When I bought my Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro package for a steal of a deal at Fry’s Electronics because it was an open box special, I had been using iTunes for a while and didn’t want to switch to Creative’s MediaSource Player in order to use the remote control. After some poking around I discovered how to use the remote in a limited yet sufficient way with iTunes. So here’s my first tutorial.
After installing all the hardware and software, go to Start > All Programs > Creative > Creative MediaSource > Remote Control & OSD Settings. Then check the “Enable Creative MediaSource Remote Control” box. Near the bottom click the “Windows Application Support…” button. Check “Enable control of other Windows applications” and then choose “Add.” Browse to Program Files > iTunes (or wherever you installed iTunes) and chose “iTunes.exe.” Put “iTunes” for the Application Name and click “ok.” Click “ok” for the remaining open windows.
Next we need to program the remote to work with iTunes. To save you some trouble, you can just download the .key file I created here (right-click, choose save as). Simply drop the file into C:\Program Files\Creative\MediaSource\RemoteControl\KeyMap (unless you installed the program elsewhere) and you’re good to go. Now hit the “Start” button on your Creative Media Remote and it should pull up an options screen. Choose “Windows Application Support” then “iTunes.” Now you can use the play/pause, next/right, previous/left, up, down, and enter buttons within iTunes!
All I did was make certain buttons on the remote to control correspond with certain keys on the keyboard. The play/pause button corresponds with the space-bar key, which is play/pause in iTunes, etc. Because of this, the remote will only work when iTunes is the current active window on your desktop. If you’re curious about other keyboard commands in iTunes, here is a list of the ones I use the most.
- Space-bar – play/pause
- Right – next
- Left – previous
- Ctrl+Up/Down – Volume Up/Down
- Ctrl+L – highlight current track