Creative Technology Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum
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- Output Mode: 7.1 Channel Surround
- Card Interface: PCI
- Bit Depth: 24-bit
- Compatible Audio Standards: DTS DTS-ES Dolby Digital EX DirectSound ASIO 2 EAX
- Form Factor: External Device and Plug-In Card
- Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR): 108 dB
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A better soundcard won't be made until the Red Sox win the world series.
Pros
Sounds amazing, can do anything, is perfect in every way.
Cons
Difficult to install.
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
If you want a high quality sound card, there is simply no alternative.
Forgive me in advance for the length of this review, but the number of features this soundcard has is truly sick (but, like, sick meant in the good way, not like, in the cold/flu season way.)
Why? For the last 5 years I've been using a SoundBlaster live! Platinum that I loved, but which after 5 years of heavy use finally decided it was done making music and decided to go with making, "thhhhppptttt" noises all the time instead. Now, if you look at my review history I do a lot of headphones, and I'm rather sound obsessed, so no second rate replacement card would do. I wanted the best, and I wanted a remote, and I wanted a front panel. For the best the only possible company worth considering is Creative Labs, they established the standard for high quality sound with the original, "SoundBlaster" in the early 90's and have always stayed one step ahead of the competition since then with their amazingly high quality cards and awesome sound systems. You can buy no better computer speaker system then one with the name, "Cambridge Soundworks," the speaker division of Creative Labs, which is the parent company of SoundBlaster.
What's in the box?
The number of cords, cables, screws, panels, and cards in the box is intense. There was: the front panel, the remote control for the front panel, the sound card, the auxiliary midi-card that attaches internally to the soundcard, the ribbon/power cord/data cord that attach from the front panel to the soundcard, a wire to connect the soundcard to your CD-Rom drive and then a bunch of screws to hold everything in and together.
Physical Installation Installation is a breeze, assuming that breeze is a 70 mile per hour hurricane. It's was rather hellish for me to install because my case is already rather crowded and this involves running multiple wires from the top front to the back left, one of which is a full sized ribbon cable that is rather unwieldy. I got it all in there, but it took some time. Also note that this requires two PCI slots if you want to add the included midi-support card (it's less a card and more a faceplate with a wire running from the back of it) I chose not to install it as I have no midi devices and don't really plan on getting any.
Making it workI couldn't make it work. I tried so hard, I installed, uninstalled, reinstalled, moved, torched, formatted, and did Wicca evil sound card dances. In retrospect I feel kind of silly for having spent 6 hours trying to make this work, because I shot an e-mail off to creative on the verge of tears and an amazingly polite and helpful tech support rep named Brandon wrote back about 12 hours later with several suggestions, the first of which was to upgrade my motherboard bios. So I did, and suddenly the sound card worked perfectly. Boy did I feel like the town jackass there, as of course that was, "the one thing" I hadn't thought of. However my front panel still failed to work, so I wrote back to my buddy Brandon and he said, "are you sure it's plugged in properly?" and sent me a very pretty diagram showing me how all the cords should be attached. I had forgotten to attach power to the front panel, strike 2 in the jackass feeling column for me.
Included software
There are 8 CD's included with this soundcard. I'm serious. Eight. To list there is one with the drivers, one with the demo material to show how awesome it can sound, two with the game, "Rainbow Six: Raven Shield," one with the software, "Power DVD" two with the game, "Tomb Raider" and one with all sorts of random sound editing utilities.
Drivers
Driver install is easy, you just click, "go" and it installs the drivers. The only option you get is telling it what kind of sound it needs to be set for (7 speaker, headphone, etc).
Demo Material
It should be noted that I only tested this soundcard with my headphones (of course my trusty Beyer Dynamic DT250-80's) and yet, despite the fact that all I'm doing is wearing headphones this soundcard made sound distinctively come from above, below, left, right, straight at, hard away, and every other possible direction you could imagine. I've had many, "head turning" moments where I forget I'm wearing the headphones and think the sound is coming from somewhere in my room. The demo material demonstrates all of these amazing abilities and much more, it just makes you hunger to get into a game like Rainbow Six and listen to the magic it can create.
Rainbow Six: Raven Shield
This isn't a game review, so I'm going to skip that, but suffice to say it is an awesome game. Why they included this is because it shows what happens when you match a soundcard with game design. Gunshots are frighteningly realistic, and all sound different in different terrains, a silence bullet in a stairwell has a unique ping that's totally different from that same silenced bullet in a wood paneled room, or fired outdoors. Footsteps can be heard growing slowly closer and farther away as terrorists pace back and forth. Ambient effects are awesome, in one level you can hear the distant din of traffic, then once you open the door to the outside it comes washing over you much louder. Imagine what real life sounds like, and that's what they've managed to replicate in this game. And remember, I'm wearing headphones, I can't even think of how it would sound with a 7.1 audio system.
Tomb Raider
I don't know how the sound would be if I played this game, but the game sucked so badly that I quit after about 5 minutes. I'm assuming, however, that the sound would be good if I took the trouble to play it.
Power DVD
Power DVD is an excellent DVD player that does exactly what it says it will. It plays DVD's and gives the user all the features generally found on a high quality TV top DVD player. You can play, fast forward, rewind, change languages, change scenes, basically everything you can do with a DVD can be done with this player. Of course the soundcard uses DVD's as a nice excuse to show off as well, but here one of the major constraints of the soundcard is shown. While Rainbow Six is designed with the sound in mind, when listening to something that just doesn't sound very good, this sound card can't make it sound good. So if your DVD only has one audio stream and it's low quality, the soundcard will simply play it as best as it can, but it won't make it good.
Random Sound Editing Tools
I'm not a desktop-DJ. I like my sound the way it comes, and I listen to it that way. I'm sure if I ever desired to make remixes and such I could, but I really don't care to. I opened this up and played with it a little bit, it's kind of cute how you can cut and paste and speed up and slow down and whatnot, I just really don't care.
Creative Media Source
Creative Media Source is the creative answer to Windows Media Player. It does it all, MPG, AVI, MP3, WAV, MID, etc, and does it all much better then Windows Media Player. However I already use Roxio's Audio Central and I had absolutely no desire to do all the necessary work in terms of defining songs and playlists and genre's that my 1,301 song MP3 collection would require. I'm doing it very slowly, a little here a little there, but it will be awhile before I'm fully using this software for MP3's.
It does, definitely, make MP3's sound better then any other media player I've ever heard. It does this simply by paying insanely close attention to each and every MP3. It doesn't play them, it massages them, it tickles them, and it makes them feel warm and fuzzy on the inside. For starters it grabs from every MP3 in your collection data that enables it to figure out what the tempo and volume of each one is, so that if you enable smart volume management it can keep all of your songs at approximately the same volume. It has options to allow cross fading from one song to the next, and, here I wish I had speakers, it lets you define the exact distance and location that your speakers are from you so that it can send just exactly the right amount of power in the right direction to keep perfect surround sound. There are of course the standard bass and treble controls, but there are also controls that allow you to speed up and slow down songs, define audio effects, "want to listen to this sound as it would sound in a giant church? You can!" Playing guitar music? There is a special setting just to make guitars sound optimally good. Want to do karaoke? No problem! It will cancel out the voices on a song and just leave you the music to sing along to. Have any static or imperfections in your MP3's? No big deal, tell the player how much noise removal and click removal you want it to do, and it'll do it. It makes MP3's sound so much smoother and crisper then I realized was possible.
Anything you have ever desired to do in order to improve or alter your listening experience can be found in this player, and that's that. Oh, and it can convert tracks to and from any format imaginable, and several formats you've never imagined.
Plus it flawlessly burns CD's.
And it files your tax returns.
Okay, maybe not that last one, but all the ones before it I'm serious about.
The Front Panel
The front panel is extensive and amazing in its powers and abilities. There is a quarter inch headphone jack, an optical in/optical out, midi in/midi out, line in/line out, and SDIF in and out. All I use it for is the headphone jack, but I'm sure the others could prove useful if I ever owned anything that could use them.
The back panel
The PCI card itself has 6 gold plated holes. This thing supports true 7.1 audio, it will actually send out seven distinct and unique streams of music if you own the sound system that can handle them. There isn't really much to say about it, it works when I plug in my headphones, and I'm sure it would work if I had a 7.1 audio system too.
The remote
The remote works flawlessly with the DVD player. I can just sit back in my chair and raise/lower the volume, pause, fast forward, rewind, etc etc. Works with the creative media player as well so I can control my MP3's from a distance. This is kind of silly because I have a wireless keyboard/mouse, but if I didn't it would be far more helpful I'm sure.
How does it actually SOUND?
The sound this produces sounds better then real life, it's incomparably flawless, by far the best sound I've ever heard from a computer, and very close to the best sound I've ever heard in my life. My headphones have never sounded this good, period.
All those cool numbers
These are ripped directly from the creative website, and really give a good smack down on showing why this soundcard is so amazing. First, here are the badges it carries: THX Certified, EAX Advanced HD, DVD Audio, 24-Bit, DTS Extended Surround certified, Dolby Digital-EX certified, and ASIO certified. Frequency response is 10hz up to 46khz. Frankly this soundcard redefines what great sound can be from a computer, there's no other way to put it.
OVERALL
Installation: B- (Thanks Brandon!)
Ease of Use:A
Included Software:A
Brand Name:A
Value for the Money:A
Overall:A
I find myself physically unable to imagine how a sound card could possibly be better then this one. Creative has redefined how great sound can sound.
Why? For the last 5 years I've been using a SoundBlaster live! Platinum that I loved, but which after 5 years of heavy use finally decided it was done making music and decided to go with making, "thhhhppptttt" noises all the time instead. Now, if you look at my review history I do a lot of headphones, and I'm rather sound obsessed, so no second rate replacement card would do. I wanted the best, and I wanted a remote, and I wanted a front panel. For the best the only possible company worth considering is Creative Labs, they established the standard for high quality sound with the original, "SoundBlaster" in the early 90's and have always stayed one step ahead of the competition since then with their amazingly high quality cards and awesome sound systems. You can buy no better computer speaker system then one with the name, "Cambridge Soundworks," the speaker division of Creative Labs, which is the parent company of SoundBlaster.
What's in the box?
The number of cords, cables, screws, panels, and cards in the box is intense. There was: the front panel, the remote control for the front panel, the sound card, the auxiliary midi-card that attaches internally to the soundcard, the ribbon/power cord/data cord that attach from the front panel to the soundcard, a wire to connect the soundcard to your CD-Rom drive and then a bunch of screws to hold everything in and together.
Physical Installation Installation is a breeze, assuming that breeze is a 70 mile per hour hurricane. It's was rather hellish for me to install because my case is already rather crowded and this involves running multiple wires from the top front to the back left, one of which is a full sized ribbon cable that is rather unwieldy. I got it all in there, but it took some time. Also note that this requires two PCI slots if you want to add the included midi-support card (it's less a card and more a faceplate with a wire running from the back of it) I chose not to install it as I have no midi devices and don't really plan on getting any.
Making it workI couldn't make it work. I tried so hard, I installed, uninstalled, reinstalled, moved, torched, formatted, and did Wicca evil sound card dances. In retrospect I feel kind of silly for having spent 6 hours trying to make this work, because I shot an e-mail off to creative on the verge of tears and an amazingly polite and helpful tech support rep named Brandon wrote back about 12 hours later with several suggestions, the first of which was to upgrade my motherboard bios. So I did, and suddenly the sound card worked perfectly. Boy did I feel like the town jackass there, as of course that was, "the one thing" I hadn't thought of. However my front panel still failed to work, so I wrote back to my buddy Brandon and he said, "are you sure it's plugged in properly?" and sent me a very pretty diagram showing me how all the cords should be attached. I had forgotten to attach power to the front panel, strike 2 in the jackass feeling column for me.
Included software
There are 8 CD's included with this soundcard. I'm serious. Eight. To list there is one with the drivers, one with the demo material to show how awesome it can sound, two with the game, "Rainbow Six: Raven Shield," one with the software, "Power DVD" two with the game, "Tomb Raider" and one with all sorts of random sound editing utilities.
Drivers
Driver install is easy, you just click, "go" and it installs the drivers. The only option you get is telling it what kind of sound it needs to be set for (7 speaker, headphone, etc).
Demo Material
It should be noted that I only tested this soundcard with my headphones (of course my trusty Beyer Dynamic DT250-80's) and yet, despite the fact that all I'm doing is wearing headphones this soundcard made sound distinctively come from above, below, left, right, straight at, hard away, and every other possible direction you could imagine. I've had many, "head turning" moments where I forget I'm wearing the headphones and think the sound is coming from somewhere in my room. The demo material demonstrates all of these amazing abilities and much more, it just makes you hunger to get into a game like Rainbow Six and listen to the magic it can create.
Rainbow Six: Raven Shield
This isn't a game review, so I'm going to skip that, but suffice to say it is an awesome game. Why they included this is because it shows what happens when you match a soundcard with game design. Gunshots are frighteningly realistic, and all sound different in different terrains, a silence bullet in a stairwell has a unique ping that's totally different from that same silenced bullet in a wood paneled room, or fired outdoors. Footsteps can be heard growing slowly closer and farther away as terrorists pace back and forth. Ambient effects are awesome, in one level you can hear the distant din of traffic, then once you open the door to the outside it comes washing over you much louder. Imagine what real life sounds like, and that's what they've managed to replicate in this game. And remember, I'm wearing headphones, I can't even think of how it would sound with a 7.1 audio system.
Tomb Raider
I don't know how the sound would be if I played this game, but the game sucked so badly that I quit after about 5 minutes. I'm assuming, however, that the sound would be good if I took the trouble to play it.
Power DVD
Power DVD is an excellent DVD player that does exactly what it says it will. It plays DVD's and gives the user all the features generally found on a high quality TV top DVD player. You can play, fast forward, rewind, change languages, change scenes, basically everything you can do with a DVD can be done with this player. Of course the soundcard uses DVD's as a nice excuse to show off as well, but here one of the major constraints of the soundcard is shown. While Rainbow Six is designed with the sound in mind, when listening to something that just doesn't sound very good, this sound card can't make it sound good. So if your DVD only has one audio stream and it's low quality, the soundcard will simply play it as best as it can, but it won't make it good.
Random Sound Editing Tools
I'm not a desktop-DJ. I like my sound the way it comes, and I listen to it that way. I'm sure if I ever desired to make remixes and such I could, but I really don't care to. I opened this up and played with it a little bit, it's kind of cute how you can cut and paste and speed up and slow down and whatnot, I just really don't care.
Creative Media Source
Creative Media Source is the creative answer to Windows Media Player. It does it all, MPG, AVI, MP3, WAV, MID, etc, and does it all much better then Windows Media Player. However I already use Roxio's Audio Central and I had absolutely no desire to do all the necessary work in terms of defining songs and playlists and genre's that my 1,301 song MP3 collection would require. I'm doing it very slowly, a little here a little there, but it will be awhile before I'm fully using this software for MP3's.
It does, definitely, make MP3's sound better then any other media player I've ever heard. It does this simply by paying insanely close attention to each and every MP3. It doesn't play them, it massages them, it tickles them, and it makes them feel warm and fuzzy on the inside. For starters it grabs from every MP3 in your collection data that enables it to figure out what the tempo and volume of each one is, so that if you enable smart volume management it can keep all of your songs at approximately the same volume. It has options to allow cross fading from one song to the next, and, here I wish I had speakers, it lets you define the exact distance and location that your speakers are from you so that it can send just exactly the right amount of power in the right direction to keep perfect surround sound. There are of course the standard bass and treble controls, but there are also controls that allow you to speed up and slow down songs, define audio effects, "want to listen to this sound as it would sound in a giant church? You can!" Playing guitar music? There is a special setting just to make guitars sound optimally good. Want to do karaoke? No problem! It will cancel out the voices on a song and just leave you the music to sing along to. Have any static or imperfections in your MP3's? No big deal, tell the player how much noise removal and click removal you want it to do, and it'll do it. It makes MP3's sound so much smoother and crisper then I realized was possible.
Anything you have ever desired to do in order to improve or alter your listening experience can be found in this player, and that's that. Oh, and it can convert tracks to and from any format imaginable, and several formats you've never imagined.
Plus it flawlessly burns CD's.
And it files your tax returns.
Okay, maybe not that last one, but all the ones before it I'm serious about.
The Front Panel
The front panel is extensive and amazing in its powers and abilities. There is a quarter inch headphone jack, an optical in/optical out, midi in/midi out, line in/line out, and SDIF in and out. All I use it for is the headphone jack, but I'm sure the others could prove useful if I ever owned anything that could use them.
The back panel
The PCI card itself has 6 gold plated holes. This thing supports true 7.1 audio, it will actually send out seven distinct and unique streams of music if you own the sound system that can handle them. There isn't really much to say about it, it works when I plug in my headphones, and I'm sure it would work if I had a 7.1 audio system too.
The remote
The remote works flawlessly with the DVD player. I can just sit back in my chair and raise/lower the volume, pause, fast forward, rewind, etc etc. Works with the creative media player as well so I can control my MP3's from a distance. This is kind of silly because I have a wireless keyboard/mouse, but if I didn't it would be far more helpful I'm sure.
How does it actually SOUND?
The sound this produces sounds better then real life, it's incomparably flawless, by far the best sound I've ever heard from a computer, and very close to the best sound I've ever heard in my life. My headphones have never sounded this good, period.
All those cool numbers
These are ripped directly from the creative website, and really give a good smack down on showing why this soundcard is so amazing. First, here are the badges it carries: THX Certified, EAX Advanced HD, DVD Audio, 24-Bit, DTS Extended Surround certified, Dolby Digital-EX certified, and ASIO certified. Frequency response is 10hz up to 46khz. Frankly this soundcard redefines what great sound can be from a computer, there's no other way to put it.
OVERALL
Installation: B- (Thanks Brandon!)
Ease of Use:A
Included Software:A
Brand Name:A
Value for the Money:A
Overall:A
I find myself physically unable to imagine how a sound card could possibly be better then this one. Creative has redefined how great sound can sound.
