HOWTO: Install and use a Creative X-Fi card with full 5.1 support

[Lantizia]

EDIT:

This guide *should* work with these cards... however why you're still using 9.04 is beyond me...
* Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro
* Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum
* Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty®
* Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer
* Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic

EDIT: NOTE: P.S.: WHATEVER:

DO NOT follow this guide if you are on a later version than 9.04, as this is support is already included

---

Hi,

I installed Ubuntu 9.04 today (EDIT: and Linux Mint 7 a couple of days later)... and I was about to compile the half-baked official Creative X-Fi drivers for my X-Fi Music PCI card... their drivers always have some kind of issue so I checked Wikipedia for any news. It seems a S.u.S.E. developer has been working with Creative and ALSA, and suffice to say the 1.0.21 release of ALSA that came out a few hours ago has worked great for me with 5.1 support for these X-Fi cards.

I don't think it's going to harm to upgrade ALSA this way, it might be that 9.10 will come with this version in a months time (it currently has 1.0.20 which I haven't tried) and just override the process below anyway.

Step One
Upgrade ALSA to version 1.0.21
Run these commands as root! To work as root, key in this along with your password...

sudo su

Then proceed...

apt-get -y install build-essential ncurses-dev gettext xmlto linux-headers-`uname -r`
mkdir -p /usr/src/alsa
cd /usr/src/alsa
wget ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/driver/alsa-driver-1.0.21.tar.bz2
wget ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/lib/alsa-lib-1.0.21.tar.bz2
wget ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/utils/alsa-utils-1.0.21.tar.bz2
tar xjf alsa-driver*
tar xjf alsa-lib*
tar xjf alsa-utils*
cd alsa-driver*
./configure
make
make install
cd ../alsa-lib*
./configure
make
make install
ln -s libpanelw.so.5 /usr/lib/libpanelw.so
ln -s libformw.so.5 /usr/lib/libformw.so
ln -s libmenuw.so.5 /usr/lib/libmenuw.so
ln -s libncursesw.so.5 /lib/libncursesw.so
cd ../alsa-utils*
./configure
make
make install

Step Two
Reboot...
No really, go reboot... you need to.
Step Three
Check preferences...

• Go to your System | Preferences | Sound
• Change the default mixer tracks device to 'Creative X-Fi (Alsa mixer)'.
• Open Volume Control | Preferences
• Tick 'Center/LFE', 'Surround' and 'Side', then unmute each of them.

Step Four
Up mix anything stereo to 5.1...
If you've got a program that's 5.1 aware then it'll work as it should, however by doing this step anything that plays stereo (like the irritating Ubuntu system sounds) will be up mixed to 5.1 instead of just coming out of the front left and right!

• Hit Alt+F2 and run this...

gedit .asoundrc

• Paste in this stuff below, then save and quit gedit...

pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "surround51"
slave.channels 6
route_policy duplicate
}

Step Five
Not really a step, I just think 5 steps sound better than 4...
Remember back in Windows there is that snooty little women who barks all around you in each speaker... she is back!

• Hit Alt+F2 and run this...

speaker-test -Dplug:surround51 -c6 -l1 -twav

You should hear her come out of each of the 5 speakers, and probably a gagged version of her mumblings out of your sub woofer.

You'll also notice in your Hardware Drivers dialogue box, that it'll say the X-Fi Drivers 1.03 are activated... not sure why it does this - but it does happen as a result of doing this.

Please let me know how you get on... can't promise I'll know what to do when stuff goes wrong for you however!


Yes that's right popcorn, why? WHY NOT!

NOTE: I am finding that even if I unmute those extra 3 properties in the volume control, they are muted again upon login again - does anyone know a fix for this?

[hawks1282]

Amazing coincidence, just yesterday I installed Ubuntu to try and begin moving away from Microsoft, and I was up late trying to get my X-Fi card working properly (and not having any success). Then today I look and see that just ten hours ago, you posted the solution to my problems.

Everything worked great, except that when I finished the last step there was no sound from the two rear speakers (center, front-right, front-left, and sub all worked). I went back and fiddled with the controls a bit, and got it working. The fix that worked for me follows . . .

Went to "Volume Control->Preferences"
Ticked "Side Playback"
Un-muted "Side"
Ran the "speaker-test -Dplug:surround51 -c6 -l1 -twav" test again and received 5.1 surround goodness for my efforts.

Thanks very much.

[xenogia]

Thanks Lantizia,

I'm going to check it out probably tomorrow.. wish I could tonight, but thanks for the info.

EDIT:
Just a quick question will this work in conjuction with PulseAudio, or will I have to remove that element for this to work correctly?

[algepy]

that's awesome! really work for me )
thx Lantizia

[Lantizia]

Went to "Volume Control->Preferences"
Ticked "Side Playback"
Un-muted "Side"

Cool, have updated my post to include this... which card to you have? Mine is a X-Fi Music card (PCI model not PCI-E).

Just a quick question will this work in conjuction with PulseAudio, or will I have to remove that element for this to work correctly?

Don't see why it wouldn't, it's basically just an ALSA upgrade.

[crazyone]

thansk for the guide. works great for me in debian and ubuntu 9.04 both being 64bit

edit: for some reason it wont play sound with bass out of my headset. its a 5.1 headset and the sound card is the xfi xtrememusic pci version. i added the .asoundrc file and also my sound profile is saying that the sourond sound is unpluged. any ideas on this?

[Soilworker]

Thank you very much for writing this guide. This was quite easy to follow and worked flawlessly in Ubuntu 9.04 64bit with a Sound Blaster X-fi XtremeMusic.

[hawks1282]

My card is a "Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional", model: 70SB088600002. It's a PCI-E card. Still going strong

[Lantizia]

thansk for the guide. works great for me in debian and ubuntu 9.04 both being 64bit

Cool, I was using the 64-bit Ubuntu 9.04 when I wrote this... I also frequently use Debian Lenny so it's good to know it works there too, not that there would be any reason it wouldn't.

for some reason it wont play sound with bass out of my headset. its a 5.1 headset

No ideas, I don't even know what a 5.1 headset is... presumably one with more than one jack plug.

[TRANQU111TY]

What happens if I'm only using 3.1 because my rear speakers don't work. Do I need to change anything or just leave it as is?

Also I have sound in Youtube but not in movie player. How can I fix this?