Anyone with the X-FI Xtreme Notebook Audio card...

[Zatara214]

Does anyone know how to make managing the volume... a little easier? Adjusting the headphone volume is easy enough, but say I want to unplug them and listen to the speakers... Unplug the headphones, obviously the sound doesn't just automatically start through the speakers (though if I could do that it'd be great...), but that's no big deal. What I don't like is having to go into the creative control panel, check Enable Notebook Speaker Playback (which unchecks itself every time I restart the computer), and then go into my sound devices, selecting one of the three icons that say Realtek High Definition Audio (usually I pick the right one on the first try lol), and then unmute the speaker volume.

Then, let's say someone's calling me and I need to mute the speakers. I need to go back into the sound devices, select the right Realtek icon again, and mute it. This is fine and all when just playing music, but when gaming (which, if we all didn't do, why would we be here lol), it's quite the pain.

So is there any way to permamently enable speaker playback, AND after that, set the speaker playback and SB headphone playback volume to the volume icon in the system tray? That'd make things a whole lot more convinient if I could.

Also, one last thing, if anyone has an answer for the corruption that I'm getting (I made a post in the tech support section), get back to me on that, because it's litterally the ONLY problem that I'm having with this laptop right now lol.

[Woody]

I wasn't sure what you were talking about so I ran some tests on my card and now I see.

I don't use the on board speakers that much with my creative card but I was able to duplicate your problem. This seems to be a limitation in the software of the creative audio panel. In order to enable using the creative card with your on board speakers you must shut down and exit all applications that use audio, such as WMP, games, Skype, etc.

The audio card is hot swappable but again in order to switch between on board audio and the creative audio you must shut down all audio enabled application prior to plugging in or unplugging the card. If you unplug the card while running an audio application it will instantly mute your speakers but it will also likely crash your application.

I also noticed that while the volume and mute controls on the keyboard (Fn-F3, Fn-F5, and Fn-F6) all work fine with the creative card when using headphones they don't work at all when using the on board speakers with the card. This is clearly just your typical laziness Creative is infamous for when it releases software. I doupt it's something they couldn't easily work into the software but on my computer even the volume control on the creative control console won't work with the on board speakers. It seems there is a fixed volume that can only be adjusted from within the application. The same goes for the mute feature. So unless your application has a mute button built in such as WMP or Skype you are SOL when it comes to an easy way to mute the speakers. Even plugging in headphones won't work because running the speakers doesn't mute the headphones if they're still plugged in.

I generally use the built in audio when running the speakers and the Creative card when running my headphones. It's slightly inconvenient but I don't think there is an easier workaround. If you figure anything else out please let me know.

[Zatara214]

Right, thats exactly what I do. The issue is that the volume icon can only be set to one device at a time, and since we both use the on board sound for the speakers and the SB for headphones, they can't be set to the volume icon. The same rule applies for the hotkeys. If you press fn + f3 (for me anyway) it will mute the headphones, regardless of whether or not speaker playback is enabled. In order to mute the speakers, you either need to do what I described, or, click the volume icon and go to the mixer, click the device tab and switch the host device to the on board audio. But, in doing that, you throw away the ability to control the headphones with hotkeys, etc. Pretty stupid really.

Also, I found that the SB control software resets itself upon every restart for me. Even though the Crystalizer and bass boost are all turned off, and the enable playback through notebook speakers is unchecked, playback is still possible through the windows sound control panel by controling (for me) the Realtek speakers. This, again, as you said, implies laziness on Creatives part. Oh well, was worth a try lol...