High-End Sound Cards and Windows 7 - 64bit

[sholling]

I'm replacing my HTPC with a new WD TV Live tomorrow and decided to move my bgrears b-Enspirer sound card to my main PC. This turned out to be a bigger challenge than I was expecting. Consider this more of a heads up than a rant (for now) and I have an email into bgears asking for a solution - although I'm not holding out any real hope. I'll pass on anything I learn from them.

• The b-Enspirer is based on the CMedia CMI8788 processor and Windows 7 lacks a driver.
• The bgears "Windows 7" driver is unsigned and Windows 7 will not let it install.
• CMedia is rumored to have sold all rights to the CMI8788 to Asus, all mention of the chip has been removed from CMedia's product listings.

This wouldn't be a horribly sucky thing if most the best sound cards (bgears, HT Omega and others) weren't powered by the CMedia CMI8788. If this is all true then lots of people are stuck with high-buck cards that won't work with Windows 7 64bit and lots of these high-end cards are still being sold to the unsuspecting. FWIW there are rumors that the INF file for an Asus Xonar D2 sound cards can be modified to allow you to use their driver but I haven't had that confirmed yet.

If this turns out to be an orphaned product it will be a real shame because the CMI8788 cards were some of the few that rightfully boasted both great music quality and compatibility with nearly every game, and did it without Creative's bloatware.

 

[sholling]

Just an update:

• I've been told (but have not yet confirmed) that the 64 bit drivers for the HT Omega work fine on their own cards.
• The bgears driver still doesn't work but I'm using a workaround. I copied the contents of the drivers folder from the Asus Xonar D2 installation folder into the bgears drivers installation folder and ran the bgears install and let it install the xonar driver. It works fine for stereo and sounds really great. Unfortunately none of the bgears utilities installed so it's strictly stereo for now.

I still haven't heard from bgears support and don't expect to before next week. I'll update this post as soon as I hear something. It'll be interesting to find out if Asus will continue to supply chips and drivers to competitors over the long haul.

 

[krzywica]

Just an update:

• I've been told (but have not yet confirmed) that the 64 bit drivers for the HT Omega work fine on their own cards.
• The bgears driver still doesn't work but I'm using a workaround. I copied the contents of the drivers folder from the Asus Xonar D2 installation folder into the bgears drivers installation folder and ran the bgears install and let it install the xonar driver. It works fine for stereo and sounds really great. Unfortunately none of the bgears utilities installed so it's strictly stereo for now.

I still haven't heard from bgears support and don't expect to before next week. I'll update this post as soon as I hear something. It'll be interesting to find out if Asus will continue to supply chips and drivers to competitors over the long haul.

You should be able to do a manual driver install through the control panel.

Also I don't know if you have tried running the installation in compatibility mode. This usually works in 7 but sometimes it doesn't work for driver installs depending on how the msi or exe is scripted. Hit me up I might be able to help you out.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Hey sholling,
I never heard of b-gears brand, but in my view this b-gears card look very much like few other clones I seen around - Auzentech, HT, Asus and Diamond.

Im pretty sure drivers from say HT|OMEGA Claro [also based on CMI8788]
should work.

 

[sholling]

Thanks to both of you. The problem seems to be driver signing. bgears' (aka blue gears) drivers are unsigned. I have it up and running now by tricking it into installing Asus drivers. It's running as a sweet sounding generic stereo sound card.

I'll give bgears through next week to get caught up on their holiday tech support email before I put more time into it.

 

[jinjuku]

I believe you can turn off driver signing...

LINKY

It's an enable system policy by default.

 

[Hi Ho]

I have never been unable to install an unsigned driver. I simply received a message warning that it was unsigned and asking if I wanted to proceed.

I have an HT Omega Striker 7.1 card (different C-Media chip) and it works perfectly in Windows 7 64 bit (retail release). It worked in beta and RC as well though the early driver versions were buggy and slow.

 

[sholling]

What I did to install the drivers was I downloaded the drivers to a folder on my hard drive. Then downloaded the Xonar D2 drivers to another folder. Finally I copied the contents of the Xonar drivers folder into the bgears driver folder overwriting the begears files. Then I ran the bgears install. Everything seems to be working now.