Audigy Drivers

[Beverly Denmark]

Thisguide is provided "as is" and free of charge. There is no warranty or support of any kind. By using this guide, you acknowledge and agree that you do so at your sole risk. The author is not liable for any damages and claims arising from the use of this guide.

This guide will help you install VxD drivers for Audigy cards under Windows 98SE or Windows ME, including proper support for DOS gaming. It has been successfully tested on retail Audigy 1 (SB0090), Audigy 2 (SB0240) and Audigy 2 ZS (SB0350) cards. However, it isn't suitable for LX/LE/SE and other cut down versions of Audigy cards, nor will it work on Audigy 4 cards. For reference, by using this guide, you get the following features from your Audigy card under Win9x:

Note that soundfonts only work when DOS games are running from within Windows 98/ME. If you go to pure DOS (by choosing Start > Shutdown > Restart in MS-DOS mode) then the card will use the (worse sounding) ECW sets instead. To my knowledge, there is no way to use .SF2 based soundfonts in pure DOS with an Audigy card.

Before starting the installation you need to determine whether your Audigy is made by Creative (retail version) or by an OEM company such as Dell or HP. For example, Dell Audigy 2 ZS cards have three, large white stickers on the back side and their serial number contains the string "SB0358". Creative cards don't have those white stickers and their serial number contains the string "SB0350". This guide is aimed at retail Audigy cards made by Creative. I'm not sure whether this method will work on OEM cards, since I don't own one of those, and they are known to be picky when it comes to driver packs.

Lastly, this guide and the modified driver pack that it uses are tailored to the US English version of Windows 98SE or Windows ME. Installing these drivers on a non-English system may cause the volume control screen (and possibly other aspects of the OS) to appear in English.

1.1 Certain chipsets have compatibility issues with VxD drivers and Creative's SB16 emulation. If you have a motherboard based on an Nvidia nForce chipset or an Intel ICH10+ chipset, then your system might not be compatible with this guide. Additionally, certain motherboards based on VIA chipsets may have compatibility issues with Audigy 1 cards specifically (Audigy 2 and ZS cards should work fine on VIA chipsets)

1.2 Upon booting up your system, enter the BIOS and disable all COM and LPT ports in order to free up additional resources. If your motherboard has an integrated sound card, network card or any other integrated device that you are not using, disable it in the BIOS as well. Lastly, if you are not using USB, disable that too

1.3 During the driver installation process, the Audigy should be the only sound card in your system. Using a second sound card may cause the driver installation to fail

1.4 This guide has only been tested on Windows 98SE and Windows ME. A clean install of Windows must be performed before attempting the driver installation procedure. Do not use any "unofficial service packs". Only install the drivers for your motherboard and graphics card until you complete all the steps in this guide

1.5 An Audigy card requires two free IRQs, one for the card itself and a second one for the FireWire port. The values assigned to those IRQs vary from system to system, but they should not be the same as the IRQ assigned to the SB16 emulation device. Additionally, the SB16 emulation device requires three I/O ports, one IRQ and two DMA channels. The default values are: I/O ports 220, 330 and 388, IRQ 5, DMA 1 and DMA 5. If any of those resources are not free, the driver installation may fail. To determine if your system has enough free resources, under Windows 98SE click Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Information > Hardware Resources and check the IRQ, DMA and I/O sections

2.1 Download the modified Audigy 2 ZS driver CD image, and burn it to a disc

2.2 Place the disc in the CD-ROM drive on your Win98SE/ME machine, and cancel the autorun installer in case it starts

2.3 This guide assumes that your CD-ROM drive resides at D: (default location). If it's using a different letter, simply substitute that letter each time you come across D: in this guide

3.1 Run D:\CTShared\LaunchApp\SysInfo\Setup.exe which will install the Creative System Information utility and update the InstallShield Engine (important later)

3.2 Run D:\DirectX\dxsetup.exe which will install DirectX 9.0a and restart your computer (if you already have a newer version installed, skip this step)

3.3 Run D:\Audio\Drivers\CTZAPXX.exe and select "Driver Installation" and "VXD Drivers" then click Ok

3.4 Driver installation will take several minutes, don't interrupt the process until you are prompted to Restart then click Ok

3.5 After the restart, wait until the installer finishes, then go to Start > Settings > Control Panel > Multimedia > Audio > Playback > Advanced Properties > Performance > Sample Rate Conversion Quality > move the slider to "Best"

3.6 Start > Run > sndvol32.exe > Ok. Note that all the volume sliders are currently at 50% which is fairly quiet. You might want to move the sliders to a higher value and also mute any unused inputs

4.1 Run D:\Audio\AudioHQ\Setup.exe and install Creative's AudioHQ (if you get an InstallShield Engine error here, repeat step 3.1)

4.2 Run D:\Audio\EaxCon\Setup.exe and install Creative EAX Console

4.3 Run D:\Audio\SpkSet\Setup.exe and install Creative Speaker Settings

4.4 Run D:\Audio\Restore\Setup.exe and install Creative Restore Defaults

4.5 Run D:\Audio\SurMixer\Setup.exe and install Creative Surround Mixer

4.6 Run D:\Audio\SFBMgr\Setup.exe and install the SoundFont Bank Manager

4.7 Start > Programs > Creative > Creative Speaker Settings and select the speaker setup that you are using, then click "Channel" in the Speaker Test section (in the screenshot below I'm using 5.1 speakers)

4.8 Start > Programs > Creative > EAX Console > CMSS 3D. I suggest turning CMSS off if you are using speakers and leaving it on if you are using headphones

5.1 Run D:\DOSDRV\SB16.REG and answer Yes > Ok when prompted (without this registry change, the SB16 Emulation driver will not install correctly on Audigy 2 ZS cards)

5.2 Run D:\DOSDRV\Setup.exe and restart when prompted

5.3 Wait until the Creative SB16 Emulation drivers are fully installed (this may take a few minutes) then restart again when prompted

5.4 During the boot process you might see a "Config file is incomplete" error. If this happens, restart your computer one more time and it should disappear

5.5 Copy the contents of D:\DOSDRV\AUDIGY12 to C:\AUDIGY12

5.6 On Audigy 2 (SB0240) models, you might get a non-functional Creative SB16 Emulation device (yellow exclamation mark) in Device Manager. If this occurs, follow steps 5.7, 5.8 and 5.9. Otherwise, skip them

5.7 Start > Settings > Control Panel > Add New Hardware > Next > Next > No, the device isn't in the list > Next > No, I want to select the hardware from a list > Next > Sound video and game controllers > Next > Creative Technology, Ltd. > Creative SB16 Emulation > Next > Finish

5.8 Restart your computer when prompted

5.9 Do not remove the Creative SB16 Emulation device with the yellow exclamation mark. Leave both devices as they are, otherwise, your DOS compatibility may cease to function

Important: if you want to use an Audigy 2 or ZS card in pure DOS you will need to run C:\AUDIGY12\AUDIGY12.EXE each time you choose Restart in MS-DOS mode. This is only necessary in pure DOS, do not run that executable when playing games from within Win98SE/ME. Lastly, this step is not needed for Audigy 1 cards.

For reference, here's how your games will sound with Creative's CT8MGM soundfont (Audigy and SBLive cards sound identical when the same soundfont is loaded). Essentially, with this step complete, you can now select any soundfont that you like for General MIDI playback in DOS games. For example, if you want to use a soundfont which more closely resembles a Roland Sound Canvas see this post. Alternatively, if you want to play games which use GS instruments, see this post.

Note that MT-32 emulation doesn't sound too great on this card, but I'm including it for completeness sake. That said, these drivers also allow your Audigy card to emulate FM Synthesis, should you want that. Of course, this sounds different from a genuine OPL3 chip, but it may still be somewhat usable, depending on the game that you're playing.

For those who have several sound cards installed, it's also possible to setup SB16 emulation with non-default settings

I have patched VxD from Audigy2 ZS driver CD ISO in order to modify MPU-401 and Adlib ports

Using the original drivers, right click on My Computer > Properties > Device Manager > Sound, Video and Game Controllers > Creative SB16 Emulation > Properties > Resources and uncheck "Use automatic settings". Then, choose "Basic Configuration 0002" > Change Setting.

This will allow you to manually change any settings except for the Adlib port (0388-038B). If you already have a different Adlib device installed (from a second sound card) it will show a conflict, but that won't affect the playback of the secondary sound card in any way.

Thanks Joseph, your guide worked, somehow, to install my Audigy 2ZS on my Windows Millenium PC. The only however was the DOS Driver Installation. The step 4.3 wont worked, because the setup refused to go saying that I'm not using an Win9x OS.... But it didn't matter because after that, even with an error, the Creative SB16 Emulation showed on my Device List as expected...

The only however was the DOS Driver Installation. The step 4.3 wont worked, because the setup refused to go saying that I'm not using an Win9x OS.... But it didn't matter because after that, even with an error, the Creative SB16 Emulation showed on my Device List as expected...

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