A somewhat technical question about G5/G6
I currently own both the SB Omni and the Titanium HD. I like the Omni features and sound a lot (despite its weird design) and I would really like to replace my current setup with one external audio card in general, but one thing prevents me from full-time using the Omni instead of the Titanium HD - whenever the Omni is "active", as in either playing audio or even being used as an output for either Voicemeeter or the "Listen to this device" Windows feature (which I need if I want to use only one sound device), a device called "Legacy Kernel Caller" pops up among the devices that prevent the PC from going to sleep (which you can see by running "powercfg -requests" from an elevated command prompt). This matters for a very specific reason - you can tell Windows to ignore any of the audio devices you might have listed there, but the case of the "Legacy Kernel Caller" is special in that it can't be overriden in Windows 10 for some reason (it apparently was possible in older Windows). So no matter what you do, if the sound card is kept "active" (even if there might not be any audio playing), your system will never go to sleep (unless you do some quite annoying and awkward workarounds).
TL;DR: So my question is - if you run "powercfg -requests" in an elevated command prompt in a system with G5/G6 (preferably G5 as it's cheaper), do you also get a "Legacy Kernel Caller" device in the list that goes away when the device is not active (as in not playing audio or not being selected as an output in an active application)?
And as a side note, if there are people who had the chance to compare G5 or G6 with either the Omni or the Titanium HD, how do they compare? Titanium HD is a great card, but I have to say as weird as it might sound, I think I actually like the sound of the Omni slightly better, believe it or not. The reason is that the Titanium HD sounds kinda a bit too "sterile", kinda "lifeless", whereas the Omni sounds a bit more "lively" and natural, more "glassy" smooth, with slightly nicer treble and smoother bass. At least to my ears and with my headphones. So (if my attemtps at describing slight sound differences are of any use) how does G5 or G6 compare?
Thanks.
Posted Aug 27, 2019, 5:00 PM UTC · edited
When not playing audio, the Legacy Kernel Caller is not active on my G6.
So if I understand it correctly, it is not active when the sound card is not playing audio, but it *is* active when it is playing audio?
Also I assume we're talking direct output to the G6 here, not something like the card being used as an output to Voicemeeter or using the "Listen to this device" feature of Windows, right?
" So if I understand it correctly, it is not active when the sound card is not playing audio, but it *is* active when it is playing audio? "
Correct. This is in a standard output config, whether in Stereo or multichannel, in either Direct or not Direct.
Thanks a lot for taking the time.
But damn, that sucks. It means that the "Legacy Kernel Caller" stuff is likely not a Creative or device-specific issue, but rather a general Windows issue which basically prevents certain configurations from ever going to sleep with no real workaround to speak of :(
Not what I was hoping for, that's for sure.
My laptop has no issues with going to sleep, and staying there. :shrug: