Sound Problems Win 7 64bit and Soundblaster-Z

[Knitschi]

Hi there!

A couple of month ago I bought the Soundblaster-Z. Since then I sometimes have troubles with the sound.
When I set the settings to "Creative X-Fi" and EAX on, I get a permanent strong reverb effect ingame. It sounds like playing in a cathedral all the time and the sounds come from all 5 speakers at the same time.
When I switch from "Creative X-Fi" to "Hardware" the reverb effect is gone and everything sounds normal, but then I only get stereo sound. Another strange thing is, that it worked yesterday (with X-Fi setting) but today it suddenly has the reverb effect again. 
My speaker setting in windows is 5.1. 
Had anybody else this problem? Should I change any of the config files manualy? If so, which one?

[Knitschi]

I think I found the problem. I have a Winamp plugin that uses 5.1 channel for music output. It seems to mess my sound somhow up. When I dont run Winamp after a restart I dont have the problem.
(The plugin is called Stu003 A3D Output plug-in v1.22 (x86) )

[Knitschi]

The problem was not winamp. It is still alive and this time I can't get rid of it with a simple reboot. 

[NTH]

Been a while since I had a sound blaster. I remember disabling all CMSS 3D settings helped a lot. That and disabling EAX.

[Strat_84]

Well, there are 2 possibilities:
- The Soundblaster Z doesn't feature the hardware acceleration of the X-fi and so can't run properly with X-fi or hardware settings (although I think Creative advertises soundblasters Z still support EAX and OpenAL)
- The Soundblaster Z actually has a software emulation of EAX 5.0 but as usual, they coded their drivers with club-feet and nothing works. 

Anyway, if someone wants to buy a soundcard, I would definitively advise him to have a look at the Asus ones.
I've always used Creative ones and I was mostly satisfied (even though there were some problems), but everything since the Recon 3D is twice the price, the hardware acceleration is gone and the sound quality went down.
There's not a single reason anymore to bother with their products (and their crap drivers  )

edit: While I think about it, there might be an easy fix though. Go in the Creative control panel, EAX effects tab. Check that the "EAX effects intensity" slider is at 0 dB. If it's higher it could be the source of your problems.