I have an X-FI Plat. Sound card. The only way I can get the mic input on the 5.25 drive to work is if I go to widows audio mixer and enable playback what I hear the problem with this is when I do this it sends the mic 2 port and game sound aswell as vent clicks and noises through the speakers and vent. There is supposed to be an option that will let you enable mic 2 input under advanced tab in windows audio options (from what I have seen on google) voice record advanced, but the advanced tab is grayed out. Does anyone know a fix for this? I do believe it worked with the original out of the box drivers but they give me a blue screen when I install them on XP SP 3.

Okay, I'm running the non-platinum version, but I will try to help you out here. I use vent as well and I had problems with voiceclicks if I didn't mute and set a few things in XP.

First go to control panel and select sound and audio devices. Next, go to the voice tab and make sure your default voice playback and voice recording is set to the SB X-Fi Audio. Click the volume button under voice recording, which will pop up the recording control. Click on Options in the menu and make sure advanced controls is checked. Underneath the microphone or microphone 2 setting, there should be the advanced button. Click that, and make sure that the box is checked for microphone boost under other controls. Close this box. Next, go to the options menu again and click properties which will open the properties box. Make sure the mixer device at the top is set to SB X-Fi Audio. Make sure the recording circular thingy is checked. Under the volume controls in this same box, I have everything checked, so it all shows up in the recording control box. After checking them all, click okay. Back to recording control, make sure all the slider bars are moved to the top (highest volume) and that your microphone 2 has the box under it checked. Close recording control as well as the sound and audio device properties.

Now open up your console launcher (start, all program, creative, launch Creative console). That should bring up your audio console. Mine is currently set to game mode since that's all I do on this computer. Okay, first thing to do is go to the X-Fi CMSS-3d tab. Set that as you want. I have mine set to enabled and both macroFX and ElevationFilter set to auto. Click on the X-Fi Crystalizer. Make sure the box is unchecked. Same for EQ, make sure it is unchecked.

Under Mixer - make sure all the devices are set to the top of the slider bars. You should have two drop down menus that will contain a few others (mic 2, line 2, etc). Go through and select each one and set the sliders bars to the top. I have microphone, CD Player, Aux, and Line in muted as well as maxed out. You should have a second line in and mic 2 in. Mute those two as well. Make sure one of the of the two drop downs is mic 2 (it should also have a + symbol above it showing that it has an increase boost of 20db)! Now, under REC you will have a multitude of options in the drop down menu. Go through each one of those and move their slider bars to the top. When done, make sure you have Mic 2 selected under REC (VERY IMPORTANT - this is the selected mic to use).

Now the bottom. On the speakers tab, change the output device to headphones, and click the THX symbol next to it. Under digital Output Sampling Frequency, change it from 48 to 96. Make sure speaker selection at the top says "headphones." Under that is a flexijack mode. I'm not sure if Mic-in2/line in 2 is there, but if it is, then check it. Close this box. With the bass tab, I leave it unchecked, but change it if you feel that you're not getting enough bass.

At the very bottom is the settings tab. Click to open. Again is the flexijack option. Change to Mic2/line 2 if you can. Click the headphones tab. Make sure both boxes are checked, so when you plug in the headphones, the speakers should mute. Close this box. Attached to my reply is a picture of my ventrilo settings. The only difference I can foresee with your setup is that "LINE" under hardware input mixer should say Microphone 2 or something like that. If it isn't, then change it. I leave my line volume at max and change the outbound setting as needed. With your front port, you have the option to adjust your volume there.

Hope these pics help and sorry for the length.