Audigy 2

[Embattle]

It costs about £85 and comes with two full games, Soldier of Fortune 2 and Hitman 2 and is a rather nice card although like all creative soundcards there are the odd niggles such as one of the apps not working quite right.

On the whole though well worth it.

 

[S-Gray]

doesnt sound a Bad price that, considering you get 2 games which are worth what? £20/30 each?


might ask Santa if i can have one for Christmas

 

[lovedaddy]

ugh

Still doesn't produce real DD5.1 streams on the fly. Only the nForce does, I'll wait for the nForce 2

 

[Embattle]

Well since I have an external decoder it doesn't matter, not that it mattered that much when I didn't have an external decoder.

 

[Xavier]

There's a whole lot more to the Audigy2 than that Emb, for one it's the first PC soundcard to get TXH certification - secondly the new 24bit/192Khz means the card is the only current solution to play DVD-Audio in a PC.

The chip hasn't changed much though - 6.1 sound is all good and well but getting 5.1 round even a generous sized gaming area is quite a feat!

 

[Yaka]

the THX certification should be THX select, not that it makes much difference

 

[Embattle]

Originally posted by Xavier
There's a whole lot more to the Audigy2 than that Emb, for one it's the first PC soundcard to get TXH certification - secondly the new 24bit/192Khz means the card is the only current solution to play DVD-Audio in a PC.

The chip hasn't changed much though - 6.1 sound is all good and well but getting 5.1 round even a generous sized gaming area is quite a feat!

Oh I know...it can now output at 24bit instead of the Audigy which could only convert at 24bit then output at 16bit.

It has many worthwhile features.

 

[Xavier]

iirc audigy did output @24 bit, but the inputs were only 16 bit, they're 24 now too.

 

[Scooba Da Bass]

Originally posted by Xavier
Secondly the new 24bit/192Khz means the card is the only current solution to play DVD-Audio in a PC.

Uhm, no, what you think we've been using to make 24/192?

 

[Embattle]

Actually iirc the old Audigy DACs were 24bit 96kHz but it's sampling wasn't, now the Audigy 2 can sample at 24bit 96kHz too.

 

[FuZor]

I'll pass thanks, I'm still waiting for Creative to fix the Audigy ONE!

 

[legendario]

gah , i'm gonna sell meh audigy 1 now

I want teh crappy games

 

[bodhi]

I'm still on a SoundBlaster Live! Value (the first Live that came out). And if that hadn't come free with the PC I bought at the time, I'd prolly still be on an AWE 64 :/

 

[Happy Go Lucky]

heh bodhi the early adopter,

I'm still using a SB 128

 

[Testin da Cable]

Originally posted by bodhi
I'm still on a SoundBlaster Live! Value (the first Live that came out). And if that hadn't come free with the PC I bought at the time, I'd prolly still be on an AWE 64 :/

ditto. but in my case it would be AWE32, a foot long isa card iirc.

 

[Embattle]

LOL

 

[Testin da Cable]

and it always worked fine too only reason I got the live/value is because a mobo I upgraded to no longer had an isa slot handy

 

[legendario]

Originally posted by Happy Go Lucky
heh bodhi the early adopter,

I'm still using a SB 128

I may be wrong but i think they came out after the SB live value.

 

[Embattle]

Got my money back the other day, too many niggles in the end.

 

[(Shovel)]

for thsoe interested, you can get the (old) Soundblaster Live! Platinum 5.1 direct from the Creative Labs website for £50 now. It's the one with the LiveDrive (which I think sells for around £50 on its own..) and remote control. Also has a version of Cubasis VST in there.

We just got one for the families new PC, probably the best £50 we'll spend on a computer part seeing as we don't need any 24 bit malarky

 

[danger]

lol I still have a soundblaster 16 in my p75.. lol well it's a p150 these days with 64mb ram.. It orriginally had 8mb of ram a diamond stealth 64 GFX lol... and a 500mb HDD.........

Mind you I still have a PET up in the loft..... err and an Amstrad with a 5 1/4" FDD and monochrome monitor (can't remember the other specs)....

anyone else got any old junk poota's tucked away?

 

[lovedaddy]

im using

just to say, people might want to consider the nForce2 mb for sound + processor solution. Im using an nForce at work, just upgraded the driver to 1.13. very impressive stuff, seems like the det driver quality is making its way over to nForce. imho, craps on the sblive efforts

 

[Xavier]

heh, aside from the extra channel (6.1 as opposed to 5.1) and the DVD-Audio support, the APU on the nForce2 MCP-T whups Audigy2

 

[bodhi]

Yeah but most people don't want to be stuck on a shit processor to get decent sound quality tho.

 

[Xavier]

 

[bodhi]

:sleeping:

 

[Happy Go Lucky]

Welcome news?

I was shopping for a new sound card, and came across this (from tecnation link to gamepc.com review of audigy2.



Update (11/26/2002) : Creative has informed us that the Audigy2 CAN decode Dolby Digital 5.1 / 6.1 content without the use of a seperate decoder. The Audigy 2 has built-in Dolby Digital decoding of AC-3 audio streams. Also important to keep in mind that the Audigy is capable of decoding 5.1 and 6.1 audio streams, while the nVidia nForce2 is only capable of encoding and decoding in 5.1.

 

[lovedaddy]

Yes, the audigy can decode 5.1/6.1 streams. Example, being able to listen to your DVDs in 5.1/6.1 using the creative speaker sets that dont come with a decoder. You could connect your Audigy to the amp via 3 * 3.5mm headphone jacks, and have the Audigy do the decoding of the 5.1 stream for you.

"Also important to keep in mind that the Audigy is capable of decoding 5.1 and 6.1 audio streams, while the nVidia nForce2 is only capable of encoding and decoding in 5.1."

The nForce is different, it can only only decode the 5.1 streams from DVDs (or any other pre-coded streams) - missing out the audio for the rear centre channel. I think SW:Ep1 was the first film to use 6.1 sounds.

HOWEVER, notice this "capable of encoding and decoding in 5.1".
DVD's 5.1/6.1 streams are pre-coded. All you need to do is decode this information to reproduce the sound stage. But if you wish to have games, that create streams on the fly, only the nForce can do this.

 

[Happy Go Lucky]

say for eg. Doom 3 has 5.1 sound, does that mean it is pre-coded?

So what you are saying for any other game that may/or not have 5.1 or 4.1 sound the nforce 2 will encode the sound to a 5.1 or a 4.1 format in to your surround speakers.

 

[Scooba Da Bass]

Originally posted by lovedaddy
HOWEVER, notice this "capable of encoding and decoding in 5.1".
DVD's 5.1/6.1 streams are pre-coded. All you need to do is decode this information to reproduce the sound stage. But if you wish to have games, that create streams on the fly, only the nForce can do this.

Sorry for butting in here, as this isn't really my field, BUT, does the encoding not take place in software regardless, which is then passed onto the soundcard to be decoded? It strikes me as being odd that you need a sound card to create a 5.1/6.1 stream when it's just a way of multiplexing seperate streams into a single transmittable channel.