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General discussion

Strange Soundblaster problem

Jan 21, 2004 1:13PM PST

I recently purchased a SoundBlaster Live! Value card for my PC, primarily in order to utilize SoundFonts. I initially installed the card, went to open a SoundFont in a freeware/shareware program called Anvil Studio, and received an error message. I then tried another SoundFont, which seemed to load correctly. However, I wasn't able to hear anything. Upon checking other audio programs that had been working normally, I still heard nothing.

I tried everything I could to make the card work, but it wouldn't, even though the line-in and mic ports work just fine. Finally I decided to replace the card, which I did.

After installing the new card, I tried playing a song in Windows Media Player; it played fine. Then I went to Anvil Studio and tried to load the SoundFonts. Again the first one caused an error message and the second loaded normally. Again I was unable to hear anything anywhere on the system.

And this continues. I have come to the following conclusions:
1.) Nothing is wrong with the hardware. Likely this was also true for the first sound card that was returned.
2.) There must be some sort of software conflict, though I don't know what it could be. My belief is that it's related either to the SoundFont that causes the error message or to Anvil Studio, but nothing I've tried has fixed the problem.

I'm running Win98SE on an eMachines etower 466is
Celeron 466, 192MB RAM
Soundblaster Live (Value) Model Number: CT4780

Any suggestions?

Remy Gibson

Discussion is locked

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Seems simple.
Jan 21, 2004 8:21PM PST

" I tried playing a song in Windows Media Player; it played fine. Then I went to Anvil Studio and tried to load the SoundFonts. Again the first one caused an error message and the second loaded normally. Again I was unable to hear anything anywhere on the system."

Contact the author of the program and they'll likely to have heard complaints about your issue.

Bob

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Re:Seems simple.
Jan 28, 2004 7:04AM PST

I have contacted the author of the program and they claim not to have heard of this problem before. I've been in contact with them for the past week and so far they haven't offered any solutions, aside from pointing out that the 29MB SF2 file was far too large for my tiny sound card.

At this point, I have also reinstalled Windows and uninstalled and reinstalled the sound card several times--still nothing.

I wonder if uninstalling Windows would have any effect, but I am loath to do that.

Remy Gibson

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Maybe that was the clue?
Jan 28, 2004 7:32AM PST

Sadly, the author would hear reports first of such an issue. (I haven't) Take their input about the 29MB SF2 file and see what you can do about that.

Bob