Soundblaster Audigy Hands-on

I personally don't notice squat difference with an SB 16, MX 300 or Sb live - I turn all 3d BULLSHIT off, because it's nothing but propaganda and rubbish in my opinion, I'll wait for the true true dolby certified setups to be released before I consider losing frames on bullshit 3d audio specifications.

I run all my cards in stereo - they all sound the same, cept the mx 300 has shit win2k drivers, and the live (MIGHT) be the cause of some crashing on my box :( - might switch back to the SB16 in the cupboard

Dual P2-400 + Win2k + Creative = buggiest piece of shit ever known to man sound wise.

I replaced my Aureal card with this damn thing because I thought "well crap, Creative fucking got me. They bought my sound card's company, they're claiming they'll contract someone to finish my drivers, but they won't. Guess I'm stuck with a Creative card so that it'll have new drivers written for it" HAH, boy was I in for a shock.

DAY 1

Bring SBLive 5.1 X-Gamer home, pull out my excellent card with no driver support any longer (Aureal SQ2500), replace it with my Creative card. Boot up, wrestle with a driver install that begs every way it can to shove 150MB of horse shit on my drive. Reboot. Win2k start up screen. CRASH. *scratch head* Start machine again. Win2k start up screen. CRASH. *looks longingly at his SQ2500, but knows he can't go back* Boot into Safe Mode with Network. Back up system. Reformat JUST because of a fucking sound card. System now works except for this annoying tendency to skip in any sound/video/midi file played by Windows media.

A FEW MONTHS LATER
Install Tribes 2, expecting bugs out the ass. Everything surprisingly works the first time. Go into the game, turn EAX on in a game for the first time with this card. Sound goes apeshit and falls apart. Switch to 2 speaker mode, still using Direct Sound. Sound pops, scratches, and makes weird noises sometimes, but works more or less. Bitch about Tribes 2. Still play it.

A MONTH OR SO AFTER THAT
Install Motocross Madness 2, worse audio problems than Tribes 2. Sound pops, scratches, gets EXTREMELY loud, then cuts out completely. No settings in the game can fix it. Investigate Control Panel, turn sound acceleration down just below the level where DirectSound is used. Sound now has latency, but software mode fixes ALL sound related issues, including media player skipping and Tribes 2. Unfortunately, this means no EAX, and no surround sound in DVDs.

A MONTH OR SO LATER
Creative says they are uncertain whether they will support SMP or not, while a beta release of Win2k 3300a drivers is NOT available on their beta tester page to at least TRY to appease SMP users. I hunt for two days to find it, install it. Turn DirectSound acceleration back up. Media player still fucks up, but I can suddenly use DirectSound and EAX in my games about 7 or 8 months after I bought it. Turns out it's because of the simple bug that Creative lets their shit multi-thread freely across both procs, and things tend to (surprise) get out of sync while doing that.

I will never buy another Creative card.

One question that many will ask when hearing about new features such as an improved 3D audio engine and support for early reflections in the new EAX Advanced HD is if Creative Labs used any of AurealÂ’s technology. The answer to that question is no, and Creative Labs also said they have no intention to ever using it. The reason, according to Creative Labs, was simply that the Audigy chip already been too long in development when the Aureal IP assets acquisition was approved. They now also consider their own technology superior to what Aureal had at the time so future improvements will build on whatÂ’s available in the Audigy chip and drivers rather than what they got from Aureal.

What the hell!?

Aureal's tech was so supurb, I highly doubt Creative can compete with even their new shit. They're making a massive mistake here I bet. Anyone here even partially disagree?

Kind of disappointed that the 3dsoundsurge guys didn't do fps benchmarks with this sound card in various modes (wav output, directsound, Eax 1, EAX 2) like they tended to do in the past.

I'm not upgrading to this new sound card.I have a couple of live's that work just fine and can't see putting money where it's not needed.

What would be really cool to see in some sound card or another would be onboard MP3 decoding.

Is there any reason to buy a Creative card anymore? With nForce coming out later this month, and the Audigy apparently being a shitty product, why would anyone buy one?

Attention Sound Blaster Live Owners! You won't be supported any farther now that the Audity is going to be released. Expect a driver update for Sound Blaster Live! for Windows XP in 2010.

From the "What I think of my new Audigy card" thread (http://www.3dsoundsurge.com/cgi-bin/wwwthreads/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=Forum22&Number=35809&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=):

...The digital out jack ONLY provides digital out in single channel PCM mode (front speakers only). So, now that I'm using the center/sub out system, I can't use my digital jack. If you try to use a splitter, it muffles whichever channel you split.

* C O P Y P R O T E C T I O N ' D *

...I'm not real pleased... coulda been better. What I want is a digital out to plug into my home audio receiver that will give me my audio output in 2, 2.1, 4, 4.1, or 5.1 output (whichever I select). Apparently, this is too much to ask for, so I'd settle for the same with analog outputs and good EAX implimentation.
After all this time, Creative STILL didn't get it right. Sheesh!

Looks like it's a loser.

Anyone know of a sound card that does 5.1 that isnt a Live! card?

Or could someone at least boost my spirits a little and tell me the 98 Live! Drivers arent as buggy as the Win2k ones?

Get a good look fellas, this is the landscape of soundcards for the next four years.

A3d cards ruled.

HAAAAAAAAAHAHAHHAH

way to go soundblaster

3 years since the sblive and the next 'gen' card you come out with is no better (in fact not even as good) as an aureal sq2500, which is a quasi dead card (winxp has new drivers)

i mean shit, no mp3/dsp acceleration??? even the damn aureal card which NEVER CAME OUT, the a3d 3.0 cards had it
and now this is just getting into wavetracing?? holy shit creative, you guys just suck...

wheres that gamer extreme card anyways..... hehe =D

What is the best no creative labs sound card? Especially for gaming, that is AMD Athlon friendly. Just wondering if such a beast exist.

minimum system requirements:
<snip>
600 mb of free hard disk space

wtf?

Speaking of Sound Blaster, I bought a SB Live 5.1 this weekend. I installed the drivers and now my computer wont start.

Fun fun fun!

SB Live + Win2k = Ouch

Time for a Hercules! GG SOUNDBALSTER!!!

http://www.3dsoundsurge.com/cgi-bin/wwwthreads/postlist.pl?Cat=&Board=Forum22

There is a good discussion in the thread "What I think of my Audigy card". I think the by word here is, don't be an early adopter of Creative cards.

"Certain applications do not work with Dual Processor support under Windows NT4.0 or Windows 2000."

What a piece of crap this new sound card is. I don't want one and I hope I never have one.

With all the bad press, worse driver problems, and even worse support, I expect Creative to pump up their OEM contracts. That's pretty much the only place where they'll get definite sales (that and the CompUSSR stores with the idiot salespeople who could sell ice to an Eskimo).

From what I've seen, almost absolutely nothing has changed from the SBLive. A 32-bit effects engine means absolutely dick if it still records only 16-bit and plays 24-bit. And when will Creative ever learn that people don't want 600 megs of utter crap? They want a soundcard that works. I already have one; it's the Hercules Game Theater XP, and it only needed a 13.6 MB download (8 of that being the soundfont for the MIDI). Plus, I could run in 4-speaker mode with any program that uses sound, not to mention that you could access almost all sound controls with sndvol32. Creative can't even come close to that.

woh there. 600 megs of HD space. thats alot of useless software and spyware.

Review==geared only to games==useless to me :[

Is there any review focusing on the sampling and real *cough* sound characteristics of the card (SNR, output power, etc.)?

creative is to soundcards as realplayer is to streaming

a bunch of useless fucking un-necessary CRAP installed alongside the actual product that is almost impossible to uninstall :(

I wonder if this works with VIA chipsets...