Sound Blaster Audigy SE Driver Prob

Question

I have a problem with Sound Blaster Audigy SE,
Im using newest from creative download site SBA_PCDRV_LB__04_006.exe drivers.
After I turn on a game like ut2004, fear combat, even dxdiag (sound test) or pause sound in music/movie player system stops reacting or process "System" uses 95-00% of my CPU.
After few tests I discovered with help of KrView (kernel view soft) that p7filt.sys uses such big ammount of cpu If in Speaker Settings, Bass Redirection and Subwoofer Gain (+5) is turned on. (5. speakers)
I installed a bit diffrent version of drivers (from cd and even later I tested SBSE7_XP_Jul2005 additional driver). But then Subwoofer Gain option isnt working at all
its written Subwoofer Gain (+0) and with sub gain +0 sound quality very poor like in AC97 audio.
Ive also checked friends sound card on my pc and also i've tested exactly same thing on other computer.
I have xp sp2 with updates, newest bios, directX, etc etc...
Pentium 4 2.4
MSI 845PE Max
Geforce 6600GT
536 DDR Ram
Windows XP SP2Message Edited by Efrin on 04-09-2007:38 AM

Answer 1

OK..first of all the Audigy SE lacks any form of hardware acceleration, so turning on features like bass boosting/sound post-processing etc. will take away a lot of CPU time. The file you mentioned just acts as a software real-time filter, although it should not go up to the point of bringing a 2.4 Ghz Pentium 4 to its knees.
The sound quality will be altered even with every "DSP" effect (quoted because there's no actual hardware DSP, it's just emulated in software) set to 0, as long as the "DSP is considered acti've.
That's because the sound output is first converted from the time domain to the frequency domain (in poor words, the continuous sound wave you hear is broken down in many different frequencies like in those 80s ghettoblasters spectrum analyzers) because it's easier to amplify bass/treble that way, and then converted back to time domain (in even poorer words, a continuous sound wave you can hear/record/playback).
It's obvious that doing that thing in real time has a CPU cost, and even more obvious that the procedure is lossy and the input will not be the same as the output even with no effect applied, as long as the this double conversion takes place.
If you really need bass boost, turn any sound processing on the card OFF, and use speakers which have it. Also, if the CPU usage is abnormally high, try updated or a specific older version of the drivers that has more reasonable CPU usage/doesn't have that bug.