Understanding PC sound cards

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Good question!!
I do know that the new creative X-FI drivers will allow 4 channels each with their own VST effects as I was going to set it up as a two way crossover system for my rig.
I haven't tried it yet, but, that was what I read in the update documentation.
And I did confirm it in the control panels.
I mean't that I have not tried it as a crossover system yet.

That was when I discovered the KX project claiming that it was possible to have control over all 8 output channels.
But again I have not tried that yet either.
I have a lot of projects going on at the same time sometimes.

jer :)
 
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With the Audigy, I'm sure that the internal Wave routing is only a driver/software issue, as the Kx driver and its GUI routing panel are able to clear the whole chain and allow you to start from scratch. You can configure the card to feed the incoming Wave stream to 'RecL' and 'RecR' only, which is exactly what I want. Then six ASIO output channels can be connected to the six analogue outputs. Using BASS, I can then read the two Wave channels, process the data with my FFTs etc. and write the filtered data out to the six ASIO channels. That's all I want to do at the moment. The question is, could I do the same with the X-Fi, as there is no open source driver.

I've never really tried any programming languages but 'C'. Would the DSP languages you suggest be easy to learn? I like the idea of 'C' being so low level that I feel as though I kind of understand what I'm doing with the data, but it is certainly a bit cumbersome when it comes to DSP.

KX-Project only works on the EMU10K1 and EMU10K2 DSP chips (Audigy). X-Fi uses a different chip with unknown parameters so it's not supported.

KX-Project is technically a Driver but it also rewrites the DSP chip so it's actually a software driver AND firmware. You will not find anything else like it.

You can certainly write DSP algorithms in C on a PC, it's actually how most VST plug-ins do it. I would assume that DSP languages are optimized for certain chips. In KX-Project you can write assembly style DSP microcode and I thought it was fairly easy once you understand what it's supposed to do.
 
I think I can finally put my question at the start of this thread to rest.

I've bought a used Creative X-Fi, and the supplied Creative control panel provides much more flexible routing than your bog standard sound card. And yes, you can stream audio into the card from any 'Wave' source, and turn off the direct route to the output. However, you can't do that if you rely on just the Windows mixer, as far as I can tell.

So, I think it really can provide a four way crossover from a Wave input. (I haven't tried four-way yet because you need three pole jack plugs for eight outputs, which I haven't got to hand right now. But it certainly works as a three way stereo crossover, using my own software written with the BASS audio library, using Wave as the Record source, and ASIO for the six outputs. )

Result!
 
Thanks for the report !!
I have the same cable issue you have.
I was not aware that it could do more than four channels each with separate processing so that is good to know!
I haven't messed with it much because after I had set it up I decided to swap it in to a faster machine only I haven't done it yet.
Creatives Audio console is quite versatile but sometimes confuses me vs the GINA24 card which is very straight forward.
I like both systems very much only I wish that I could run them together in the same machine.

:cheers:

jer :)
 
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