Successful sound card installation – Creative Xfi Titanium

[stanowen]

I run an HP ML350 to support my small consultancy. I’ve completed the configuration for the “Desktop Experience” thanks to the information on this site. As my server did not come with onbound sound (hardly surprising really), and I like some music while I work, I have been looking around for a PCI-E sound card (my machine has only these slots) which would run under 2008R2. These are not too thick on the ground but a couple of posting in this forum put me onto one or two of the Creative Labs products. Unfortunately, all the references were to their non-SPDIF equiped offerings (I wanted to run the output to a 5.1 decoder/amplifier) so I took the plunge and bought an OEM Xfi Titanium (the lowest-priced version). Windows found the card and installed the basic drivers. I was able to intall the creative drivers and applications direct from the supplied CD although this did seem to take for ever. The expected shutdown for the initial reboot “hung” but after rebooting the machine the device was there in Device Manager correctly identified. Trials with a cheap pair of powered speakers demontrated that the card was performing as expected on CDs. DVDs were a no-no in Media Player (it terminates when I select the “DVD” tab under “Options”) but I downloaded a trial version of Cyberlink PowerDVD2010 which installed without problems and plays DVDs with pretty impressive results. I’ve now got the card working with the card’s TOS SPDIF output feeding an inline optical to coaxial converter box which in turn feeds my 5.1 decoder/amplifier (coaxial input) and all is working just dandy.

It would seem that, at least according to my experience, the Xfi Titanium works just fine on 2008R2. Creative Labs do a cheaper card (XFi Extreme Audio) which also has an optical SPDIF output and this card is available in both PCI and PCI-E formats. I believe that the drivers are pretty identical so this other card would probably also work OK.

Hope this helps someone

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