• Egosys Sound Cards & Media Devices Drivers
• Egosys Sound Cards & Media Devices Driver

The best way to update sound card drivers is to install from the manufacturer website page. Since Windows 10 was released 3 and 1/2 years ago, many of the sound card manufacturers provide this Windows version drivers. The reason to update sound card driver to the latest ones, is to avoid any conflict with OS or firmware upgrade of your BIOS or any new updates of Windows 10. ESI offers professional audio hardware for (semi-)professional music studios. Specialized in PCIe, USB, network audio hardware, MIDI devices, studio monitors. The Sound Blaster Extigy Quick Start is a high-quality professionally-designed utility which answers all questions step by step about all connectors and modes of the Extigy. Video 3Digests Video cards: Sound Blaster Extigy Tour is a dynamic presentation which explains all advantages of the Extigy. Prodigy 7.1 HiFi 192kHz 7.1 HiFi Surround Audio Interface The Prodigy 7.1 HiFi is based on the powerful VIA Envy24HT (ICE 1724) audio controller and the Wolfson WM8776 / 8766 codecs, providing 2, 4, 6 (5.1) and 8 (7.1) channel support as well as optical digital I/O with 24-bit/192kHz support.

The market of multimedia devices meant for equipping a computer witha sound subsystem can be divided into 3 sectors:

• $75-200: expensive multichannel solutions;
• $30-$75: middle-level 4- and 6-channel sound cards;
• $5-30: budget sound solutions, usually stereo or 4-channel, including soundintegrated into the mainboard.

While expensive sound cards are often beyond users' pockets, old solutionsfrom a lower price range such as ISA cards are too crippled, first PCIcards of 1997-98 support only stereo speakers leaving 3D sound API (EAX,A3D, I3DL2) aside.

Is there a way out? Yes, for example, inexpensive sound cards based on HSP chips (host-based signal processing chip). Such chips contain only the least required set of functions for sound processing. The most part of calculations is made by CPU. The HSP based sound cards are rather popular. Here are some of successful HSP sound chips: YMF724/740/744/754, FM801AS/AU (reviews of the sound cards on such chips: AW744Pro from AOpen, AW754 from AOpen, ABIT Home Theatre AU10, X-treme 5.1 from MediaForte, Genius Sound Maker Live 5.1).

Integrated sound may serve as an inexpensive sound solution for a new computer. Many modern soft hardware means based on the AC'97 codecs integrated into a mainboard with the advanced program support are of great interest today (see Integrated AC'97 Sound on Intel D815EFV Mainboard which concerns SoundMAX 3.0 audio complex based on the AC'97 codecs AD1885).

But apart from HSP chip based cards there is another solution whichdoesn't comply with the AC'97 specification from Intel. I mean audio chipsfrom C-MEDIA ELECTRONICS INC (CMI).The single chip design combines all elements of a sound card: DAC, ADC,digital controller.

The most advanced model from the whole chip family 8738 is CMI8738/PCI-6ch-MX.And the most advanced card on this chip is Nightingale PRO 6 from Zoltrix.So, today we are going to examine it from head to foot.

Appearance

Here is the package:

The case uses black and yellow colors, thus suiting the card made of blacktextolite with gold-plated connectors:

Accessories

• Nightingale PRO 6 card marked as SC-8838 Rev. 1.1;
• daughter card with digital inputs and outputs;
• plastic optical cable ended with a standard Toslink connector and an opticalmini-jack;
• installation manual;
• CD with drivers and demo-programs.

The information about other cards and their accessories can be found atthe Zoltrix site in audiosection.

The CD with drivers and applications of v1.72D includes:

• drivers for W95/98 of v4.06.1095b from 12.04.2001;
• software DVD player WinDVD2000, v.2.6;
• CMI8738/PCI Multi-Channel Audio Demo v.2.5;
• Helicopter: HRTF demo;
• Rock War game which demonstrates operation of HRTF (you are to shoot at the meteorites, the 3D sound will help you);
• C-Media's utility AudioRack: virtual audio system, various file players and a mixer.

Inputs/outputs

The card has 6 analog outputs according to the standard scheme 5.1: front,rear, center/sub. All connectors, except the Game Port, are metallic, gold-plated.2 digital-ins are non-standard for a sound card. But 2 connectors are notmuch. If you use them for connection of CD-ROM drives in a digital mode,then with a DVD-ROM drive and a CD-RW one in the computer each will geta connector.

On the daughter card you can find other digital inputs and outputs.The cards are connected with a flat 9-conductor cable.

CMI8738 audio chip

TheZoltrix Nightingale PRO 6 card is based on the CMI8738/PCI-6ch-MX chip.It is the most perfect model in the 8738chip line from C-Media (except the CMI8738/PCI-6ch model with a modemsupport).

Specification:

• 3D audio positioning according to the C3DX technology based on the HRTFfilters;
• professional digital interface with 16/24-bit S/PDIF-in and -out support(only at the sampling frequencies 44.1 kHz and 48 kHz);
• integrated linear buffer for 32-Ohm headphones;
• 32-bit PCI bus mastering;
• driver support for Microsoft® DirectSound 3D, EAX, Linux, BeOS etc.
• effects: echo for microphone and transpose for Karaoke phonograms;
• single chip design;

The CMI8738 is mainly an HSP solution (though a small DSP unit for calculationof HRTF is provided) which is primarily based on drivers and which loadsthe CPU with computation. It means that all 3D sound APIs are realizedon a software level, and the stream mixing quality and sounding is definedby the drivers of the card.

And now a few words about the digital abilities. It is difficult touse the chip's possibilities of 24-bit sound receive/transmitting sincethe chip contains the converters fixed for 16 bits and has no digital interfacesfor connection of converters of another bit capacity.

Installation

Installation of the drivers and the programs was easy.

Test system:

• Athlon 1333 processor;
• ASUS A7V133 motherboard (BIOS v.1005A, VIA 4-in-1 v.4.32);
• Creative SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 Player sound card;
• EgoSys WaveTerminal 2496 sound card;
• Creative DVD 5x CD-ROM drive.

Operating system: Win98SE (4.10.2222A) with DirectX8.0a installed.

During the installation you may choose a driver version:

Usually the VxD drivers use the resources of the hardware and of the operatingsystem completely. At the same time, their WDM version has wider compatibility.The drivers were installed on a virgin operating system.

After that the following devices appeared:

The following files control functionality of the card:
CMAUDIO.VXD 4.06.1095b
C3D.DLL 4.12.2006
A3D.DLL 4.12.2006

When the WDM drivers are installed we can see the following picture:

The libraries of the drivers have the following versions:
CMAUDIO.SYS 5.12.01.0620
CRLDS3D.DLL 4.12.01.2002
A3D.DLL 4.12.01.2007

The WDM version differs from the VxD drivers in settings and functions.

The VxD drivers have the following peculiarities:

• all volume regulators can be controlled, including a sndvol32.exe mixerof the OS;
• lack of separate control for 6 analog-outs;
• extended control panel:
• lack of EAX 2.0 support in games.

Peculiarities of the WDM drivers:

• lack of a possibility to control sound from the mixer (both proprietaryand system);
• separate control of all 6 analog channels;
• EAX 2.0 support in games;
• extended control panel.

Let's examine the latter item in detail. The first panel is identical tothe upper part of the panel of the extended settings of the VxD drivers.

The option 'SPDIF IN loopback to SPDIF OUT (bypass)' will be useful ifyou are going to apply a digital signal of one digital device to another(e.g. from Digital Out of the CD-ROM drive to the external converter).'Enable SPDIF OUT' is exactly what is written. Besides, you can choosea reference sampling frequency. 'Monitor SPDIF IN' means a digital signalis monitored through the DAC of the card.

'SPDIF IN device' is where you are to choose an input (see the input/outputscheme). The Live! cards have also 2 digital S/PDIF-INs: CD-Digital INand S/PDIF IN. But while on the cards with the EMU10K these inputs worksimultaneously and both are present in the mixer, in case of the CMI8738based cards the number of digital-ins may differ from the number of theports in the chip. That is why one has to choose an input for taking asignal from. 'SPDIF IN Format' is a normal inverted signal format. In theNormal position in my computer with the DVD drive Creative 5X the rightchannel produced hum while the left one 'didn't say a word'. It seems tobe a bug of the driver or it may be the chip to blame. 'Enable SPDIF IN/OUTCopyright protection' enables the 29th bit in each subframe of the datablock of the S/PDIF protocol. This function restricts or permits some minideskdecks to write/transfer a signal with the help of digital-in/out's. 'EnableSPDIF IN Validity detection' works with the 28th bit of subframe whichindicates the correctness of data transfer. This option may be enabledif you are sure in the quality of the CD-Digital cable and of the digitaltransmitting part of the CD-ROM drive. After I enabled this option nothingcould be heard. It means either constant transmission errors or errorsin the algorithms.

The second panel deals with operating modes of the card - standard presetsfor the 5.1 sound card. Headphones and 2 speakers sound equally when playingmusic. The differences can be noticed only in games which use differentHRTF presets.

The third panel contains separate regulators for all 6 analog channels.

On the next panel you can choose a preset of the reverb.

On the last panel you can set hot keys for volume control. There is alsoan option for preamplification of a signal coming from the mic-in. The'Load Mixer Default' button didn't work.

The lack of a possibility to disable analog-ins in the WDM drivers madeimpossible their usage in tests. For the CMI8738 based cards there areVxD/WDM drivers which combine the best features of both families.

Internal digital-in

Advanced users are usually interested in:

1. how good ADC/DAC and buffer analog stages are
2. how internal algorithms of a sound card affect a source signal

Let's start with the digital-in of the Zoltrix Nightingale PRO 6. If youwant to get a high-quality signal from a digital-in you should connectto it an output of the CD-ROM drive.

For the test we used a CD-DA disc with 2 recorded signals: 15 kHz, -3dB (FS) and the one processed by dithering in order to eliminate the correlationof quantization noise with a signal. The test was conducted in the SpectraLABv4.32.14.

'Usual' sinusoidal signal
15 kHz@ -3 dB (SoundForge 5.0)

Sinusoidal signal with dithering
15 kHz@ -3 dB (CoolEdit 2000)

The card shows excellent results!

Now let's enable the monitoring of the digital-in and apply the signalto the built-in DAC of the CMI8738 chip (the signal was recorded with theEgoSys Waveterminal 2496 professional sound card from its analog input).

Sinusoidal signal with dithering
applied to the DAC of the card (15 kHz@ -3 dB)

The signal is not ideal. When I listened to the music from a CD on agood acoustic system or in headphones, I heard constant noise and noticeddistortions at high frequencies. And what about mids? Here are the spectrograms:

Sinusoidal signal with dithering
applied to the DAC of the card (1 kHz@ -3 dB)

So, the signal at the mids is much better than at the highs. It meansthe card is not suitable for listening to high quality CD-DAs thru itsown DACs.

Tests of DAC and analog outputs

In order to get the more complete information on the quality of the 16-bitdigital-to-analog converters of the CMI8738 chip and of the analog bufferelements let's look at the complex tests of our program RightMark AudioAnalyzer.

Tested chain: Zoltrix Nightingale PRO 6 Front Out - WT2496 LineIn
Operating mode: 44100 Hz, 16 bits

General performance: Good (in detail)

Tested chain: Zoltrix Nightingale PRO 6 Front Out - WT2496 LineIn
Operating modes: 48000 Hz, 16 bits

General performance: Good (in detail)

Although the DACs have not the best characteristics yet at 1 kHz, suchsound suits games and 128 Kbit/s MP3 files played on inexpensive computerspeakers since their THD is often almost 10%!

You may compare the results of the Zoltrix Nightingale PRO 6 with other modern 6-channel cards in the review Philips Seismic Edge and Rhythmic Edge sound cards.

Performance in games

As we have already said the EAX 2.0 is supported only in WDM drivers. Forthis test we used the Serious Sam game which can measure the average valueof frames per second at the time of playing of the recorded scene.

First we taped dem_bProfile=1 <Enter>in the console and started the first demo. The settings are: Normal, 1024X768X32bit.The tests were carried out three times for each case, then we calculatedthe average. The spread in values didn't exceed +/-0.1 fps. X-axis: fps.

The worst performance drop is 16%, on the Athlon 1.3 GHz based computer.On a less powerful system with a weak video card the difference won't beso clear. But the processor utilization will still depend on the driversand on the card mode (DS3D, EAX).

Digital possibilities of the CMI8738 chip

Now a bit on the set of players from C-Media. I must admit that apart froma terrible design this player doesn't suit for reading CDs via the IDEbus ('Using CD-DA to playback the CD' mode).

The sound in exactly this mode and exactly on this player comes out ofthe speakers jerkily. Such problems sometimes happen on other cards basedon the CMI8738 chip.

But there is a way out. You should use a CD-IDE plug-in for the Winampcalled CD Reader. Thisplug-in is widely compatible with various CD-ROM drives and has a greatdeal of useful settings which can be found this way: Options / Preferences/ Plug-ins / Input / CD Reader / Drives / Configure.

Now about 24-bit possibilities of the CMI8738. The drivers allow playing24-bit files at almost any sampling frequency, but you can't listen tothem. The card, however, can convert the sound into 16bit on the fly andallows monitoring it with the DACs.

If a file can't be played because of, for example, a sampling frequencyexceeding 48 kHz, then it will be marked with a criss-cross in a play list.

It is hard to say who may need the modes of 24-bit 44.1/48 kHz. But let'slook at least at the characteristics of the digital-out at 16-bit 44.1kHz.

Tested chain: Zoltrix SPDIF Out - WT2496 SPDIF In
Operating mode: 44100 Hz, 16 bits

General performance: Excellent (in detail)

For the test we used a usual $4 audio-video cable from Luxmann. Butthe characteristics are, at the same time, outstanding! This chip doesn'taffect a signal which is applied to its digital-out.

Now let's look at other cards which can't give directly a digital signalat 44.1 kHz and which use resampling into 48 kHz. Is the situation reallyso bad? The Live! Value and the SQ2500 Vortex2 (AU8830) will help us toclarify it.

The Live! was tested with the 'S/PDIF Output only' disabled.

Tested chain: Live! Value SPDIF Out - WT2496 SPDIF In
Operating mode: 44100 Hz, 16 bits

General performance: Very good (in detail)

The Vortex2 was tested with VxD drivers of v2.016, 2048, 2050.

Egosys Sound Cards & Media Devices Drivers

The v2.016 is not very good. The maximum amplitude of the digital signaldidn't exceed -6 dB (FS). In the output mode at 44.1 kHz the digital signalon the Vortex2 cards is twice converted: 44.1->48->44.1 kHz, that is whythe distortions grow incredibly (THD+N = 0.1%)!

The drivers of the v2048 are much better. Now in the digital mode the 0dB signal is at the full scale level. But the output mode of a digitalsignal at 44.1 kHz is overloaded when the signal level exceeds -6dB FS.

Now the drivers of v2050. Despite the Added S/PDIF 44.1kHz support onAU8830 these drivers are not better than the 2048. In all cases the driverswere installed on a virgin system; the disc image was prepared by the NortonGhost program, and all devices installed had no clashes on a hardware level.

Well, I felt disappointed because of impossibility to measure the characteristicsof the S/PDIF-out of the SQ2500, but then an idea crossed my mind: whatif I just play a 44.1 kHz signal in the digital output mode at 48 kHz?Thus I can avoid problems of double resampling. But in such mode the Waveterminallost synchronization. So I had to set the measuring card from EgoSys intothe mode of generation of its own reference frequency, without taking intoaccount the readings of the coming signal and enabling the Sample RateConverter in the mode 48kHz-to-48kHz (it is not an erratum).

The signal now is easy to discern. The results are below.

Tested chain: SQ2500 SPDIF Out - WT2496 SPDIF in
Operating mode: 44100 Hz, 16 bits

General performance: Very good (in detail)

Now, if you compare these characteristics with the parameters of thedigital-out of the Zoltrix Nightingale PRO 6 you will see that it makesno sense to replace a sound card with a fixed 48 kHz sampling frequencyof the digital signal on the S/PDIF-out with a card based on the CMI8738chip.

Conclusion

This Zoltrix Nightingale PRO 6 card of the 1.1 revision is, possibly, thebest solution on the 6-channel version of the CMI8738 chip all around theworld.

Highs:

• stylish design - black textolite, gold-plated connectors;
• 6-channel analog output;
• complete set of digital interfaces - it is the absolute record among thesound cards of this price range!
• optical cable supplied with the card;
• high-quality digital-in which doesn't distort an S/PDIF-signal coming froma CD-ROM drive;
• 16/24bit digital signal output support at 44.1/48 kHz;
• WinDVD 2000 2.6 player.

Lows:

• HSP-solution (some performance drop in games);
• low signal level, weak overload capacity of output stages;
• not the best characteristics of the analog outputs (especially in a HFrange) - this card should come with a computer 5.1 acoustic system pricednot higher than $200.

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It’s highly important to have the drivers for an audio or network device as without them they might not work correctly or they might not work at all. And some audio problems happen when you did not update your C-Media driver. Here we will discuss the two most common way to update C-Media drivers.

Methods:

Method 1: Update C-Media Drivers With Device Manager

The first way is to update it by Microsoft Windows, which is an easy way and needn’t download third party software.

1. Right click the Start Menu and choose Device Manager in the list.

2. Locate the C-Media device in the pane. Usually you can find it when you expand Sound, video, and game controllers.

3. Right click it and select Update Driver.

4. In the window, there will be two options as the picture.Choose the first one Search automatically for updated driver software, Windows will search your computer and the internet for the latest driver software for your device. You just need to follow its instructions to update the driver.

And it will remind you if your computer has already installed the latest driver software.

These are steps of the first method.

Method 2: Update C-Media Drivers Automatically

You need to download a professional driver download utility tool which can help you download and update device drivers, such as Driver Booster. This method can save time for you.

Driver Booster, an automatically drivers download and update tool, can help users to get the latest graphic driver, audio driver, USB driver, mouse driver etc with one click. And as the best driver scanner, it can detected the most outdated and missing drivers for your computer.

Egosys Sound Cards & Media Devices Driver

Besides the driver function, it supports to download and update the game components such as Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable, Microsoft XNA Framework Redistributable, OpenAL, etc.

1. Download and install Driver Booster step by step, after that, run it on your computer.

2. Click Scan. After it finishing scanning, it will tell you how many devices need updated drivers.

3. Then there will be a list, and you can find C-Media Device among them. Next you just need to find the C-media device and click Update to update the driver. Or if you’d like to update them all, choose Update Now.

Your C-Media Driver can be updated quickly after finishing these steps.

Method 3: Install Compatible C-Media Drivers

The next method is a little similar to the first one. When there is no C-Media Audio driver but your device is C-Media PCI Audio device, you can install the compatible device driver such as High definition audio driver or Realtek HD audio driver.

1. Right click the Start Menu and go Device Manager>Sound, Video and game controllers > C-Media Device > Update Driver.

2. Choose Browse my computer for driver software.

3. Then click Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer.

4. Check Show compatible hardware. Then it will show compatible device in the box and you can choose the version you’d like to update to. Click Next.

5. Choose Yes when the warning window appears for it is normal.

After this process, you have updated your C-Media driver.

All these above are the three ways to update C-Media Drivers. And these ways can be applied to not only C-Media Drivers but other device drivers. You can choose one way you prefer.

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