tough luck..
it's Liveware! 3 at it's worst ;(

Go to Start>Settings>Control Panel>Sounds and Multimedia, click the advanced button for playback then under advanced audio properties click the slider one notch to the left under hardware acceleration. This will help stablize the system in some cases and also help with distortion of sound quality when lots of sounds are being played at once.
 
Creative left out the old device controls from the Win2K version so you can't choose the amount of voices in sound.

i was just wondering.....will creative ever do something right?

marketing...

looks like that litle trick with the bar did not work...i still have sound screwed up in games....why`???????????
 
damn i gonna start hating creative

I had the exact same problem with my SB Live! The problem always happened when a progam was using both the D3D api (never during normal DirectX or OpenGl) and the Digital Sound Decoder features on the Live! card. I did narrow down the problem to something on the motherboard that the Live! drivers didn't like. I had to finally switch boards. I still had a bunch of other probs with it though.
 
Eventually I just decided to downgrade my card to a Sb128 PCI. But then I found out that my chip (1373) was the only 128 that Creative had no Win2k drivers for! Well yesterday I found out the sheer extent to which Creative is screwing us all. I happened to find 1373 drivers for Win2k on Intel's site and they have even been certified! Not only that, but they also had another driver dated late Feb that was also certified!!! This means that they've had drivers since Feb which went through the M$ certification program (obviously before Feb), but didn't give them to the public!
 
All I have to say is : BASTARDS!!!!!!!!!! DON'T LET ME CATCH YOU CREATIVE GUYS IN A BACK ALLEY SOMEWHERE!!!!
I hope they're reading these posts
 
 
 
[This message has been edited by JediBaron (edited 19 September 2000).]

Here's what happened to me. i had a SB Live. it gave me all kinds of trouble "in any OS in any PCI slot" I have no idea why. It would always mess up and then not work untill i rebooted, it would turn off my speakers by itself. And the volume would even get inconsistent. So i ditched that board and got a SB pro. it seemed better that the live but it still had probs... So eventually i took it out.. What i ended up doing was taking my old SB 16 AWE 32 ISA
and using that.. it worked great.. never a single problem. I had great sound and full duplex.. i have no idea my this happened, i now blame it on a shitty Mobo "it was a compaq".. so thats my SB horror story i dont know if it helps you any, but i thought you would like to know.

I feel your pain. My Windows2000 setup is rocking but the only thing holding it back is the sub-par Liveware driver quality. I'd hate to return to WinME just because of the sound quality but it's really pissing me off and I know how good the Live sounds under Win9X. Creative rushed these drivers and you can see in the newsgroups how unhappy people are. Lots of people are buying the new Santa Cruz soundcard because it has better driver support in Win2K and WinME.
 
A post at http://alive.singnet.com.sg/ by a Creative guy slates the next update in October but you know how those things go.
 
Your only recourse is to either return to Win9X/WinME or grin and bear it because there aren't many sure fire fixes besides hacking the driver code yourself.

thats pretty strange...coz the card workd prefect in the begging when i installed win2k...but after some time...i dont have a clue what i did...i didnt do nothing...it just stoped working in games....its just games...i mean...i can use direct sound in winamp and it workd prefect...but when a game uses the driver...damn...the sound goes nuts....i dont understand creative..
 
/Silent-IQ