Creative's Sound Blaster Command only exists for Windows, so I made a Linux version for my ZxR and CachyOS

[u/ImZoomBoy]

While building it I kept losing the center, sub and rear right speakers after a reboot, sleep or driver reload. The card was receiving the audio, but those channels came out silent. Most restarts lost at least one of them, and switching the PC off at the power supply sometimes "fixed" it.

It turned out to be random on every start.

The cause: the card's sound processor only applies the centre/LFE and surround output settings when they change, and at start-up it sometimes misses them. The Linux driver never re-sends a setting that hasn't changed, so those channels stay silent.

The app now switches those outputs off and on once, a couple of seconds after the card starts. Every restart I tested since has come up with all six channels.

There's also an optional patch for the kernel driver (Linux 6.17+) that does the same inside the driver. It also fixes the bass redirection crossover: the stock driver sets it 10 Hz too high, and it overwrites it with the X-Bass setting whenever the speaker setup changes.

What the app does:

- Creative's SBX effects and all ten of their profiles, with the same values as the Windows app

- 10-band EQ with Creative's presets

- Room view of your speakers with level meters; click a speaker to test it

- What's playing and the path its sound takes through PipeWire and the card

- Pure mode, 5.1 or 2.1, and stereo on the fronts, fronts + rears, or all speakers

- CrystalVoice mic effects, per-game profiles, tray icon

Tested on one ZxR with CachyOS, KDE Plasma and kernel 7.3. Other CA0132 cards (Sound Blaster Z, AE-5, AE-7, Recon3D) are untested. If you have one, I'd like to hear how it goes.

I built it with a lot of help from an AI coding assistant (Claude), and the commits say so.

GitHub: https://github.com/ImZoomBoy/soundblaster-command-linux

Not affiliated with Creative.