Open Source

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Linux Drivers for Creative Audio Cards

ISA Boards

All Creative ISA sound cards are supported using ALSA drivers. Most Linux distributions include these drivers, although some distributions may not automatically find your card.

PCI Boards

Most Sound Blaster Live, Audigy, Audigy 2, and Audigy 4 cards are supported by the latest ALSA drivers. Most Linux distributions include these drivers. For the latest information on which cards are known to work with the ALSA drivers, look at ALSA's sound card matrix.

X-Fi series

April 16, 2008 X-Fi 32-bit / 64-bit BETA Linux drivers are now available.

Please check the Available DownLoads Asia US World-Wide

Filename: XFiDrv_Linux_US-1.18.tar.gz

This download is a beta driver providing Linux® 32-bit / 64-bit OS support for Creative Sound Blaster® X-Fi ™ series audio devices. For more details, read the rest of this web release note.

Take note of the following:

THIS IS AN UNSUPPORTED BETA DRIVER. There is no technical support for this driver.
This beta driver has only been tested on the following 32-bit / 64-bit Linux distributions: Ubuntu® 7.10, openSUSE® 10.3 and Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® 5.1 (64-bit only).
We recommend that only experienced users install this driver. Do not install this driver on a system used to perform critical tasks.
Your feedback is a valuable part of our development process. To submit feedback on this driver, visit the Sound Blaster X-Fi Linux Beta Driver Feedback Program.

This download is intended for the following audio devices only:

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

Current release features:

ALSA PCM Playback
ALSA Record
ALSA Mixer

Added Features or Enhancements:

Supports GCC version 4
Supports Linux 64-bit and 32-bit OS

Known issues:

S/PDIF passthrough is not supported in this driver release.
External I/O modules are not supported in this driver release.
Applications from the original Sound Blaster X-Fi Installation CD will not work with this driver.

Requirements:

Linux x86 / x86_64 OS
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi audio devices listed above

Notes:

To install the driver, do the following:
1. Download the XFiDrv_Linux_US-1.18.tar.gz package onto your local hard disk.
2. Double-click the downloaded package to unpack its contents.
3. Read the README file and follow the instructions.

X-Fi Xtreme Audio ( SB0790 {Not 20k1 chipset})

Not sure if this driver works quite yet. Needs to be tested. Google Search

See the latest ALSA-Project driver for Module snd-ca0106

At the time of this writing, ALSA does not yet state X-Fi Xtreme Audio, but the source code does contain it.

ALSA HOME page

February 26, 2008

4Front Technologies (OSS) tells me that their driver supports the following...

At this time...

Linux , FreeBSD, Solaris, and SCO OSR6. It can also be ported to other operating systems.

Both 32bit and 64bit, it supports x86 and AMD64 as well as Sparc on Solaris.

It's a bare bones driver - only support for the front speakers. It's locked at 96Khz stereo sampling rates.

This driver doesn't make use of muti-voice hardware mixing.

Instead it relies on 4Front's internal virtual mixing engine and currently it runs at 96Khz.
There is no support for SPDIF at this time.

February 1, 2008

   X-Fi 32bit and 64bit OSS BETA drivers
   Open Sound NEWS (Home Page)
   OSS v4.0 build 1013 for Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD and UnixWare announced.
     * Beta support for Creative Labs XFi announced. Including source code for the SB XFi has been released.

A customer sent the following message:

Open source support (beta) for X-Fi announced:
http://4front-tech.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=7485#7485

    Code is available under GPLv2, BSD and CDDL licenses.
    Binary download: http://www.opensound.com/download.cgi
    Sources: http://developer.opensound.com/sources/

September 25, 2007
X-Fi 64bit BETA Linux drivers are now available.
Please check the Available DownLoads Asia US World-Wide

Select X-Fi => Sound Blaster => one of the Listed cards below => LINUX

This download is a beta driver providing Linux® 64-bit OS support for Creative Sound Blaster® X-Fi ™ series audio devices. For more details, read the rest of this web release note.

Take note of the following:

THIS IS AN UNSUPPORTED BETA DRIVER. There is no technical support for this driver.
We recommend that only experienced users install this driver. Do not install this driver on a system used to perform critical tasks.
Your feedback is a valuable part of our development process.
To submit feedback on this driver, visit the Sound Blaster X-Fi Linux Beta Driver Feedback Program.

This download is intended for the following audio devices only:

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

Current release features:

ALSA PCM Playback
ALSA MIDI Playback
ALSA Synth
ALSA Record
ALSA Mixer

Some OEM cards and the latest retail boards will not work with the drivers included in most Linux distributions. For those cards, try the latest code from ALSA or purchase a driver from 4FrontTechnologies.

USB Audio

The ALSA project supports USB audio, and Creative devices such as the XMod and Audigy 2 NX should work.

SoundCard Support

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