Enable CMSS of Creative Sound Blaster Live! 24-Bit External in Vista x86 and X64
Creative MultiSpeaker Surround (CMSS) is a feature in Sound Blaster audio cards as part of EAX technology which allows stereo upmix from various sources such as MP3, WMA, or Wav to become 4.1, 5.1, 6.1 or 7.1 channels surround sound, depending on speaker setup and sound card model. CMSS works regardless of whether the typical stereo sources are Dolby Surround encoded or not, and works well with Dolby Pro Logic, WAVE, AVI and MIDI program material. Unfortunately, with latest Windows Vista driver from Creative for Creative Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit External sound card, CMSS is not supported. Here’s a little trick that allows SB Live! 24-bit External to support CMSS.
The hack should work in both 32-bit and 64-bit of Windows Vista, and is good as a workaround at least until Creative releases a proper Vista driver for the sound card.
- Disable integrated onboard sound.
- Remove all sound cards installed.
- Uninstall all drivers of previous installed sound cards, including Vista driver for SB Live! 24-bit External if it has already been installed.
- Remove all Creative software.
- Restart computer.
- Download the Basic Audio Applications for PC (consists of Device Manager, EAX Console & Speaker Settings).
- Download the audio driver for SB Live! 32-bit External for Windows XP:
- Extracted both the drivers and application setup installers downloaded with WinRAR or PowerAchiver.
- Plug in the Creative Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit External sound card. Windows Vista will detect the sound card and install it as USB Audio Device.
- Run the following setup program (setup.exe) in the sub-folder of the unpacked Basic Audio Application folder. Do not restart computer until you have finished install all three application:
/setup/DevCon/setup.exe
/setup/EaxCon/setup.exe
/setup/SpkSet/setup.exe - Restart computer now.
- After Windows Vista boots up, go to Device Manager in Control Panel -> System and Maintenance. Expand Sound, video and game controllers and right click on USB Audio Device, and choose “Update Driver Software”.
- Select “Browse my computer for driver software”, and input the following location path inside the unpacked WinXP SB Live! driver folder:
x64: /Drivers/Win2k/SBKS64.inf
x86: /Drivers/Win2k/kscombo.inf - After the driver is updated, reboot.
- After booting up, go to Control Panal again, select Hardware and Sound -> Sound. Highlight Speakers and then select “Configure”. In the Speaker Setup configuration wizard, select Stereo and Front left and right.
- Run Creative Speaker Settings and select the correct speaker type under Speaker/Headphone Selection section. Do not sync with Control Panel.
- Run the Creative EAX Settings. Under CMSS-3D, select (tick) Enable, and choose CMSS. Do not select Stereo Surround as the sound channels won’t come out from every speaker, and make sure Stereo Focus is 0%.
Enjoy CMSS surround sound in Windows Vista.
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Entries (RSS)
June 8th, 2009 02:20
Creative Support
June 8th, 2009 02:18
I had the problem with “audio device supported by this application is not detected” when I first started with the Live 24-bit External. I’m using Vista Business 32-bit. Initially, I used the CD that came with it, along with letting Windows search for a better driver. The one it found actually had an unidentified version.
Anyway, what I did then was to go to Creative’s support page and find the page for this device. Under downloads, I expanded it by clicking show all downloads. There I found driver versions 1.1.02 as well as a new beta version 1.1.92. Downloaded the beta and also a version of the Creative Audio Center, version 1.10.12. I uninstalled the old driver (including deleting it) and all of the installed software. Then I put the new beta driver on (which includes Creative’s Audio Control Panel that has the settings to set 5.1 vs 2.1, etc), and then installed the new Audio Center. The Audio Center has the Speaker Settings, EAX Settings, Surround Mixer, etc that all work now.
I’m not sure if it just needed that new Audio Center, or if the beta driver was needed, too. You could try with the 1.1.02 version to see if that works if you don’t want to use the beta.
Also, the new Audio Center also has CMSS settings now, so the instructions of this article might not be needed not. Again, I don’t know if that’s just because of the new Audio Center or the beta driver.
June 3rd, 2009 20:55
followed this all to the absolute letter on a fresh install of windows and it flat out didn’t work… waste of time
April 26th, 2009 19:56
End of the line for the SB Live External by the looks of things. The last of the official drivers no longer supports this card, failing with a “please insert disc” message.
This is the only way to install the card, but relies on the OS detecting the card as a ‘USB Audio Device’ – this is only possible with a fresh install of Vista. Once the card has come up as ‘Sound Blaster Live 24-Bit External’, it cannot be reverted to ‘USB Audio Device’, even if that specific driver is installed on top.
April 22nd, 2009 23:05
Cheers…
I was lukin for this.. helped me a lot m8
February 25th, 2009 05:10
Just thought I’d say that Creatives new beta drivers for this (Created for Windows 7, but may work in Vista I’m told) enable CMSS-3D as an option by default. So you can use the newest drivers and have full functionality of your card
February 20th, 2009 02:02
So I had this up and working in vista, installed the Windows 7 beta on a partition and can’t seem to get it to work on it… too bad
December 9th, 2008 06:41
Hey,
Thanks for this tip, but I have some issues.
I followed everything you wrote on the site. And everything works, I see the power lit, and the cmss light on on the sound card.
Heres the problem, when I go to spk setting or device control or eax setting, I get a error message saying:
“The audio device supported by this application is not detected. The application will exit.”
I do not know what I did wrong, I uninstalled everything and re-did it again, but same results.
Any help is appreciated, thanks.