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How and why does everyone have problems with the Phoebus/Drivers ?

Dicehunter
Level 10
I bought my Phoebus about 2 months ago now, I installed it, I installed the latest drivers from the site, Customized my sound settings and it's work amazingly with everything and sounds fantastic.
How and why are so many people having problems with this ? I'm genuinely confused :confused:




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Tellus
Level 7
There is plenty of issues with the current driver, if you run win7 you might not run in to all of them especially if you don't use to many of the extras on the card.

The card is however advertised as win8 compatible and promoted with certain features, very little of this does work in reality. Today i swapped back to a D2X because i don't use the headset much atm so there is no benefit at all with the phoebus. With the D2X you can run UniXonar which makes it alot less buggy. I hope they can sort out the drivers soon for the phoebus but im not holding my breath.
| Sabertooth p67 rev b | i7 2600k @4,8GHz | 2x8GB 2133MHz Corsair | MSI GamingX GTX 1080@2125MHz | 256GB Samsung 840Pro | MX300 1TB | 2x 120GB Intel 510 | Xonar Phoebus | Zalman ZM-850HP | Logitech G810 & SS Rival 500 | Acer Z35 |

Cageymaru
Level 7
@Dicehunter. You're running Win 7 64 and there are far less issues with that Phoebus driver. The Win 8 64 driver is in complete shambles. It's never been in a good place. It simply doesn't work as advertised and Win 8.1 just makes it look worse. The premier music streaming service that ships with every Win 8 64 computer, XBOX Live Music, doesn't work. This is a music service designed by Microsoft. If your sound card isn't designed to run basic run of the mill Microsoft code, then how can you in good faith slap a "Compatible with Windows 8" sticker on it?

Just think about it for a moment again. This is a sound card that can't play music off Microsoft's music service that ships with the OS! I could see if it was something that wasn't designed into Windows 8 from day one! Netflix apps blocks 5.1 output. I got rid of it long ago since it's not compatible with my sound card. Who wants to watch movies in stereo with a $200 sound card? Who thought it was a good idea to design a driver that doesn't play Netflix properly in Win 8 64? Netflix is as common as Google. That would be like buying a PC and not being able to use Google. What good is that? Why is there an ASIO sticker on the box other than to fool people into thinking that it supported it. That's right to make suckers out of them!

In BF3 I can't tell where a footstep is located the positional audio is so bad. Sure you can hear a footstep, but what's the point if you can't tell if it's left, right, forward, or back of your location? Hell it might be your teammate to your left or it might be the enemy sniper to your right. I feel more gimped playing BF3 with the Phoebus, than without it. I have to either assume every footstep is the enemy and get killed out of cover since I am forced to stop and see visually instead of aurally. Or I assume that they are my teammates and run up on the enemy who has say a properly working Creative card and is waiting for my lame duck situation to feed him a knife kill.

I have been building PC's since the 1980's. This is the most depressing component I have ever purchased. Well there was that World of Warcraft Burning Crusades keyboard overlay that was probably worse. I used it as a doorstop for my room. But it didn't cost me $200!

mitchy1690
Level 7
Well i was tempted to buy a Phoebus next week but i've read so much bad things about the drivers i think i'll jump over to creative.

Thanks for posting your problems


I'm reasonably sure that i'm not the only one getting this from time to time 😉
| Sabertooth p67 rev b | i7 2600k @4,8GHz | 2x8GB 2133MHz Corsair | MSI GamingX GTX 1080@2125MHz | 256GB Samsung 840Pro | MX300 1TB | 2x 120GB Intel 510 | Xonar Phoebus | Zalman ZM-850HP | Logitech G810 & SS Rival 500 | Acer Z35 |

Tellus wrote:

I'm reasonably sure that i'm not the only one getting this from time to time 😉


I get the same Error-Message everytime I switch from Headphones to Speakers...

cx-ray
Level 12
I've used the Phoebus on Win 7, 8, and 8.1. So far it works the same on all my OS installs.

I only use Stereo mode or XEAR Surround Headphone. Installation on clean OS installs, no UAC.

Glasofruix
Level 8
I also have no problems with the drivers (i'm not using protected audio such as netflix or xboxmusic though), but it seems that the positionnal features are totally borked, regardless the OS (and xear surround sounds like crap compared to razer surround, which is free at the moment).

Mineria
Level 7
Card ran well under Windows 8, on Windows 8.1 the enhancements won't work until they get updated...

Glasofruix
Level 8
Those enhancements never actually enhanced anything in the first place. The card is clearly a disappointement in the "gaming" part it's sold for. But it sounds great, I can't deny it.