenAL 1.1 (with EAX effects)
```

Closed bull at 2nd Q of 07  :Evil or Very Mad: 

----------

## nukem996

Damn creative has been so good with open source drivers for all these years. Sucks that there going closed on newer cards. I hope the X-Fi drivers are better then the win ones, I remember reading a bunch of shit how they caused lockups and such on win.

----------

## boniek

Seems people were persistant enough to enforce Creative to make some move. Driver will not be Free Software so I don't know if it is such a good news (looking at how often Creative releases Windows drivers it will be such a hassle for them to release drivers with every kernel update).

----------

## nukem996

They wont need to release with every kernel update. Yes updates are required to drivers but not that often. My main concern would be the quality of the drivers. Ever since the cards came out I read all over the net people having problems with the Windows drivers.

----------

## boniek

True enough. We will see in a year or so when first stable version will come out (good thing is, they plan to support EAX effects).

----------

## alienjon

I am preparing to build a new system and would like to use an x-fi card (Actually, it might be an x-fi gamer, but that depends on how the reviews I find go) But for now, half-way through the year, is there any updated information as to the driver support for the card? I may not get it until the end of the summer (another 3 months, or so) but if development is coming along nicely then I may wait longer just to see what comes out (and, of course, if there is no information or anything, I may just go with a higher-end audigy)

----------

## AstroTux

Hi,

I think it is a shame that a company such as Creative are supporting proprietory software.  :Sad:   I am one who buys for the drivers second to an extent, as what good is great hardware if the drivers don't work properly or cause the system to lock up?

Don't Creative realize that they can still retain the Copyright on the drivers even if someone else develops them? It certainly wouldn't result in driver piracy, either.  :Rolling Eyes: 

I know I won't be buying a Xi-Fi until it works under Linux.

Best regards,

AstroTux.

----------

## Eskarel

Reasons why the x-fi is going to take a long time to get done.

1) The kernel and xorg devs frequently screw over closed source driver manufacturers on principle(look at the change in allowed interface on the kernel a year or so ago, and the changes to xorg-server recently which prevent binary graphics drivers working yet. No company is going to spend resources building a driver if the devs randomly screw them over with no warning, it's just not worth it. Give companies a semi-stable API and they might invest more in using it.

2) Vista. The fact that there aren't even Windows 2000 drivers for this card means that they're doing some deep kernel magic which Microsoft has never and will never support between versions. Once they have a stable Windows XP driver(mine works fine at the moment), they need a Vista driver, because whatever you think of Microsoft, a card which doesn't run in the new Windows promptly is a card which isn't going to exist.

3) Product value. Creative could probably throw together a really basic "sound only" driver for linux, but this isn't a sound only card, you don't spend as much as this card costs to get something which sounds and acts exactly like the myriad of cards which work on linux just fine. You buy it for all the niffty things it can do.

----------

## ChickensDontFly

I just about bought one of these cards today. Glad I checked the forums!

----------

## mc-escher

Well, I thought we were past all this nowadays, but I guess not.   I blame creative for making me box this sh*t back up and take it back to the store.   It will be a cold day in hell before I buy another one of their products. 

They can just sit in the penalty box with sony for all eternity.

----------

## Kai Hvatum

 *linuxtuxhellsinki wrote:*   

> Latest news from there  
> 
> ```
>  May 18, 2006 -- Creative plans to make proprietary (closed source) drivers available for the X-Fi series of sound cards in the second quarter of 2007. These drivers will have full support for ALSA (playback, recording, mixer, MIDI, synthesis) and OpenAL 1.1 (with EAX effects)
> ```
> ...

 

I'll hold judgement until I see exactly what the quality of the closed source drivers are.

----------

## boniek

 *Kai Hvatum wrote:*   

>  *linuxtuxhellsinki wrote:*   Latest news from there  
> 
> ```
>  May 18, 2006 -- Creative plans to make proprietary (closed source) drivers available for the X-Fi series of sound cards in the second quarter of 2007. These drivers will have full support for ALSA (playback, recording, mixer, MIDI, synthesis) and OpenAL 1.1 (with EAX effects)
> ```
> ...

 

I'm sceptical. Even if they initially will be working I don't believe creative will quickly support newer kernel versions as they appear not to mention bug fixes. See their drivers in Windows, and what people had to do to make creative release new driver set for cracking/popping issue with xfi cards.

----------

## feld

How many of you have actually used the card in Windows? The card is crap. The audigy 2 is way better. They sure do know how to sling buzzwords, that's all I gotta say...

Get a pro card that IS supported under Linux and you'll be happier.

Check out the high end offerings from M-Audio for example.

And if you really, really need the XFI, OSS might have it working before Creative because I think they said they were in negotiations on getting an NDA. Better than nothing...

----------

## XenoTerraCide

question. as far as hardware how is it crap? performance, audio quality? does it not provide the boost to game performance it says it does?

----------

## boniek

You won't be able to hear any differences between audigy and xfi on computer speakers (and even equipped with good speakers you would have to have superhuman hearing abilities). Xfi does not help framerates in any noticeable way. It's just a waste of cash compared to current audigy 2 zs for example. Oh and their drivers in windows are plain pain in the ass (talking about switching to different modes).

You don't have much choice though if you want really good audio positioning with headphones. It's really good in this aspect.

----------

## askoff

Is there any opensource movement on this area? Can we get opensource drivers for X-fi some day?

 *boniek wrote:*   

> You won't be able to hear any differences between audigy and xfi on computer speakers (and even equipped with good speakers you would have to have superhuman hearing abilities).

 

I disagree. I'm abel to distinguish Audigys resampling problems quite easily. It doesn't even require any special abilities to do so. Decent headphones are enough. Resampling problem can be avoided though with software resampling, which is quite easily done in Linux and can be done in Windows also in certan cases, but in all cases it takes some CPU resources to do so. That's why I prefer X-fi over Audigy.

----------

## bubbl07

Until Creative releases their binary drivers for this card, I'd settle for just sound playback for now.  I use the X-Fi in Windows for games and have to switch to my onboard sound to even listen to music or watch videos in Gentoo.

The ALSA page says that there haven't been any developments made for this card, but that was last updated in March 2005 (http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/index.php?vendor=vendor-Creative_Labs#matrix).

I realize I could just stick to my onboard in Windows, but it doesn't sound nearly as good in games or movies and the framerate's slightly higher in all the games I play.

So, has anyone been able to at least get audio playback?

----------

## November Rain

I had a SB Live! before i bought a X-Fi. It sounds much better and i wont miss this card unter windows, but my main os is gentoo and i had to switch between the onboard card and the x-fi if i want to hear something. it seems to be impossible to run a x-fi and sblive in one box.

Btw Vista wont support many of the x-fi hardware features like decoding dvds.

----------

## Kai Hvatum

 *boniek wrote:*   

> You won't be able to hear any differences between audigy and xfi on computer speakers (and even equipped with good speakers you would have to have superhuman hearing abilities). Xfi does not help framerates in any noticeable way. It's just a waste of cash compared to current audigy 2 zs for example. Oh and their drivers in windows are plain pain in the ass (talking about switching to different modes).
> 
> You don't have much choice though if you want really good audio positioning with headphones. It's really good in this aspect.

 

The sound quality is noticeably better, between the X-Fi and Audigy 2 ZS I can without doubt hear a difference on my Grado SR-125. Also the front bay on the Platinum card is a built in amplifier which is great if you're driving high end headphones. I agree that you need a very high end speaker to notice a difference. But on a decent pair of $80 headphones you already get a benefit from the X-Fi. Good point on the 3D positioning, that's simply unbeatable. On any game with EAX 3 or 5 it's nothing short of awesome. Very scary in Doom III. Audigy 2 is already pretty good though. 

And I agree, you won't notice a huge difference in FPS. But... you will notice a 10-12 FPS difference once you add on all the 3D positioning calculations that the X-Fi does. It actually is offloading a pretty significant amount of processing. Just check the benchmarks of some other cards that offer (at best) EAX 2 and are a lot slower at it to boot. 

Disclaimer: I might be sounding like a Creative Fanboy. But I have some SERIOUS problems w/ them, I really wish they would get some basic OS drivers out there. I really have no problem with closed source drivers, afterall it's costing the company more money to make them. They must have some good reason. I do however have problems with drivers that SUCK (if they're closed source). The Windows drivers are fine IMHO, I've not had any problems at all.

----------

## Phk

I know this may sound really stupid, but isn't there a way to "register creative product" under linux??

I mean, if they knew how many "def" linux users are right now (like me), they'd think about speeding up.

We should make a signed below report to creative.. and ALSA. They could reverse engineer the XP drivers....

I'm sick of silence   :Crying or Very sad:  Why oh why haven't i bought Xmod...  :Crying or Very sad: 

----------

## alienjon

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> I'll hold judgement until I see exactly what the quality of the closed source drivers are.
> 
> 

 

I concur, I have no qualms with closed source drivers so long as they do their job and they do it well enough to make me happy. (Which for right now is for them to exist in the first place and for me to get sound out of them)

----------

## rtyall

According to this, Vista's to blame for the lack of driver support.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NTc4NA

No beta until the end of the year.

----------

