Audigy Opinions - post em here

[AuraEdge]

I opened the opinion's to the Audigy's realeased news, and i found nothing but creative bashing there.

Now Ive seen the specs, and to me they dont mean much, because all the Sound Tech-ese doesnt mean much to me.

I wanna know what you people think of the Audigy (Preferably people who understand what the different sound terms mean).

I dont want to hear opinions on the creative name, and I dont wanna hear how your sick of the Live! and wont buy another creative card. I also dont wanna hear "too little too late". I wanna know what you think of the Audigy card as a sound card. I know its hard to judge strictly from specs and with no one ever hearing the card. How do the specs compare with the Acoustic Edge, Santa Cruz, and GTXP? The AEdge is my fav so far, (Besides it sharing my screennamesake ) and I was gunna get that soon. Audigys creeping up on the scene and I wanna know how it compares with these cards.

Basically, what's the Audigy, and hows it fit into today's compitition?

[RobRich]

The Philips Edge series of sound cards is hard to beat in terms of "bang for ya' buck" potential. The QLab's Thunderbird128 DSP is one of the most powerful desktop (non-professional) audio processors available.

I just glanced through the spec page, but I didn't notice any information about harmonic distortion, signal to noise ratios, or other detailed technical data. I'll reserve judgement until Creative delivers the tech documents for the base chipset.

Robert Richmond

[VERT]

I never really had too many problems with my SoundBlaster Live Value, I had it for a good 2 years. I have now upgraded to The Gametheatre XP, because of the supperior sound quality and in which I can really notice a difference. Its good to see that creative are bringing out a new chip, but honestly at the moment I dont think I will be going back to creative, perhaps sometime in the future...

[Brian48]

I'll be getting it.

[BBA]

So you only want "good" opinions when you ask for opinions?

I guess the features it has are good and can do 4 effects simultaneously...very good...bravo...

It's probably a great card... still does not compete with other new cards.

[Atomic Rooster]

Great. Another overpriced Soundblaster™ card. Just what the world needs.

[AuraEdge]

I'm not asking for just "good" opinions. I want opinions based on hardware, not on the creative name or previous soundblaster experiences.
I mean what if the Audigy was a....sony card or something? For example, if we all reserved our past stigmas against companies, we would never have found out about Athlons awesome FPU
Basically I dont want opinions based on past opinions of the Live or Creative.
I use an SBLive to this day, since I got one back in 98' I believe. The only update I got for it was up to a 5.1 Model when I put the SBLive i had into my moms comp. I've had none of these problems stated. I've run Win95,98,ME and now 2000, even on two VIa boards witht he 686b Southbridge through its duration, and I havent had a single problem.

Thats not to mean they dont exist though.

But back to the point. How does it stack up to current competitors?

Rob, Thanks for your synopsis of your current opinion on the Audigy. I realize it's difficult to judge a sound card by its cover...maybe even impossible. Maybe I should play the game and just wait...Its not like the Klipsch 5.1's are available right now anyways.

BBA, how can you tell it doesnt stack up to current cards? Is it lack of features? and if so, what features?

I'm an Audiofile, but not a Soundcardphile, sorry if I come off as irrational, but I just wanna learn more about the Audigy.

[BBA]

It only supports creatives EAX and EAX HD extensions, where all other new crop of cards support Sensaura™, EAX™, A3D™, DS3D, IA3D. Most even support EAX2, which even the live does not support.

The TBSC has three independant hi fidelity stereo DAC's ( 20 bit each I think ) for 6 discrete channels ( not a single DAC multiplexed to all channels ) with hardware 10 band DSP equalization, and it's sound quality was verified higher than ANY other current PC sound card ( barr some professional cards not tested ). I know the Audigy boasts a hi fidelity DACs as well...but will it be as good? It can't really get any better.

The Audigy does some neat effects I have never heard, which means no games have support for either. I do know the new games will use A3D and 5.1 sound...havent heard of any of the new games ( like Doom2, Quake4, Duke Nukem 4ever ) using CL's new extensions or even planning to use them.

I just see that you will get everything the Audigy boast from cards that exist already and are cheaper. It is a disapointment in CL that they stretched their Live series so far they now look stupid...in short they got lazy and now they should have to pay for it, not make me pay more for their belated greatest overpriced card. ( I bet it will cost more than the TBSC )

Another aspect I don't like is the TBSC for example is optimized for MP3 acceleration, 3D gaming and multi source recording...where the live series has a seperate card for each of those things...unless you want to pay $200+ for the CL version optimized for all in one Live/Audigy card.

In short, I think the marketing department is driving the Audigy more than the engineering department. When that happens, profit is more important than product quality. Thats just business.

[jad1097]

BBA AFAIK the Live, Live MP3, Live x-gamer and the Platinum are all the same card with different software. Of course the platinum is the only one that come with the Live drive.

One thing I can tell you about the Audigy that I see that I don't like is the min sys. requirments. Since when does a sound card require 600MB's of disk space and 64MB of ram!


I think we will have to wait for reviews to see if this card is any better than the ones currently availible.

[vass0922]

About the new features Audigy supports
When Live! first came out, how many people had heard of EAX?

For that matter when Pentium Pro came out how many games supported MMX?

NOW look at them?
many games support EAX, and now games require the extra instruction sets of MMX.

[BBA]

To answer that question, Unreal did EAX, right out of the box, as did many games...before the first SB-Live ctually came out.

I had bought a PCI128 to do EAX way back then just because of Unreal. It was pretty cool, hearing things move all the way around you with 4 speakers for the first time.

[zak326]

I bought the Audigy Platinum ex for $250 about 2 months ago and it simply won't work. first both the card and the cd were bad and had to be replaced. Since then I have spent about 100 hours with creative and other resources trying to get the thing to wor. I have a pentium 4 1.7 gghz machine with 512 rdram. one would think. My SBlive 5.1 +mp3 works in the machine fine. Anyone who tries to tell you the card is cool isx right when it works. I only know that there are 5,000 people who purchased it that have signed a petition to the president of Creative and it is my understanding they are filing a class action lawsuit.

The long and the short of it is, that they released this card before xp came out and were having some problems and never prepared for the xp rollout. I have had their products for years and have sworn by them. This is a real shame. I am now looking for an alternative. Anyone got any ideas? :o

[Kurylo]

Audigy is cool, but very expensive for me ($250)...

[Brian48]

The Audigy is great card in my opinion. There are two many people out there that's still pissed off because of their negative experiences with the SBLive (which uses an ancient chipset if you think about it). Since upgrading from my old Santa Cruz, I've bought two more to take advantage of the firewire support.

Regarding the Platinum and Ex packages, they've never worked reliably even with the SBLive. This is always the case when you have an external controller box dependent on an internal sound card. The Herc GTXP has the same problem with unreliable multi-speaker and USB support, although a lot of GTXP owners won't admit it (Yeah, I had one of those too). Either way, even if you get it to work OK, I think they're way overpriced. At least the Herc GTXP OEM can be had for less than $100 at most online vendors.

As far as "bang for buck" or overpriced, that's a lot bull**** also. The Audigy OEM is only $60 (or less) and except for the color coded connectors (vice gold plated ones), it's identical to the retail box. It's an even bigger bargain if you ever plan on buying a firewire compatible device as separate firewire PCI cards are still pricey right now.

[AuraEdge]

Wow, this one got dug up
I bought my Acoustic Edge already..I'm plenty happy, even in XP, but only after finding some beta drivers somewhere on the net.
I just dont like that dongle thing it comes with, but I guess if I actually used the other ports, I wouldnt be complaining.

I've heard alot of Creative bashing lately (maybe justified...who knows), So I just bought the AEdge since it seemed to have alot of features I wanted.