| Creative frees Sound Blaster driver code |
Nov. 07, 2008
At long last, Creative Labs has released the full source code for its SoundBlaster X-Fi audio cards. Released yesterday under the General Public License (GPL) 2, the X-Fi and X-Fi Titanium 32bit/64bit drivers replace previous X-Fi drivers released only as object code for select 64-bit Linux kernels.
According to the release page, the drivers have been tested for the following X-Fi models:- X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series
- X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional Series
- X-Fi Titanium Professional Audio
- X-Fi Titanium
- X-Fi Elite Pro
- X-Fi Platinum
- X-Fi Fatal1ty
- X-Fi XtremeGamer
- X-Fi XtremeMusic>
The drivers work with Linux's ALSA (advanced Linux sound architecture) sound system, and support PCM playback, recording, and mixing via the asound API. "External I/O module" support is missing, as obviously is Linux support for the various fancy Windows sound applications bundled on the included CDs (but who cares, with all that great open source software to chose from).
Early reports suggest the drivers may have a few bugs. It remains to be seen whether Creative will take the initiative to work with the Linux kernel development team to get the drivers into shape for merging with the mainline kernel, or whether this is one of those "throw it over the wall" maneuvers aimed at getting work done by the community for free.
Availability
Creative's Sound Blaster X-Fi and X-Fi Titanium 32bit/64bit driver source code for Linux is available now, here.
-- Eric Brown. Henry Kingman contributed to this report.
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