Gaming with the C-Media CMI8788 (HT Omega Claro)

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nray

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 20, 2006
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So far, since replacing my (defective) X-Fi, I've been mostly happy with my HT Omega Claro (which has an Oxygen HD audio chip). Sound quality is great, the drivers are fairly lean and are updated fairly often (Rev. 5.12.01 came out Aug 29), and their interface isn't bad.

Most games I've tested so far (out of the 60 or so I have installed on my computer right now) work fine, but I've gotten a few blue screen crashes in the audio driver in a couple instances, and some strange behavior in another, and I was wondering if anyone had any similar experiences or knew of any workarounds.

Evil Genius and Sid Meier's Pirates! cause a blue screen crash during load, before even getting to their main screens. I've uninstalled them, and will try re-installing them at a later date to determine if perhaps the fact that they were configured to use the X-Fi when it was installed causes a problem (though trying the safe-boot shortcut to Sid Meier's Pirates! didn't stop it from blue screening).

In Colin McRae DiRT, it has three sound modes. Software Mixing, DirectSound, and OpenAL. Both DirectSound and OpenAL are unreliable. Sometimes when launching the game with one of those modes selected, I get a blue screen crash in the audio driver right away. Other times, OpenAL or DirectSound will seem to work, but as I go through the menus and play the game, certain horribly loud sounds blare out of my speakers - it seems like a sound is getting stuck in a buffer and then looped over and over. Once I gave up trying either OpenAL or DirectSound, I've found Software Mixing to work fine in the game, however the quality of the sound mixing doesn't seem as good.

DXdiag doesn't find any problems (and I'm using the latest runtime), the drivers are the latest release, and in games that don't have problems there are no crashes or issues. Anyone have any ideas? I've got another 40 or so games to test, so I may be able to provide some more data points as I go along...
 
ourfpshero said:
try Drivercleaner to get rid of any leftover creative labs drivers
Click to expand...

I've run both DriverCleaner Pro 1.5 and Driver Sweeper 1.0 and used their Creative presets to clean out the leftovers (I realize Creative leaves a lot of crap behind after their uninstalls).
 
EAX 2 software support or do you get hardware acceleration with this card?
 
cmi chips give software eax only. only creative labs chips gives acceleration anymore. a few others used too but have all left the market (crystal, yamaha, soundstorm, etc)


ok try installing the latest openal from openal.org. if that doesnt help, take out the openal files -theres 2 of them in system32 folder. make sure each game doesnt have its own openal wrapper in its install folder- if it does try renaming it

i have an x-fi, and also have a cmi usb card that i mess with- i can use either with no problems
 
Both DirectSound and OpenAL are unreliable.
Click to expand...

Well I would hope so since OpenAL on your C-Media card is just wrapped through DirectSound3D (doesn't have native OpenAL drivers). So if DirectSound doesn't work, neither will OpenAL.
 
The cards will do openal in software mode if your using XP. you try installing the newest openAL runtime from www.openAL.org and then look in your system32 folder for a file named. wrap_al i think it spelled.

rename name that to openal32.dll thats the openal for non hardware card,and it will use that instead of the normal openal32 hardware file.

Because in XP I didnt have your problems when I had my razer card even with using the software openal32.

try that and see if that fixes your problems.
 
ourfpshero said:
ok try installing the latest openal from openal.org. if that doesnt help, take out the openal files -theres 2 of them in system32 folder. make sure each game doesnt have its own openal wrapper in its install folder- if it does try renaming it
Click to expand...

I had OpenAL 1.1 installed (downloaded from the OpenAL website), I've gone ahead and uninstalled it.

I've continued my testing, and so far games that work without a problem are:

Black & White 2
Chronicles of Riddick
Company of Heroes
Conquest Frontier Wars
Darwinia
Defcon
Doom 3
Doom 3 Resurrection
Dreamfall
Galactic Civilizations II
GTR 2
Hitman Blood Money
Jade Empire
Lock On
Mercedez-Benz Truck Racing
Moto GP3
Need for Speed Most Wanted
Oblivion
Paradise
Pariah
Prey
Quake 4
Rise of Legends
Supreme Commander
The Settlers Rise of an Empire
ToCA Race Driver 3
Tomb Raider Anniversary
UT2004
Counter-Strike: Source
Dark Messiah Might and Magic
Half-Life 2
Lost Planet
Portal
SiN Episodes: Emergence
Team Fortress 2

Games that cause a blue screen DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL in cmudaxp.sys (the C-Media driver), typically after getting past the main menu and into gameplay:

BioShock (worked after uninstalling and re-installing it)
Far Cry
Lego Drome Racers
Max Payne 2 (works if I turn off EAX off in game config)
Painkiller Black Edition (BSOD as soon as I click on the Sound button at main menu)
Prince of Persia The Two Thrones
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
Scratches
Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic (BSODs even with "Force software sound")
Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II (BSODs even with "Force software sound")
Thief Deadly Shadows
Tron 2.0 (works if I turn off EAX off in game config)

Games that cause the entire system to freeze (no blue screen):

Nexus The Jupiter Incident
 
ok next try turning down sound acceleration in dxdiag.exe
go one notch at a time
 
ourfpshero said:
ok next try turning down sound acceleration in dxdiag.exe
go one notch at a time
Click to expand...

Well, if I'm going to have to disable sound acceleration in order to get an Oxygen HD sound card to work, then I might as well go back to my Audigy 4. Sure, there's an issue that Creative has yet to fix regarding EAX support with more than 4GB of RAM, but at least it works otherwise!

So I've pulled the HT Omega Claro and stuck my old Audigy 4 back in.

Games that now work with the Audigy 4:

Far Cry
Lego Drome Racers
Max Payne 2 (now works with EAX on)
Nexus The Jupiter Incident
Painkiller Black Edition
Prince of Persia The Two Thrones
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
Scratches
Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic (works, though says "EAX disabled" in game)
Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II (works, though says "EAX disabled" in game)
Thief Deadly Shadows (EAX options un-selectable in-game)
Tron 2.0 (EAX options un-selectable in-game)

That's everything.

You know, I read every single review I could find on the HT Omega Claro and other Oxygen HD based cards before I made my purchase, and no one mentioned anything about blue screen crashes in certain games. I guess people just don't really test hardware/software.
 
nray, thanks for the test result. I was thinking about getting this card but apparently this card or the driver has issue with some games. :(
 
robber98 said:
nray, thanks for the test result. I was thinking about getting this card but apparently this card or the driver has issue with some games. :(
Click to expand...

I'm glad someone might get something useful out of all the testing I've been doing (I'd really rather be playing these games!)

The one thing that isn't clear though is if the blue screens in the C-Media drivers are just in the 64-bit drivers (I'm running XP Pro x64). I have 8GB of RAM, and with the Creative Audigy series it's well known that EAX is pretty broken with more than 4GB of RAM in 64-bit Windows. What I see with the Audigy 4 is an inability to select EAX in a lot of games, but like I've said, no crashes at least.

Perhaps Creative identified when their drivers would crash, and disabled EAX as a work-around. Maybe C-Media hasn't figured that out, and instead their drivers just crash (and take down the whole OS as a result). I don't know for sure, this is just conjecture, but it's the most likely thing I can think of right now.
 
It sounds like driver issue to me. I got Vista Ultimate 32bit so things may get better... but I don't know if I should take the chance tho. :confused:
 
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