Download Aureal Sound Cards & Media Devices Driver

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Downloads 1 Drivers for Vortex AuReal Vortex AU8830 Sound Card & Multimedia & MP3. Here's where you can downloads the newest software for your AuReal Vortex AU8830. Aureal Vortex 2 PCI (SQ2500) Sound Card. Tue Nov 07, 7: Jul 25, Posts: Compared to my MX, that’s one of its best features apart from the six channel support, Sensaura and general all round great sound. All articles with dead external links Articles with dead external links from September All stub articles. Download sound card drivers or install DriverPack Solution software for driver scan and update.

Please update this page with the status of each sound card that is tested. Please add a link to the site where the driver was obtained, driver version and OS version. AS YOU CAN SEE, THE LIST IS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER. PLEASE KEEP IT THIS WAY.

  • 2Tested Soundcards

Possible statuses

StatusDescription
WorksWorks without any major problems
Not testedNo test has been performed
FailedFails to work or crashes ReactOS
Run w/o resultRun without fundamental functionality

Tested Soundcards

Current state

SoundcardChipsetStatusRevisionCommentsTesterDownload URL
4 Channel Low Profile PCI Sound Card with AC97 3D Audio EffectsCMI8738Worksr76032Driver is provided on the CD packaged with the sound card. I extracted drivers from the Setup.exe. This is a simple NSIS self-extracting installer. I decompressed it using 7z. I added installation files to my bootcd.iso for ReactOS. You can hear ReactOS sound for session opening and play any sound if you open a video just a few seconds after you heard ReactOS sound at opening session. However it will fail if you wait too much time. But at least you can hear ReactOS at opening sessions.rboxeur
Creative ES1373Creative ES1373Worksr67080Everything works and the audio playback is smooth. Tested playback using the Fox Audio Player. I can also record audio.Pi_User5Driver Download
Microsoft Virtual Machine Audio Device DriverMicrosoft Virtual Machine Audio Device DriverFailedr67629I extracted the files from the Windows 7 Virtual PC guest additions and the drivers installed, but no audio was played.Pi_User5
SigmaTel C-Major AudioFailedGit Revision 4ba3c90The driver installs fine but will cause ReactOS to freeze on shutdown. It shows up fine in Device Manager but no audio is played and applications report no audio hardware installed.Pi_User5
SoundMAX Integrated Digital Audio (Not HD)SoundMAX Integrated Digital AudioRun w/o resultr72017Install worked and the start up sound will play but it has some static sounds when playing. Audio from other applications did not play anything. Sound only played during start up. After installing the driver ReactOS seemed to never be able to shutdown properly anymore. Unsure if that is related to the driver or not. Would always have to kill power to shutdown/restart because it would freeze. Also had to restart many times before sound would play and the driver would be fully installed.Reactosfan34
SoundMAX Integrated Digital HD AudioSoundMAX Integrated Digital HD AudioFailedr70617I tried to install the driver and I first have to install another driver first. I have not had time to try it again. Reactosfan34: The required HDA audio bus driver fails to install thus the driver can't be used.Pi_User5
Turtle Beach Montego A3DXstream PCIAureal Vortex AU8820B2 AAPXPFailedr70788Not detected. Installs & works in WinXP with modified INF.morbip

Archival

SoundcardChipsetStatusRevisionCommentsTesterDownload URL
AC'97 (Avance Logic)ALC100P on KT133aInaccurateMissingNo wave-out device.Davy Bartoloni
Analog Devices 1888VIA AC'97 Enhanced Audio ControllerInaccurater64117Sound choppy. Some apps no soundmarko_chayDriver Download
Aureal Vortex 1Aureal Vortex AU8810A1Inaccurater41939Drivers: 'Aureal Vortex 8810 Audio (WDM)' (XP drivers) - Inf not recognized: 8810.Davy Bartoloni
Aureal Vortex 2Aureal Vortex AU8830A2 acpxpInaccurater41939Drivers: 'Aureal Vortex 8830 Audio (WDM)' (XP drivers) - Inf not recognized: 8830.Davy Bartoloni
Avance Logic Inc. ALS 4000 Rev 1.10ALS4000 0A096T1Worksr42467
r41380Installs ok, ROS crashes after restart, see debug log.
r41939Installs ok, Some Noises/Desincronization on output sound, see debug log.
r42467Decreased Noises/Desincronization on output sound.
Davy Bartoloni
Avance Logic Inc. ALS 4000 Rev 1.1ALS4000 04364T2Inaccurater41939
r41380Wave Out is present.
r41939System hangs on Installation (card can be broken, other tests required).
Davy Bartoloni
AT-4000-4ALS4000 13310Q1Worksr42467
r41380Installation works, debug log, system hangs during boot debug log.
r41939Installs ok, Some Noises/Desincronization on output sound.
r42467Decreased Noises/Desincronization on output sound.
Davy Bartoloni
Avance Logic Inc. ALS 4000 Rev 1.1ALS4000 9B122S1Worksr41939
r31384Wave Out is present but system crashes when playing a sound ( ALS4000 official driver for XP ) debug log - This bug has been recently fixed, please re-test.
r41939Works. Same as others ALS4000 Cards.
Davy Bartoloni
C-Media 8738 (including 8738-C3DX)CMedia-8738Worksr54573Tested with offical CMI driver 5.12.1.644 revision r54573 - Installation -> Install WDM version via setup.exe and reboot.Johannes Anderwald
C-Media PCI CARD 6 ChannelCmedia-8738Worksr43337Notified (from Elhoir) on IRC that standard driver works (card is back! :) ) No sound heard yet, anyway :(Elhoir
A.8738-4CCMI8738/PCI-SX HRTFWorksr42762
r42467Hang on driver installation (Drivers from C-media Site),C-MediaPCIAudioDevice.
r42762Troubles with USB controller (removed for tests) sounds are played very slow,system works very slow during playback,C-MediaPCIAudioDevice.
Davy Bartoloni
Creative Labs SB Live! EMU10k1 [1102:0002] (rev 06)CT4832 SBLive! Value [1102:8027]Worksr49191Used WDM drivers from Windows XP. Card works fine, smooth playback.Haos
Creative SoundBlaster PCI 128CT4700 (5507 5507000101)WorksMissingCard n°5 on this picture.Davy Bartoloni
Creative SoundBlaster PCI 64 (audio PCI 3000)Ensoniq Es1370 Audio PCI 1370-0001-01WorksMissingUsing Ensoniq ES1370 drivers (from Creative).Davy Bartoloni
Creative SoundBlaster PCI 128CT4750 (CT5880-DEQ)Inaccurater41368(copying .sys file on system32drivers before installation , RARE BSOD during startup, debug installation.Davy Bartoloni
Creative SoundBlaster PCI 128CT4810 (CT2518-DAQ)Inaccurater41939No wave-out device.Davy Bartoloni
Creative SoundBlaster PCI 128CT4810 (CT5880-DCQ)Failedr42467
MissingNo wave-out device.
r41368Xp native drivers, system hangs during installation debug: creative.audio.pci.es1371.es1373.
r41368FirstQemuTests-Driver (1370 and SB PCI64), copying .SYS driver to drivers folder (trick from Janderwald) no Wave-Out device: Debug Log: audio.pci.es1371.es1374.wdm.
r42467Long pause during driver installation CreativeAudioPCI (ES1371,ES1373).
Davy Bartoloni
Creative SoundBlaster PCI 128ES1373 (1373-0001-02)Failedr43145It installs ok but ros crashes when trying to play. See ES1371-ES1373 folder from link for debug log and drivers.Gabriel ilardiES1371-ES1373
Creative SoundBlaster PCI 128 CT4810ES1373 (1373-0001-04)Worksr42467
r41380XP native drivers, correct installation, but no Wave-Out device debug log - has been recently fixed.
r41939Xp native drivers, correct installation, But ReactOS hangs on BootLogo during Reboot debug log - registry corruption - retry.
r42467XP native drivers, works fine CreativeAudioPCI2(ES1371,ES1373)(WDM).
Davy Bartoloni
Creative SoundBlaster PCI 512Creative EMU10K1-SEFInaccurater41368Hang during driver installation, see debug log.
  • Joystick-Port setup debug log.
Davy Bartoloni
Crystal SoundFusionunknownInaccurater32694See bug #3138revision too old, please update.
Crystal 4205 (SoundFusion)Crystal 4205Works0.3.14Used ReactOS-distributed AC'97 driver - unzip to inf and system32drivers folders.chinamicah
ESS Allegro - ES1988ES1988Failedr43145Card installs ok, but winamp says no audio devices - See ES1988 folder from link for debug log and drivers.Gabriel ilardiES1988
ESS Solo-1ES1938S D098Inaccurater42467
r41348Hang on driver installation (native xp, ESS Solo1 PCI AudioDrive (WDM)), see debug log.
r42467Hang on driver installation (native xp drivers)AudioDriveESS1969PCI(WDM).
Davy Bartoloni
SC2000Ess Allegro 1989S L130Failedr42467
r41939System hangs during installation.
r42467Hang on reboot afer driver installation, no waveout device. ESSAllegroPCIAudio(WDM).
Davy Bartoloni
nForce2 AC97 Audio Controler (MC [10de:006a] (rev a1) on ECS N2U400-AUnknown [1019:1b31] (AC97 CMI9739A)Worksr49337See bug #5464 for hack, that is needed for successful driver installation and stutter decreasing. Used drivers are cmedia973x WDM drivers.igor Paliychukdrivers
NForce2 integrated (Abit NF7-S)NVidia SoundStormFailedr48930Crashes in 4th stage on nvapu.sys.Haos
Phantom 806 (FM801)ForteMedia FM801-AUInaccurateMissingNo wave-out device.Davy Bartoloni
Realtek AC'97 (Motherboard Integrated)unknown chipsetWorksr58939Real hardware. ReactOS tune sounds at start-up. Driver: WDM_A406.EXE.
Realtek AC'97 (VIA on board)VT8233/A/8235/8237 VIAFailedr41809Blue screen after reboot tested with VIA & Realtek driversLinoSPdrivers
SoundMax Digital AudioADI AC97 AudioInaccurater65936LiveCD test. Sound choppy. Some apps no soundjedi-to-beDriver Download
SoundMAX integrated digital audioFailedr42095Ros crashes during installation. See SoundMAX folder for debug log and drivers from link.Gabriel ilardiSoundMax
Turtle Beach MontegoVortex AU8820C0 (9903-MBP90)FailedMissingInstalls fine using XP WDM drivers. Playback is limited to few seconds (Winamp 2.91) then it's cut silent.Haos
Via Ac'97 on notebook Compaq 12XL406AVia AC'97Inaccurater41357Drivers: 'Controller audio (WDM) Via AC'97' (XP drivers) - BSOD (ntoskrnl.exe) during installation (sorry no RS232 on this notebook).Davy Bartoloni
Via AC'97 on Compaq Presario 1400Via AC'97Inaccurater41351AC97 XP drivers - Wave-Out device is present, system hangs when a sound is played (sorry no RS232 on this notebook).Davy Bartoloni
VM QEMU AC'97AC'97WorksMissingWorks from Qemu 0.10.0Davy Bartoloni
VM QEMU ES1370ES1370WorksMissingTested with QEMU 0.9.0 and 0.10.5. See installation in QEMU.Gabriel ilardi
VM VirtualBox AC'97AC'97Worksr49191This is known to work best atm, see the installation in VirtualBox.Haos
VMware VMaudioVMware VMaudioWorks0.3.17Everything works. I used the drivers from the VMware tools CD.Pi_User5
VM VMWARE SB16SB16WorksMissingSee VMware.
VM VMWARE ES1371ES1371WorksMissingBroken with VMWare Workstation >= 5.5.2 Didn't work in revisions earlier than r40930. See VMware.Gabriel ilardi
Yamaha XG PciYMF724F-VFailedr42467
r41380Debug log: Start-Install-Reboot, no sound from speakers, occasionally, system crashes during sound playback Debug-BT.
r41939Driver installs correctly, but system hangs when icons appears Debug-BT.
r42467Driver installs correctly, but no sound from speakers during playback Debug.
Davy Bartoloni

Download Aureal Sound Cards & Media Devices Drivers

Notes: Testing

Windows

Latest versions of Winamp suffer an annoying bug (#1239) in ros that won't let you click on it as if the main window were transparent. I've done some tests and the last 'clickable' and 'working' version is 1.90. After 1.90 Winamp crashes but its main window is still clickable until 2.08. Special pack for ros made from 1.90 + 2.08 here. Gabriel_itAureal is known to use MF - multifunction entries in their INF. As we don't support such, one has to convert it back to normal entries before trying out the driver. Caemyr

Debugging

If you can provide a debug log and compile ReactOS from sources, please change NDEBUG to YDEBUG in the following files:

You'll need to recompile those modules (make portcls_clean sysaudio_clean, wdmaud_kernel_clean make kmixer_clean)

See Also

Retrieved from 'https://reactos.org/wiki/index.php?title=Supported_Hardware/Sound_cards&oldid=47983'
Review date: 31 January 2000.Last modified 03-Dec-2011.

Aureal make what are, arguably, the best PC game sound cards in the world. Their Vortex 2 chipset lets you hear honest-to-goodness 3D sound from a multi-speaker or, better yet, headphone setup, and it handles fancy stuff like proper reflections from walls, and occlusion of sound by objects.

But, until recently, Aureal hadn't sold a single Aureal sound card.

This seeming paradox is explained by the fact that Aureal used to just make Vortex and Vortex 2 cards for other people to sell under their own brand names. This is more than some other big manufacturers do; some companies, like NVIDIA for instance, make only chipsets, and no retail cards at all.

It wasn't much of a leap, therefore, for Aureal to start making cards under their own name. Pretty much the only Vortex 2 cards they didn't make already were Xitel's Storm Platinum and the Turtle Beach Montego II (and you can tell; the Quadzilla version of the Montego II implements four speaker sound in a somewhat odd way. See my review here).

If anybody can make a good Vortex 2 board, you'd think it'd have to be Aureal. And you'd be right.

What you get

The SQ2500 is in the middle of Aureal's own-brand card range. Its US list price is $US99, with OEM (plain box, no software bundle) versions going for about $US50 from discounters. This puts it in the same price bracket as other manufacturers' Vortex 2 packages, and means you're looking at not much more than $AU100 for the OEM version and well under $AU250 for the full retail boxed card.

And what a box it is, by the way. Aureal appear to be shooting for the Box To Product Size Ratio Trophy for this year.

OK, so there are a couple of CDs and manuals in that big-ass box as well as the little SQ2500 itself. But there's also a heck of a lot of fresh air. Not that Aureal are at all unique in putting little things in huge boxes to make 'em stand out on the shelf; it's just a bit of a contrast from OEM cards, which often don't even have a box, just an anti-static bag.

Once you and your native guides have ventured forth into the trackless wastes of the SQ2500 box and retrieved the card, you'll find yourself looking at something not very different from various other full-specification Vortex 2s, which is hardly surprising under the circumstances.

The SQ2500's got four speaker output built in, via the usual 1/8th inch stereo jacks, and there's an RCA S/PDIF output as well. S/PDIF is only of interest to home theatre and home studio aficionados, and the output-only connector on the SQ2500 means it's only good for sending your nice clean digital music straight to a stand-alone recorder with S/PDIF input, or more likely sending Dolby AC3 audio to a surround sound decoder.

Some other single-board Vortex 2 cards have digital output, but to my knowledge the SQ2500 is the only one that has an RCA electrical connector, as opposed to a TOSLINK optical connector. There's no difference in sound quality between the two digital systems, but the electrical version is more popular on lower end gear.

Aureal's top-of-the-line SQ3500 Turbo, by the way, has a Dolby Digital decoder built right in, and can downmix the decoded surround sound to four speakers, two speakers or headphones. I hope to check out an SQ3500 shortly.

There's a line and a microphone input (more 1.8th inch jacks), and the usual joystick port which doubles, via an optional adaptor cable, as an MPU-401 compatible MIDI interface.

On the board there are three MPC2 standard inputs for CD, modem and auxiliary audio. You get only one MPC3 cable, but that's all most people are likely to need; many devices that use them come with a cable anyway, and you probably only have a CD-ROM drive to connect in any event. The modem connector is an input/output one, for voice modems that can work as an answering machine. Doing this with an internal modem, though, requires that you leave your computer turned on all the time.

(Incidentally, there are modems that can do the answering machine job with the computer off; I review one here).

There's also a header for a WaveBlaster standard MIDI daughter card, which can be piggybacked onto the board if you want to beef up its MIDI sounds.

The SQ2500 game bundle's a good one; you get the full versions of Psygnosis' third person dragon-riding fantasy-Tomb-Raider-With-More game Drakan: Order Of The Flame, and there's also Raven Software's third person magic-heavy combat-adventure Heretic II. Neither of these are brand spanking new games, but they're not very old, and they're both top-string titles, not just funny off-brand games that happen to have positional audio support. There's also a special 'extended' seven level demo of Accolade's giant robot blast-up Slave Zero.

If you want the game bundle, it's decent value for the $US40 or so it'll tack onto the street price of the card. If you don't care, though, hang out for the OEM version.

Media

You also get a good printed manual with the SQ2500, which explains in detail the whole installation and setup procedure, and goes on to tell you how to uninstall, troubleshoot common problems, and work the software. Manuals are getting more and more anaemic these days, and even the good ones commonly come only on CD, which isn't much use to a newbie scratching his head in front of his dismantled computer. It's nice to see proper documentation for a change.

One thing the manual doesn't mention is the WaveBlaster card connector on the board. Fortunately, pretty much no users are likely to care about this.

The SQ2500 also comes with the revision B incarnation of the AU8830 Vortex 2 chip, which is slightly faster than the 8830 on everybody else's Vortex 2 boards. This effect is only in the order of a few per cent, so you're not likely to actually notice it, but it's nice to know it's there.

Setting up

One of the big attractions of a card made by Aureal for Aureal is that the SQ2500 perfectly matches the Aureal reference drivers; whenever a new driver version comes out, it should work perfectly with the SQ2500.

That's not to say that the reference drivers don't behave themselves fine with other Vortex 2 boards that don't deviate from the reference design, but oddities like the Montego II Quadzilla need their own specially tweaked drivers to enable their extra features. In the Quadzilla's case, the extra features are the rear speaker and S/PDIF outputs on the board's daughter card. Run it with the reference drivers, and the daughter card might as well not be there.


The Rooms demo is the best of the Aureal A3D 2 show-off software

The SQ2500 comes with a driver CD containing reasonably up-to-date v2.040 drivers for Windows 95/98 and NT, plus demos, a DirectX updater, documentation and so on. The 2.040 drivers include the v2.25 version of A3D.

Aureal kept its users waiting for a new driver set with support for Creative's open EAX 2.0 standard for a while, but when I first wrote this the new drivers still weren't out. They are now, though; you can get the v2.048 drivers from here. The 2.040 or 2.041 drivers are perfectly functional, but EAX-free.

Sound quality

Devices

A Vortex 2 is a Vortex 2, as far as sound quality and 3D performance go. The Revision B chip is a tad faster, but sounds no better. Not that it needs to sound much better - A3D 2.0 is superb in most of the many games that support it. Sounds really do seem to come from distinct, 3-D locations, especially when you're using headphones.

All of the non-3D sound capabilities of the SQ2500 are well up to scratch, too; its inputs and outputs are very low noise, its recording quality is superb, and of course its digital S/PDIF output, being digital, is noise-free.

The very low noise design makes the SQ2500 perfectly suitable for studio work, provided of course that you can make do with just one external input jack. Make up cables for the internal CD and AUX IN jacks as well, though, and you could use a standard Vortex 2 card as a three channel stereo mixer without much trouble.

The SQ2500's MIDI output has an outrageous number of possible simultaneous voices (64 hardware, up to 512 more with software mixing), but the standard 4Mb instrument set is merely OK. It sounds acceptable, especially with the two simultaneous configurable effects you can layer on top of the music. But if you want something better, a whole different instrument set is only a download away - compatible DLS 1.0 sample sets can be had from various sites, like this one.

Four speaker mode

As with all four speaker Aureal-based cards, the fancy Head Related Transfer Function (HRTF) tricks that make you think sounds are coming from particular points apply only to the front speakers. The rear speakers only do stereo panning. Since the rear speakers only handle sounds that are actually meant to be behind you, though, this is not as big a problem as you might think. After all, who needs HRTFs to persuade you a sound is behind you when a speaker really is?

In four speaker mode, there can be occasional noticeable front-to-rear transfers, depending on where sounds are meant to be and where they're going. For the best 3D sound, I recommend headphones, but they have their own limitations. When you turn your 'phone-equipped head, the whole soundstage turns with you. You can move around inside the four-speaker sound space and the sounds will stay in the right place relative to the world you're supposed to be looking at through the screen. Then again, move too much when using speakers and, as you leave the 'sweet spot' where all of the HRTF wizardry expects you to be, the illusion dissolves.

System performance

Download Aureal Sound Cards & Media Devices Driver Download

The Vortex 2 is a chip specially made to do A3D 2.0, unlike the earlier Vortex 1, which was a general purpose Digital Signal Processor (DSP), which required considerable help from the CPU to do fancy environmental effects and which therefore could cause a nasty loss of performance.

A3D 2.0 on the Vortex 2 still creates a CPU hit, but only because it's doing things that can't be done on the sound card - if the sound card is to do accurate wall reflections and sound occlusion, the computer has to provide the sound card driver with geometry information, just as it has to tell the video card driver what shape the world is.

How much of a hit you'll suffer depends on your processor and video card. The faster the video card is compared with the processor, the worse the performance loss will be; if the video card spends a lot of time waiting for the processor to feed it more geometry data, any processor time spent on A3D will be directly reflected in your game frame rates. If the processor out-speeds the video card, though, it'll have 'spare' capacity and you may notice little to no loss of speed.

The upshot of this is that if you have a pretty current computer - say, a faster-than-300MHz P-II or better processor and a TNT2, Voodoo 3 or better graphics card - the performance hit from A3D should be perfectly acceptable, no matter how picky you are. If your computer is slower, then A3D for single player gaming (where the number of polygons being dealt with is typically lower, and the CPU thus less stressed) will be fine, and it's up to you to decide whether the loss of frame rate in multiplayer games makes up for the extra fun - and information - you get from hearing where things are happening.

Cards

Download Aureal Sound Cards & Media Devices Driver

Overall

There's nothing about the SQ2500 that makes it stunningly better, technically, than various other Vortex 2 cards, but its decent price and excellent bundled software give it an advantage. The four speaker output and S/PDIF connector put it up against the higher spec competing cards, and it gives 'em a run for their money. If you're in the market for a Vortex 2 card - and if you're an avid game player, you really should be - Aureal's branded venture into the market they've actually owned for a while is a darn good choice.

Recommended.

Download Aureal Sound Cards & Media Devices Driver Updater

Review card kindly supplied by Aureal.

Download Aureal Sound Cards & Media Devices Driver Windows 7

For a more in-depth treatment of Vortex 2 sound cards, see my earlier review of Turtle Beach's Montego II cards here.





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