Voicemeeter with Creative Sound Blaster Omni Surround 5.1 USB

[bluemax]

Hi guys.

At the moment, I am playing around with having a external mic, a UE Megaboom bluetooth speaker and a pair of creative T40 speakers. The mic plugs in via a 3.5mm jack and the T40's plug into the speaker/audio out in my laptop. The UB MB is obviously bluetooth.

I wanted to get a the Creative Sound Blaster Omni Surround 5.1 USB Sound card (external), and I wanted to know if I can use it with voicemeeter.
The UE Megaboom would still be on bluetooth, but the mike and the T40's would plug into the external sound card. I could even have a second set of speakers plugged into the external sound card since it has a multi use in/output jack. The Creative Omni also has two mic's built into it, which would give me a "second" mic if I wanted to use my current external mic as well.

The external card is attached to the laptop/pc via a usb cable (see 1st pic). I would attach the T40's to the card and I would try to set the speakers on the card to work with Voicemeeter. That would leave me with one extra 3.5mm connection I can use for something else, like a sub-woofer. You can see the built mic's on the top of the card

So I was wondering, before I even buy this thing, if I can use it with Voicemeeter or not.

Thanks for your help.

[Vincent Burel]

just bought it... will test it when i will have recieved it.

[bluemax]

Thank you. I look forward to your review.

[Case]

Hello. I do own the SB Omni, though I was rarely using it (I originally got it for the rare situation where I needed a solid external audio solution), but as it happens, I've spent the last week or so getting back to it (as I considered actually using it as my main audio device to simplify my somewhat convoluted audio setup) and inevitably also tinkering with Voicemeeter as part of that. I really like the sound of the Omni, probably best of all the soundcards I've heard or that I own.

As far as I can tell, there's no problem using it with either regular Voicemeeter and Voicemeeter Banana on my Win10 64bit using latest drivers (the drivers from Microsoft are slightly newer than what Creative has available on their website). Note that I am not really using any advanced Voicemeeter features, I just use it to get 7.1 audio for virtual surround processed by HeSuVi (the Omni is only 5.1 and the difference in HeSuVi between 5.1 and 7.1 is pretty big) and to separate Teamspeak and game audio for recording/streaming. But if you want to know/test something specific, feel free to ask, I'll do my best to test it if I can.

I do have an issue with the Omni, but it's not really related to Voicemeeter (though Voicemeeter seems to make it worse) - I seem to be having issues with my PC not going to sleep automatically when I am using the Omni. That's the reason I've spent a week on that (so far), because I was trying to make it work and try some solutions. Though as it happened, I just connected it today to test some things again and it seems my PC was going to sleep without issues despite me not changing anything from last time, so it might be a bit more complicated than that.

Also, you mentioned using several inputs/outputs with the Omni. I'm not sure if I understand correctly what you're trying to achieve, but be aware that the Omni is kinda limited in this regard and only really allows one input and one output at a time. So if you connect headphones, your speakers get disconnected. If you connect an external mic, the internal microphone array can not be used. And also, when it comes to inputs, only one can be active - not just for recording, but even for monitoring. So if you want to hear or record your line in source (guitar in my case), you can not use or listen to any other input, including the internal mic - you can only use the line input. You can switch to a different input, say an external mic, but then the line input gets completely disconnected. And so on. So this can get kinda annoying/complicated.

[bluemax]

Hi Case. Thanks for the information. My main machine is a laptop with only one media out, as it were, a 3.5mm jack for a headset/loudspeakers.

I do have 2 bluetooth speakers (UE Megaboom + UE Boom2) both, paired with the laptop. I wanted to know if I could use the Omni to plug in a external mic, a pair of Creative T40 speakers and, using Voicemeeter Banana, get to use the T40 (attached to the Omni) and the UE speakers (paired with the laptop) at the same time. That would give me not quite surround sound but but something close to stereo. Essentially I wanted 2 sets of speakers (T40 + UE & UE2) working at the same time. The video I saw on Youtube certainly seemed to imply that it was possible. However I wanted to make sure before buying the Omni, hence my initial question/post here.

As you say, if I use the mic on the Omni, I can't use the T40 that would be attached via the 3.5mm jack. But that, hopefully wouldn't be a problem, since I hope that the bluetooth UE Megaboom and UE boom 2 (paired to the laptop) should work, through Voicemeeter.

I know the whole thing is a little convoluted, but I have to work with what I have. I stumbled on to the Omni and it peeked my interest. Not least because I can move it between my home machine and my office PC.

Thank you for you insight. I'll only make a decision on whether to buy the Omni once I hear back from Vincent Burel, although, based on your post, I am tempted to buy it anyway.

[Case]

Using the mic on the Omni and the T40 speakers at the same time should not be a problem (though you would probably want to connect the T40 via the RCA out, as that is the designated speaker output on the Omni, the 3.5" jack in the front is from the headphone preamp, so probably not ideal for speakers). You can use one input and one output. You just can't use the internal mic array while an external mic is plugged in, or the speaker output while headphones are plugged in.

[bluemax]

Ha. I never thought of getting a Y-cable, female 3.5mm jack to male RCA, and use that with the T40's. That's a great idea Case. Thanks.
I'll order the Omni this week and start experimenting with it and Voicemeeter.

[Vincent Burel]

Ok, we received the Sound Blaster Omni Surround 5.1
REM: USB cable is a bit short.
We connected it and installed Creative components (from the CD).

1- There is an ASIO driver (offering 8 output channels but no inputs). This is configured by default with 2400 samples buffer size (that could be a problem for Voicemeeter). Then simply tweak the Sound Blaster ASIO latency to 20 ms (instead of 50 ms per default) to get a buffer size closer than 1024 samples.

2- The Stereo integrated MIC seems to work well with WDM interface.

3- Using Sound Blaster WDM Speaker as output A1 offer 6 channel (5.1) , this is correct. WDM SPDIF out offer 2 channels (but 8 channels if using MME interface). REM: WDM SPDIF out offer 6 channels if Dolby encoder is activated in CINEMA tab of the Sound Balster Omni Control Panel.

Anyway, this first test shows that it works ok with Voicemeeter.

[bluemax]

Superb. Thank you very much Vincent. I'll setup it up as soon as I get it. I'll post what the out come is and if I have any problems.

[Case]

It took me a lot longer than I originally intended, but for anyone interested, here's a possible workaround for the issue of the PC not going to sleep with an USB soundcard like the Omni, especially when combined with something like Voicemeeter, due to the system sleep being blocked by a Legacy Kernel Caller device:

http://english.edgeoftheworld.cz/2019/0 ... ound-card/