Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Sound Card by Creative
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Digital camera reviews of Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Sound Card
Digital camera Review: This sucka rocks!
Summary: 4 Stars
I love this card. I owned the first Audigy card and it was mindblowing as well, but I received this card for Christmas because of the fact that I'm a fan of EAX gaming and an audiophile. The reasons I deducted a star is because of the driver situation and the mediasource issue. The drivers can be a real hassle to install if you have XP imho. What I would suggest is downloading the latest XP drivers from their site and be prepared to use them if things don't work well for you. The mediasource issue involves not being able to open the application from the pull down menu. Once updating it, it works fine. Since installing the updated drivers everything sounds and works great! The included installation guide should help the newer computer owners.Digital camera Review: Ultimate Sound in One Neat Little Package
Summary: 5 Stars
Creative Labs has long been known as the definitive manufacturer for sound cards and computer audio. That being said, the Audigy 2 can be considered the pinnacle of their art.Without having to blow your entire paycheck on the Platinum series, the Audigy 2 card provides top notch sound for gamers and audiophiles. It also enhances your DVD viewing experience and allows you to get the surround sound quality that your collection deserves.
Digital camera Review: Very Pleased
Summary: 5 Stars
Creative Labs has created another great premium sound card. The difference between this card and the standard or integreated sound that most computers ship with can be compared to the difference between a home theater and a boombox. The sound quality in even my average quality Harman-Kardon 'Champagne' style speakers is so much better now that it's hard to imagine I once thought my old card was just fine.
The Audigy 2 supports formats that are just now coming into their own (ie. DVD-Audio), and promises to be current with sound technology for many years to come. Many people are starting to use their computers for nearly every type of media, so having a card that can produce high fidelity audio in multiple surround sound formats is one of the most important invesments you can make; the Audigy 2 is certainly one of the best sound card buys for most consumers right now. The cost is much less than most other high quality audio components, and it would be difficult to find something that can increase the multimedia power of any PC so much.
Digital camera Review: Very happy with it
Summary: 5 Stars
Let me start right off by saying that I am not an audiophile and maybe I can not discern between a good/bad quality audio stream, so the fact that I purchased this audio card would seem like a big waste of money. I actually purchased this card after I started having a few resource problems between a fire wire card and my onboard audio that were getting to be very irritating.
When I read that this card had integrated fire wire connectivity in addition to the sound capabilities, plus two bundled high quality games (Soldier of Fortune II and Hit man 2) I told myself I couldn't go wrong by spending a few more bucks than the average sound card.
This card does make an extremely noticeable difference in the way we listen to any kind of audio. MP3s just sound better, period. A few of my MP3's that previously were almost unplayable now simply sound better, I don't know how it works, it just does.
My Unreal Tournament 2003 game is a totally different experience with this card. Boy, I was simply mesmerized with the positional EAX sound performance of the Audigy 2 card with this game. With my onboard sound, I had a lot of difficulty locating enemies by using positional sounds, but now it is so much clearer and crisp, it's unbelievable. Here's where I got totally convinced about the true difference between my onboard sound, which I thought was more than enough, and a truly remarkable work of technology.
I also tested the fire wire with my video camera and it works like a charm, plus now I do not suffer from system resource problems anymore.
Card installation is simple: With the PC off, insert the card, make sure to disable onboard sound (via the BIOS) if any, boot up, install the drivers from the CD, restart and done. Make sure to download the latest drivers afterwards.
Don't get intimidated by the price tag. This is one of the best investments you could make for your PC if you want to enjoy true quality audio.
5 stars
Digital camera Review: When it works like it should its quite a good deal
Summary: 4 Stars
My experience with this product is divided into two "eras".The first one was up until a few months ago when it gave me real headaches and problems. The second one is ever since it managed to solve itself (I don't know how, but I'm not asking either).
I'll start with the problem. My problem was the infamous "Squeal of Death" bug that Audigy cards tend to suffer from. This is some type of hardware flaw that occurs depending on your mainboard, operating system, etc. Up till now Creative hasn't managed to toally figure out why it happens, but what it does is simply cause the computer to completely freeze and emit a constant high-frequency tone while its halted (hence the "squeal"). This happens randomly during normal computer use while sound is playing. You cannot predict when it will happen, but it usually happens within the first 30 minutes of use, and its one of the most irritating things, one that can ruin your entire experience. As for Creative's support, it was very lacking. They told me to go over the same procedures again and again without any useful tips.
I've had this problem for nearly a year. Having the latest drivers for all of my hardware didn't help. I also tried formating my Hard Drive and reinstalling everything several times with no help. I did manage to understand what causes the bug to happen more frequently (such as watching DVD movies in surround mode, etc) and tryed to avoid it, but that was surely no fun.
Then one day it passed. Don't ask me how or why, but for a few months it works flawlessly. I know that recent motherboards, though, hardly cause this bug, so if you have a new computer you should not experience this problem.
And now for the card itself (when it works).
What I care about mostly is audio quality (in stereo), and this one delivers very good audio considering its a sound card. The resolution is high (not talking about the technical one), the high frequencies are precise (though a bit harsh), the soundstage is good, and detail is sufficient in audiophile terms.
One minus is that the card resamples everything lower than 48KHz to 48KHz using so-so algorithms that make 44.1KHz sources sound lacking at 48KHz (all your CD, MP3 sources). I found a way around this using a high-quality plugin for Winamp that resamples everything to 48KHz (or higher, I use 96KHz) using the best dithering algorithms and this avoids this little trouble.
I found working with high resolution and high frequency recordings (96KHz/24bit) pleasing and flawless. DVD-Audio also turned well, and surround sound very good if that is what you're into. I am not much into it but whatever surround recordings I tried sounded as good on the secondary channels as on the front ones (i.e. the DACs are the same for all channels).
The EAX hardware effects don't really improve the sound, but they work quite well and the fact they are done on-card (without CPU usage) is a big plus. There is a nice noice-removal option which works very well, especially useful with old films or bad radio reception (using line-in), though there is a slight delay.
Lastly, I'm not a big fan of computer games, but I was quite astounded with the sound it produced in serveral EAX-supported games, so if that's what you're into I suppose it delivers the finest out there.
To sum it up, when it works like it should it delivers excellent sound quality for such a mass-market product (and considering the price), all the needed surround sound support, and advanced EAX effects that work well for games and music as well.
If you're into recording you'll be also pleased to hear that it can record using high resolution 96KHz/24bit and that it does so with a very audiable improvement than the usual 48/16, great for doing analog remasterings or recordings on an amatuer level.