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Defferences between Audigys?

B

bassboy_pete

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 16, 2003
Messages
178
What is the card difference between the Audigy 2 ZS, and t he Audigy 2 ZS Platninum? I know the Plat has the liveDrive or whatever its called, but is there any difference between the card at all?

Thanks
 
no difference what so ever.

now when it comes to the audigy gamer, mp3, hell you got me, i havent the foggiest.
 
I doubt that there is any serious difference between the cards. Hell, even an Audigy or Live can be made to run the latest Creative drivers.
 
CodeWaste said:
no difference what so ever.

now when it comes to the audigy gamer, mp3, hell you got me, i havent the foggiest.
Click to expand...

The Gamer and MP3+ were differentiated by software bundles. As far as hardware is concerned, all Audigy 2's are very similer in terms of processing, but differ in DAC's and the like.
 
so what would be the difference between the DACs and the like? In fact, I don't even know what DACs are.
 
The differences are just DACs, number of speaker outputs, and which versions of EAX are in hardware (mostly 3 or 4, and HD or not). Thats it.

DACs are Digital to Analogue Convertors. They determine the samplerate your card is outputting, IE the ZS is 192khz/24bit at 118db/SNR vs 92khz/24bit 108db/SNR on the plain Audigy2, I think...anyhow yeah...DACs...
 
The DACs and capabilities between the Audigy 2 and 2 ZS are not that different (if at all.)

Both feature 24bit/192khz in stereo mode.
Both do 24bit/96khz in anything greater than stereo. (4, 4.1, 5.1, 6.1, 7.1).

They both have the same main processor. CA0102-ICT. Because of this any time you do something with the onboard effects processor your sound gets sampled down to 48khz.

The Audigy 2 is rated at 106 SNR. The 2 ZS is 108. I forget what weighting and power that was at, but they were both the same. So the 2 ZS is technically quiter. SNR is widely used as a bogus marketing number in the consumer sound card market, so don't put a lot of thought into a sound card's SNR.

The only functional difference between a 2 and a 2 ZS is that the ZS has 7.1 sound and the 2 has 6.1.

That's it.
 
Just a bit more....

So it boils down like this:

If you aren't in to games, but like the music and don't necessarily care about getting the very very best sound in mulichannel mode...get a Chaintech AV-710.

If you want all of the good stuff about the Chaintech + the hardware acceleration/DSP effects for games...get an Audigy 2 or 2 ZS.

If you want the absolute best sound to all channels for music and movie watching, but don't need every last frame per second of performance (or if you have a really fast setup and can afford a 5FPS hit in Doom3 for example)......get a Revolution 7.1 or 5.1.

and I'll just throw these two in here for kicks...

If you just want top of the line music reproduction and recording look at the EMU 0404 and 1212. No multichannel theatre modes or any of that stuff. Just the best/cleanest sound source to can plug into a PC.

If you just don't care about quality, hardware acceleration, multichannel formats, etc...
Use your onboard sound, or go get a Chaintech AV-710 because they are ultra cheap ($25US) and destroy onboard solutions.
 
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