Awesome!

I must get myself one of these 😀

swaaye wrote:

Audigy 2 ZS is about as good as they get. There are some Audigy 2/4 Platinum cards which in theory could sound ever so slightly better. I have an X-Fi Elite Pro and an Audigy 2 ZS and frankly I can't tell the difference between them. The plain Audigy 4 is great too.

Agreed. It's also worth noting that excepting the "Pro" models (with the external breakout box), there isn't usually any difference between the "normal" and "Platinum" boards; for example the 2 ZS and 2 ZS Platinum are the same PCI card, the Platinum just adds the front-panel device. You can add the device to a compatible card later (Creative used to sell them as an ~$80 upgrade to existing PCI cards) if you find that you need the connectivity features. The "Pro" boards (like Audigy 4 Pro) generally have slightly higher specs but move most of their connectivity onto the breakout box (which could be a negative if you don't have room for the thing; or conversely if you're buying one used and the seller doesn't have the box).

Mau1wurf1977: Personally I'd go with an Audigy even under XP - I loathe the X-Fi's drivers (specifically the "mode switching" mess), and the EAX 5 functionality is only used by a few games.

Under XP you can't go wrong with a PCIe X-Fi Titanium. Best X-Fi card there is.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Under XP you can't go wrong with a PCIe X-Fi Titanium. Best X-Fi card there is.

Yeah I would actually recommend staying away from the PCI X-Fi cards. They are very sensitive to PCI bus issues.

hello, exist DOS drivers for this sound card? or in setup which card i must choose?

obobskivich wrote:

Ever tried non-Creative cards? Like VIA or C-Media boards? Should be fairly compatible with older hardware and give you hardware audio, and it'd certainly be something different. 😀

On my two previous systems I used a Terratec DMX 6Fire 24/96 with VIA Envy chipset. It's excellent in terms of sound quality (assuming that the card comes with good quality DACs) and it has great features for the semi-pro musician or even for things like multi-channel playback of music (DVD-A) or movies. In terms of pure sound quality, it's easily comparable with the best from Creative Labs, at least up until the X-Fi Titanium HD, which means better than most people's speakers/sound systems can tell apart. For gaming however, I'd argue that Creative Labs and EAX is the way to go. There are also some Auzentech cards with X-Fi chips that have really good DACs and also built in headphone amplifiers, which might be highly compelling options.
If the goal is to get DOS compatibility however, I'm not sure I'd go beyond an SB Live! with SB-Link.

I bought the Audigy brand new when it came out a long time ago, and actually just sold it on ebay recently. The SB0090 is the one I had, so yes it should be "real"

Ok, giving this old topic a new impuls.

I currently have 2 Audigy's. The Audigy (SB0090) and the Audigy 2 Value (SB0400). The first one is in a Core2Duo E8600 system running Windows XP as one of my retro pc's.
It works, but EAX gives trouble in some games eg. Doom3. My guess lack of EAX 4 support and/or old driver. The second card was in a Pentium 4 test system running Windows XP. In this test system with the SB0400 Doom 3 worked flaweless with EAX. This Pentium 4 system was a test bench system and I want to know if I am better off using this Audigy 2 Value in my Core2Duo, replacing the Audigy for good. Is the SB0400 a better quality soundcard, supperior to the SB0090?

The SB0400 is basically a full Audigy 2 without firewire and DTS-ES so definitely a good card despite the value name.

I wouldn't say the SB0090 is a bad card more like the SB0400 is a later revision so benefits from newer drivers etc so would put that in your main rig.

Thank you for your reaction. I will swap them
👍

I bought an audigy when it was new back in the day, for my pentium 4. It is an SB0090. This card resamples rather badly to 48kHz to pass signals through dsp, affecting playback of 44k1 music. Something noteworthy is that its 5.25 inch drive bay extention has its own Wolfson DAC for the front headphone port that sounds absolutely fabulous.

I also have an audigy 2 zs, sb0350. This card sounds better than the sb0090. Its dsp is also a bit bigger, it can do 10 band EQ with the kX driver.