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Creative Audigy Sound Card


Date
: 11/8/01 – 12:02:39 AM

Author
:

Category
: Sound

Page 1 : Introduction

Manufacturer: Creative

Audigy Products In The US:
- Audigy MP3+ : $99.99
- Audigy Gamer : $99.99
- Audigy Platinum : $199.99
- Audigy Platinum eX : $249.99

Audigy Products In Europe:
- Audigy Player : $99.99
- Audigy Platinum : $199.99
- Audigy Platinum eX : $249.99

Prices are written down as they can be found on the Creative website!

Introduction

Today, we’ll take a look at one of Creative’s latest goodies, the Sound Blaster Audigy sound card. Did you know that Creative has a lot more than just sound cards. They also produce video cards, webcams, CDROM drives, CDRW drivers, etc. BUT their most popular products still are their sound cards and sound (speaker) systems. That’s because Creative Labs was the first company to engineer an affordable sound card, the original Sound Blaster, for PC users back in the good old days. Yes folks, time goes fast when you’re having fun :)

Creative made itself even bigger and more popular when they launched their Sound Blaster Live! range based on the more powerful EMU10k1 chip. For a very long time, the Live! sound card has been the first and only sound solution on the market featuring 5.1 sound, astonishing sound effects, a Live! drive and many more. That’s what made it so extremely popular and wanted by almost every gamer and person who respects quality music in the whole world.

3 years later, the Creative Labs have finished a completely new generation of sound cards based on the Audigy chip. Yep, the Sound Blaster Audigy is born and it immeditately impresses everyone with some amazing specifications. But we will talk more about these later.

For some weird reason, the products sold in Europe are slightly different from these in the US. The Audigy range in the US consists of 4 different models : the MP3+, the Gamer, the Platinum and the Platinum eX. In Europe you can buy the Player version, the Platinum and Platinum eX.
The one we will look today is the most expensive one of all, the Platinum eX.

The Audigy seemed to have everything on board to be a success even before it was available in the stores. But the more important question Creative was worrying about goes as follows: Will Live! owners, who bought a $150 sound card only 2 years ago, still buy a $200 Audigy now? We will try to give you guys an answer to this difficult question in our review. We will also try to figure out if the hardware you get with the Sound Blaster Audigy justifies the $$$ …

Read on as we take the Audigy for a spin … First, we will look at the specifications …

Page 2 : Specifications

Specifications

Here’s a copy/paste of the Audigy Platinum eX’s specifications from the Creative Labs website :

MIDI Features

Synthesizer Chip Audigy
Synthesizer Type Wavetable
Polyphony 64 (with 8-point interpolation)
RAM size Based on System RAM, up to 1GB
Sample Sets 4 and 8 MB
Synthesizer Effects Reverb, Chorus, Flanger, Pitch Shifter, Distortion, etc
MIDI Channels 48
Effects Engine 32-bit

Digital Audio Features

Duplex Type Full
Max. Recording Depth 16-bit
Max. Recording Rate 48kHz
Max. Playback Depth 24-bit
Max. Playback Rate 96kHz
Signal-to-Noise Ratio 100dB
Soundfont Support Yes, including Soundfont 2.1
Built-in Amplifier No

Compatibility

Windows XP Downloadable
Windows ME Yes
Windows 2000 Yes
Windows 98 Yes (Win 98SE required for SB1394 support)
Windows 95 No
Windows NT 4.0 Yes
Windows 3.x No
DOS Yes
Linux No
General MIDI Yes
MPC3 Yes
Plug & Play Yes
Sound Blaster PCI Yes
EAX Support Yes
Microsoft DirectSound Yes
Microsoft DirectSound 3D & Derivatives Yes
PCI 2.1 Yes
AC97 Yes
MPU-401 UART Yes
Dolby Digital 5.1 decoding Yes
EAX Advanced HD Yes
ASIO Support Yes

Connectors

Microphone In Yes
Line In Yes
Line Out (Front)/Speaker Out Yes
Line Out (Rear) Yes
MIDI/Joystick Port Yes, as a separate attachment
MPC3 CD Audio In Yes
Auxiliary In Yes
S/PDIF In Yes(on AudigyDrive)
Telephone Answering Device (TAD) In Yes
24-bit DAC (Digital to Analog Convertor) Yes
24-bit ADC (Analog to Digital Convertor) Yes
Analog/Digital Out Yes (Analog: Center & Subwoofer / Digital : 6-channel S/PDIF)
Digital DIN Support Yes
SB1394 Connector Yes
CD Digital In Yes

Others

4 Speaker Support Yes
Creative MultiSpeaker Surround Yes
Creative Environments Yes
5.1 Speaker Support Yes
Headphone Support Yes
Front/Rear Speaker Level Adjustment Yes
Center Speaker Level Adjustment Yes
Subwoofer Level Adjustment Yes
Crossover Frequency Adjustment Yes (10 – 200Hz)
CreativeWare Program Elilgibility Yes
Dolby Digital 5.1 Pass-through Yes (with Dolby Digital-capable softDVD player)
DTS pass-through Yes (with DTS-capable softDVD player)

AudigyDrive

AudigyDrive Yes, External
S/PDIF Out Yes
Optical In Yes
Optical Out Yes
Aux In 2 Yes
Headphone Out Yes
Line In 2 Yes
Mic In 2 Yes (shared with Line In 2). Supports both dynamic and condenser types.
InfraRed Receiver Yes
Bundled InfraRed Remote Control Yes
Batteries Included Yes

The Specs In Detail

As you can see from the specs above, the Audigy sound cards sure seem to have everything to become rulers of the PC sound empire. Of course an Audigy card still has the features and effects of a Live! sound card, but on top of all that, the Audigy boasts even more kickass features like :

- 24-bit Playback Depth and 96kHz Playback Rate
- 100dB Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR)
- 4 simultaneous multi-environment effects
- ASIO support
- SoundFonts 2.1
- EAX ADVANCED HD
- IEEE 1394 FireWire via SB1394
- PC-to-PC for LAN gaming

Let’s talk about these innovative new specs. First of all, high quality 24-bit playback depth and 96KHz playback rate is very new on sound cards these days. But is do you really get as much as 24-bit and 96KHz? Sadly enough, the answer to this question is NO! Alright, I think this needs some explanation and frankly, we asked Creative this same question when O attented the Audigy Press Tour a couple of months ago. Here’s what Creative told us … The Audigy performs all internal processing at 48KHz instead of the 96KHz they mention on the box and in the specs. However, pure and simple 96KHz playback is supported. Also interesting to know is that all recording can only be done in up to 16bit at 48KHz, just like on a SB Live!. To conclude the 24bit story, I’d like to note that Creative have reached a higher sound quality with their Audigy chip, especially when you’re really into sound processing. Cubase users with Audigy cards will know what I’m talking about.

What’s probably interesting to all the gamers is that the Audigy sound processor allows the card to play and mix up to 4 multi-environment effects at the same time. That’s 4 times the processing power of a SB Live! which can only do one single effect at a time. All these effects are accelerated by EAX ADVANCED HD. This is Creative’s new name for what can be called the successor of the popular EAX1 and EAX2. Other effects of the new reverb engine are Environment Morphing, Environment Panning, Environment Reflections and Environment Filtering. All these features should help the Audigy owners to create a much more realistic gaming environment. Let me tell you briefly about these new effects :

- Environment Morphing : To me, this is the most significant change of the Audigy compared to the effects we’ve seen so far on other cards. The morphing effect allows smooth transitions between different environments. For example, if you’re walking in a tunnel or something and you listen to the footsteps, you will hear some kind of echo, right? Well now, when you exit the tunnel and you enter an open area, the echo effects will stop immediately! At least, it used to be this way, because now, with the Audigy sound cards, the echo effect is morphed with the open area sound without you noticing it ;) Really cool feature!

- Environment Panning : I just know this feature is highly appreciated by every self-respecting hardcore gamer! What does it do? Well, in short, it lets you experience the sound of an object from behind a wall for example. You can almost feel the object coming your way when it is moving.

- Environment Reflections : This one isn’t new on the block. It already exists as a part of Aureal’s A3D technology, but now it’s also included in the SB Audigy cards. This effects allows the gamer to experience real-world sounds like a birds singing in the trees with the singing bouncing against the wall of a house and back into the eares of the listener. Gamers are also quite fond of this effect because it allows them to keep better track of their location at that time.

- Environment Filtering : The last effect in our discussion is the filtering capability of the SB Audigy. By filtering the sound, the Audigy simulates indoor and outdoor effects much more accurately than before … For example, a large blast a couple of miles away or the sound of an engine running in your garage.

So far, we only talked about what the Audigy has to offer the gamers, but of course, Creative doesn’t want to sell this product ONLY to a gamer. That’s why EAX ADVANCED HD also has a couple of new music technologies under the hood. The Audigy still doesn’t support full 5.1 Dolby Digital Decoding onboard. This is no different on the Live! 5.1 soundcards however.

- Audio Clean-Up : this will help to remove those annoying cracks and pops from your good old LPs or tapes. You can also suppress the hiss from the recorded audio to clear up the songs.

- DREAM : Dynamic Repositioning of Enhanced Audio & Music … this feature will simply take a 2-channel stereo source and turn it into a multi-channel surround sound by cutting the frequency range in several pieces.

- Time-Scaling : No doubt on my mind that DJs will find this a great feature of an Audigy soundcard. It can slow down or speed up all kinds of sounds (a voice for example) without changing the pitch of the audio.

- Audio Effects : The Audigy provides you with a list of environmental audio presets like Auditorium sound, Concert Hall effects, etc. You can set it to pretty much anything you want.

IEEE1394, FireWire, iLink, and now … SB1394! Oops, I guess my previous sentence demands some explanation. The IEEE1394 interface has many different (and easier?) names given by hardware manufacturers. While Apple calls it FireWire, which I think is the most popular name, Sony likes to call it iLink and now we have Creative naming it the SB1394. Jesus, isn’t this becoming a little too complicated? Anyway, the SB1394 is Creative’s solution to connect your IEEE1394 devices to your computer. The good thing is that Creative tries to test as much hardware as possible to check out if that device works with the SB1394 or not.

Wouldn’t it be nice to use the SB1394 interface to connect your rigs together and share data or play LAN games @ 400 Mbps bandwith? Well guess what … the SB Audigy allows you to do just that with their SB1394 interface. It supports up to 63 devices hooked up in a daisy chain. Doesn’t that make you drool? ;)

Sony cam on SB1394

Let’s see what you can expect in the box …

Page 3 : In The Box

In The Box

What do we see in the box after we opened it up and threw away the packaging (Remember that we have the Platinum eX version) :

- SB Audigy card
- External Audigy drive
- One bracket to connect the Audigy drive
- Remote Control
- All the necessary (power)cables and connectors
- Quick Installer
- Software

I have to admit that the package looks really impressive if you take a good look at it. Not only does it come with just about everything you need, but the box is also very solid so your Audigy and Audigy Drive won’t get damaged during transportation. To me, this is a really important issue on every piece of hardware! As you can see on the little list above, the box consists out of 3 pieces. First piece and the most important part one of the package is the SB Audigy itself! Second is the External Audigy drive which comes only with the Audigy Platinum eX and the last pieces (like the R/C, etc.) can be catalogued as accessoires.

Like I said earlier in the review, the box has all the cables you need to properly install the Audigy solution into/onto your computer.

The Quick Install manual certainly provides every newbie with enough information he/she needs to get the Audigy up and running. Sadly enough, their’s no 100-page manual you can read in your chair when you have a lot of spare time, but hey, Creative has included it on the CDROM as a .pdf file. You can just print it out and you’re ready to read :p

Once you have installed the main Audigy card into a free PCI slot, you will notice that there’s another expansion card in the package. This also needs to be installed in the case to provide the connection between the external drive and the SB Audigy inside the case. This results in the fact that our Audigy Platinum eX requires 2 available PCI slots (1 for the Audigy card and 1 for the bracket).

The Audigy box is also filled with great software to work with. Next to the programs like the PlayCenter 3, the RemoteCenter (for use with the R/C), the Surround Mixer and so on … Creative also has included programs for the more experienced music lovers out there. I’m talking about Vienna SoundFont Studio 2.3 to work with the SoundFont 2.1 format and last but not least, a full version of Cubasis VST for professional MIDI recording using the soundbanks. Really cool stuff if you can plug a MIDI keyboard in the Audigy. I even tried to make a song to put online along with this review, but because my keyboard play is really bad, the tunes are just not good enough to publish. You guys would ust laugh at me … Trust me on this one :p

What does the Audigy Platinum eX has to offer in terms of connectivity?

- On the Audigy card, we have the standard 5.1 connectors like Analog and Digital Out (front, rear, center and subwoofer), Line In, Mic In and the SB1394 connector. And where’s the MIDI and analog joystick connector? Well, it had to make room for the SB1394 connector BUT the good news is that you can buy yet another small expansion bracket with an analog MIDI/joystick port.

- The bracket holds the connectors to link the Audigy Drive to the Audigy card

- And finally, the Audigy Drive … this drive looks very similar to a Live! Drive. There’s only one difference. Can you see it? Right, it’s the SB1934 conntors next to the MIDI In/Out. Furthermore, the Audigy Drive has the SPDIF In and Out connectors which are great if you want to attach your DVD player to the Audigy, Optical In/Out (MD, DAT), Auxiliary In (to hook up a video player for example), the headphones connector and volume button and Line In 2/Mic 2 (Guitar, Mic) also with volume button.

Now that we know what the SoundBlaster Audigy should be capable of and how many devices we can plug in this sound card, I believe it’s time to have a look at how it performs. That’s what we’re about to do on the next page …

Page 4 : Testing

Testing

System setup

- AOpen HQ45 case
- AMD Athlon 1.4GHz
- IWill KK266plus-R Mainboard (onboard 5.1 sound disabled)
- A non-conductive shim was used to protect the CPU (Supplied by CPUfx)
- Swiftech MCX370-0A cooler
- 256MB OCZ Performance Max SDRAM
- Hercules Geforce2 GTS Videocard
- IBM 20GB UDMA100 7200rpm hard drive
- Windows 2000 Pro AND Windows XP Pro + VIA 4in1 4.35 Official
- nVidia Detonator 21.83

Impressions

First of all, let me tell you that I didn’t have any problems installing the SB Audigy in Windows 2000 Pro or Windows XP Pro because Creative released a new driverset on their website not very long ago. I also decided to use a motherboard based on the VIA KT133A chipset, because of the problems that have been reported when trying to install a SB Live! on VIA-based motherboards. I agree that most of these problems can be solved by just running a BIOS update, but in some rare other cases, the Live! just failes to work properly. In these cases, the user who has spend all his $$$ on an expensive SB Live! and a new VIA-based motherboard is really screwed :(

So, did I experience any trouble with the SB Audigy on my VIA KT133A board? I give you a quick and simple NO! I’ve been using the Audigy for almost a month now, and so far I didn’t even hear one single crack or drop-out. I also haven’t heard any complaints about this problem from any other users who combine a VIA board with the SB Audigy.

So how does the card handle :

- Games? The best way to test a soundcard and a speakerset, is to do the things it is made for. And the Audigy is certainly made for games. The sound realism is very impressive. The new reverb engine increase that realism a LOT! Of course, the quality of 3D audio depends a great deal on the type of speakers that you’re using. You have to know that $20 speakers won’t allow you to hear the complete Audigy capabilities. Games sound really sweet on this Audigy sound card, but without support for the new effects of an Audigy, you will experience the same joy with a Live!. So, I guess we’ll have to wait till these new Audigy effects are implemented heh.

- Movies? Enjoying a DVD movie together with the SB Audigy, a good speakerset and pack of crackers feels like heaven. I played several DVD movies this past month and I enjoyed watching them all for the 10th time because the 5.1 sound is really crystal clear, even when you turn up the volume and that’s extremely important!

- Music? When Audio Clean-Up and the EAX ADVANCED HD audio effects join forces, the quality of the music that’s coming through the speakers certainly increases quite a bit. Nevertheless, I should say that I didn’t hear any difference between the time the Audio Clean-UP was turned on and the time it was turned off. There’s no real use for it when you just play ordinary MP3s you just backupped from the CD you bought the other day. BUT when you are a genuine Elvis maniac, you might have some older MP3s with hiss, clicks and pops. The Audio Clean-Up can handle the removal of these clicks and stuff with the utmost ease. The quality of the audio is clear and pure. Your speakers will offer much better trebles and basses compared to a $20 sound card. But compared to a SB Live! ??

Page 5 : Conclusion

Conclusion

Good

- High quality sound card
- 5.1 sound
- External Audigy drive
- Many inputs and outputs
- SB1394 with 400Mbps LAN support
- Superb/Increased sound quality
- R/C

Bad

- Requires 2 available PCI slots
- Not all that much better than a Live!
- Expensive

So, what’s our conclusion about the SB Audigy from Creative Labs? What do overclockers think about it? Well, since we are not really specialized in reviewing sound cards, we do not have much to compare the sound quality too; BUT let me tell you just one thing here … the Audigy rocks! After using it for about a month now, that’s only conclusion I can draw. If you look at the specs and the performance, the Audigy is way better than every other competing product on the market today. But does that justify the price tag? You really want my opinion? NO! The downside to all this is that the Audigy costs a whole lot of $$$ and personally I don’t have the need for a high end 5.1 sound card like the Audigy. The conclusion is that if you have a SB Live! 5.1 with Live! Drive, just keep it and don’t buy an Audigy! On the other hand, when you’re messing around with a $20 sound solution or onboard sound, the Audigy is one of the best 5.1 solutions available today! It’s up to you to figure out if you have a need for this kind of card …