Soundblaster kx driver as a crossover?

[JaRoD]

Since I'm already using the kx drivers for soundblaster I've been thinking about using it to make a crossover. But I'm guessing the quality of the crossovers aren't the best, so has anyone else tried it before?

And then there's the problem of controlling volume too, altough that might be fixable by getting a computer remote. But will it work with the kx drivers? And last, I've tried to take the sound from my tv to linein on the soundcard but it doesn't sound as good as straight to the amp. Would connecting it to cdin on the soundcard make any difference?

[DragonMaster]

You could play in the DSP to solve your problems.

[DigitalJunkie]

I played with it a little bit..
Check out the DSP,you can add all kinds of modules,low-pass,bandpass,EQ,gain,etc...You can also 'virtually re-wire' the card,and bypass the surround encoder and whatnot if you like...Or rewire certain outputs directly to a jack on the back panel
The subwoofer/variable LPF output was quite handy.

[DragonMaster]

BTW, development has restarted for Kx, in the forums you can find the 3538 beta drivers. (There are some new modules I think also)

[DragonMaster]

You can also 'virtually re-wire' the card,

In fact, you do what the Creative drivers SHOULD do : Let you "re-wire" the EMU10Kx DSP.

Would connecting it to cdin on the soundcard make any difference?

No. It's normal it doesn't sound as good, it's made of cheap in/out stages. (Maybe putting new caps and opamps could help?) You could try to pass the line in directly to the speakers output with the DSP.

(There are some new modules I think also)

I don't know for the 3537, but on 3538 I see 2th and 4th order crossovers. I really can't tell anything about sound quality because I don't know if the code sounds good or not.

Oh, one last thing, if it sounds really different, look for "Swap speakers" option. If it's on, it means that the front output comes from the better-sounding rear outputs and that the rear comes from the front outputs. (For 4 channel cards at least...)

[JaRoD]

Since I have an audigy 2 value card I have to use the newest drivers for it to even work, I use 3538k right now. So the only way to get good sound from an external source would be to have an external AD and take go digital in it.

Think I read somewhere that the dsp is powerful enough to do IIR but not FIR filtering, although I have no idea what the differences between those 2 are. And I don't know how the 2nd and 4th order ones in kx are implemente.

Guess the only way to find out how good the filters are is to plug in my poweramps directly to the soundcard and play around a bit. Guess I'll have something to do this weekend then Just have to go buy some 3.5mm to rca cables.

[bobo1on1]

IIR means inifinite impulse response, this implementation feeds back output values to the input to create a filter, it is called inifinite impulse response because when you feed it an impulse the output never stabilizes to zero mathematically speaking, in practice it does stabilize to zero because the precision of the datatype is not infinite.

FIR means finite impulse response, it doesn't feed back output values to the input, thus creating a stable filter.
If for example you take the average of the last 10 input values and use that as the output value, you have created an FIR lowpass.
It always stabilizes to zero when you feed an impulse to the input.

The benefit of FIR filters is that there is almost no phase shift.
The downside is that FIR filters have to be very complex to get good results, this requires alot of processing and they also have a delay.

Imho if you want the best quality out of the creative card, you should consider playing the media on your computer, or use the spdif cd input.
For outputs you could use the onboard dac's, or you could use an external dac.

Creative cards have 3 stereo spdif ttl level outputs available on the aud_ext pin header (try searching the kX forum).


Imho the best thing about a digital crossover is that you can add a static delay (look at the dsp documentation on the website) and you can change your crossovers on the fly.

There is also a speaker alignment plugin on the forum to counteract the delays when speakers are placed at different distances from the listener, this works very good.

[JaRoD]

I tried out using making a crossover in the kx drivers and connect the poweramps directly to the soundcard. And the result is that it sounded pretty bad... And I have no idea why

[DragonMaster]

Maybe you'll need a buffer.

Oh, and I just remembered, some older SBs got the front output inverted. If you have one, you'll need to add the Phase effect that's in the "Basic" menu to the front out. Also, in the "EQ & Filter" menu, there are some EQ highpass and EQ lowpass you could try(They seem to work for me, you have both Freq and Q to adjust). You can remove almost every blocks from the original layout. I don't use the LineIn, so I take the FXBus0 & 1 lines and output them directly to the epilog outputs.