Sound Blaster Audigy 2

C

Cody8417

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 15, 2004
Messages
203
Hey all,

I've been rocking an Audigy 2 for ages at this point. How does this compare to current onboard audio solutions or the audio from a Radeon HD 5000 series?

The motherboard i have is the MSI 760GM-P23.

Thanks!
Cody
 
The signal to noise ratio for your mobo's on-board audio is certainly not as good as the Audigy card.

Since you mention the audio from your GPU, I'm assuming that audio over HDMI is something you can do. I'd say if you're able to, then give it a shot, it might be worth listening to through your AV system. Maybe you'd like it better. Tough to say.

The only reason I moved from my X-Fi to the PCI-e card I have now was because the PCI slot on my board wasn't available with SLI in use.
 
I have a audgy 2 and a pci sound blaster xi-fi and a pci express xi-fi.

the pci-E version works like the old pci one..
lga 2011 motherboards like the rampage 4 extreme dont have normal pci slots anymore anyway


you can try one of these I did not look at it to see if it is as good as a audgy 2

http://us.creative.com/p/sound-blaster/sound-blaster-audigy-rx


if the old one still fits there is drivers no reason to change.
 
Cube said:
if the old one still fits there is drivers no reason to change.
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Agreed. Outside of some specific use-case scenarios, OP's not likely to gain much from changing the card out for something else.
 
cortexodus said:
Agreed. Outside of some specific use-case scenarios, OP's not likely to gain much from changing the card out for something else.
Click to expand...
Seconded. I've been through several generations of audio cards and nothing has been able to top the audio quality of my original Audigy. Unfortunately I fried it by accident :(.
 
The Audigy cards were pretty nice back in the day.

Having almost always used Creative Labs cards, here is my take on their cards.

This is based on the cards that had the real HW chips in them. None of the cut-down cards are worth it.

Audigy cards had a bit better sound quality than the Live! cards.
X-fi cards have a bit better soud quality than the Audigy cards.

You are pretty much going to get the same experience between the PCI and PCIe variants of the cards unless you have a motherboard that has the IRQs setup in a lame way on the PCI bus. In that case, the PCIe card is the way to go.

If you have the higher end models that come with the 5.25" bay panel, the one with the PCI cards is more to my liking because it supports MIDI. (Titanium is PCIe and Platinum is PCI).

I really wish they would have released the Platinum card in PCIe.
 
Nothing wrong with the Audigy 2, especially now that Creative has gotten their act together and stripped all the bloat from the driver (which happened around the time Windows 7 came out).

I'd still be using mine if my PCI slot wasn't covered by a graphics card. Had to swap to a PCIe sound card because of that...
 
I've been using the HDMI audio-out from my graphics card for years (since I first discovered I could do this with my GTX 460). IMO, dedicated sound cards (at least for entertainment purposes) are a thing of the past. If you're using a decent receiver or powered speakers, current onboard audio sounds completely acceptable.
 
madFive said:
If you're using a decent receiver or powered speakers, current onboard audio sounds completely acceptable.
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Dunno about you, but I really don't have the room for a home theater receiver next to my PC...
 
Unknown-One said:
Dunno about you, but I really don't have the room for a home theater receiver next to my PC...
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Oh, yeah, I run my gaming rig from the couch in living room. PC sits beside the TV-stand on other side of room, and reciever is under TV. That setup would probably not work at a desk.

When I run my pc at the desk in my office (very rare these days) I have a small headphone amp and EQ box that I use to boost audio into my headphones (ATH-A900).

In either case, I would still recommend using modern onboard audio. If there is a sound quality problem, use better speakers with some kind of amplification.
 
Ive have the Audigy 2 for years ,had the xfhi, it stopped working tried every thing to get it to work, got so mad at it i took out back hit with sledge hammer. and what previous poster said is true it sounded a bit better ...after so many years since the Audigy 2 came out it still sounds quite a bit better then onboard audio
but creative drivers are still made by blind programers
 
Baxter299 said:
creative drivers are still made by blind programers
Click to expand...

I think you mean "blind, deaf, and terribly stupid" ;)

They still manage to sound pretty good and work relatively well, though. I have gone through many generations of Soundblaster, Live!, Audigy, X-Fi, etc and still use them. Although I've been nothing if not completely satisfied with my Xonar DGX in my home machine.
 
I have an Audigy 2 ZS from 2004 and it's still rocking hard. Agree with Unknown-One in that their drivers are much better for that device than back in the day. Install ALchemy and you can still rock EAX and hardware acceleration.
 
I'm still using a 'vintage' Audigy 2 as well. Still sounds plenty good enough for me. It does sound better than my own on-board realtek imo. I can't remember why I originally started (compatibility issue?) but I keep on using Daniel K's drivers for no particular reason, he just released a new one last month.
 
Have the drivers really improved for Windows 7? Only notable complaint that seems pertinent was the 4GB RAM issues.
 
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