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R.I.P. Sound Blaster Audigy 2zs

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First post, by Intel486dx33

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The Sound Blaster Audigy 2zs was the Best Sound Card Creative labs ever produced.
It was supported in Win98 thru Win-10 up until recently when Microsoft and Creative labs discontinued support in Win-10
( Since 2002 , 18 years of support from Microsoft ).

Since this sound card was supported for such a long time. I will have to say this was the best sound card Creative labs manufactured.

Unless someone knows where to get WIn-10 drivers for this sound card ?

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Last edited by Intel486dx33 on 2020-10-16, 17:08. Edited 3 times in total.

Reply 1 of 30, by darry

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Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-10-16, 16:21:
The Sound Blaster Audigy 2zs was the Best Sound Card Creative labs ever produced. It was supported in Win98 thru Win-10 up until […]
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The Sound Blaster Audigy 2zs was the Best Sound Card Creative labs ever produced.
It was supported in Win98 thru Win-10 up until recently when Microsoft and Creative labs discontinued support in Win-10

Since this sound card was supported for such a long time. I will have to say this was the best sound Creative labs manufactured.

Unless someone knows where to get WIn-10 drivers for this sound card ?

Have you tried the Audigy RX drivers ? AFAIK, it uses the same EMU chip as the Audigy 2ZS .

https://support.creative.com/Products/Product … 0332.1602865886

EDIT : Longest supported does not necessarily equate with "best" or even good, IMHO. Most versatile maybe, but to deserve to be qualified as the "best sound Creative labs manufactured", it would need to outperform other Creative products at least in terms of sound quality, which is the first and foremost criterion upon which sound cards should be judged, IMHO .

Last edited by darry on 2020-10-16, 16:44. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 2 of 30, by DosFreak

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I use the integrated Realtek for Windows 10 and the Audigy for less than in my test desktop. Didn't have any luck with the RX drivers when I tested a year ago.

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Reply 3 of 30, by Intel486dx33

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darry wrote on 2020-10-16, 16:34:
Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-10-16, 16:21:
The Sound Blaster Audigy 2zs was the Best Sound Card Creative labs ever produced. It was supported in Win98 thru Win-10 up until […]
Show full quote

The Sound Blaster Audigy 2zs was the Best Sound Card Creative labs ever produced.
It was supported in Win98 thru Win-10 up until recently when Microsoft and Creative labs discontinued support in Win-10

Since this sound card was supported for such a long time. I will have to say this was the best sound Creative labs manufactured.

Unless someone knows where to get WIn-10 drivers for this sound card ?

Have you tried the Audigy RX drivers ? AFAIK, it uses the same EMU chip as the Audigy 2ZS .

https://support.creative.com/Products/Product … 0332.1602865886

Yeah, those use to work but with the latest Win-10 update it no longer works. It causes the computer to crash.

Reply 5 of 30, by Intel486dx33

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Yes, Microsoft use to supply WDM drivers that worked with the Audigy 2zs but they recently discontinued these drivers.

I contacted Microsoft support community and they said this Sound card is NO longer supported by Microsoft.

Reply 6 of 30, by DosFreak

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For those working can you post:
Build of Windows 10
Type of Audigy 2
What audio out port you are using
Driver version

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Reply 7 of 30, by Joseph_Joestar

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Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-10-16, 16:21:

The Sound Blaster Audigy 2zs was the Best Sound Card Creative labs ever produced.

I have two of these and they are indeed excellent sound cards, both for Win9x and for WinXP. You can even use them as a soundfont loader for General MIDI in DOS games that run under Win9x (see my signature for details).

However, I would still say the X-Fi is a better choice for WinXP, mainly because of the improved resampling engine. This helps with some older games which still used 22 kHz sound files, even during the XP era.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 8 of 30, by Intel486dx33

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Yes, It does work with the Audigy RX WDM drivers for Win-10.

1) Just download the package and extract to hard drive using win-rar or win-zip.
https://support.creative.com/Products/Product … 0332.1602865886

2) Browse to folder \Audio\drivers Win10\ and run the Setup program to install the WDM driver.

I must have been using the old version of this driver which was causing my computer to crash.

So use the latest version driver for Win10 only.

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Last edited by Intel486dx33 on 2020-10-17, 16:26. Edited 3 times in total.

Reply 10 of 30, by computerguy08

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DosFreak wrote on 2020-10-16, 17:15:
For those working can you post: Build of Windows 10 Type of Audigy 2 What audio out port you are using Driver version […]
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For those working can you post:
Build of Windows 10
Type of Audigy 2
What audio out port you are using
Driver version

Ok, here is my setup:

I'm using this SB0240 Audigy 2 together with Windows 10 May 2020 update (AKA 20H1 or 2004).

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(I used a Win7 skin, so the transparency is glitched out in places, don't worry about it)

In order to get the card working with Win10, I used this Audigy RX driver, which you can find here. The driver itself should look like this:

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In order to install it, I ran the wdma_emu.inf file inside the package (after unarchiving).

I used the normal speaker output.

Reply 11 of 30, by swaaye

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That is the driver Daniel K has in the new 7.0 pack. And you can optionally have the various control panels as well. Plus the pack works for XP thru 10 so it's very convenient.

Last edited by swaaye on 2020-10-16, 18:03. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 12 of 30, by computerguy08

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swaaye wrote on 2020-10-16, 18:00:

That is the driver Daniel K has in the new 7.0 pack. And you optionally have the various control panels as well then like EQ, speaker setup, Soundfont config, Alchemy, etc.

This was a workaround for that (before Daniel K made his blog update), which I know it's still working.

Glad to hear he is still interested in supporting those cards.

Reply 13 of 30, by keenmaster486

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Audigy 2ZS is not the best sound card Creative ever produced. Its output is very dirty and unsuitable for anything but audiophool "FX SOUND XTREME COOL BLAST SURROUND INSIDE YOUR MIND" listening.

I know this because I tried using it in a professional radio studio application, in which cheap components and dirty audio output become very, very obvious, and it sucked. It was bad.

The effect was compounded when sending the audio through two of the cards in various stages in the audio chain (for streaming purposes), and it got even worse.

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Reply 14 of 30, by swaaye

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I use it with headphones and I think it's pretty clean. Certainly when compared to Audigy 1 or Live.

Last edited by swaaye on 2020-10-16, 21:40. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 15 of 30, by Intel486dx33

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keenmaster486 wrote on 2020-10-16, 18:58:

Audigy 2ZS is not the best sound card Creative ever produced. Its output is very dirty and unsuitable for anything but audiophool "FX SOUND XTREME COOL BLAST SURROUND INSIDE YOUR MIND" listening.

I know this because I tried using it in a professional radio studio application, in which cheap components and dirty audio output become very, very obvious, and it sucked. It was bad.

The effect was compounded when sending the audio through two of the cards in various stages in the audio chain (for streaming purposes), and it got even worse.

I mean it was supported since 2002. From Win98 thru Win-10.
Over 18 years.

What other sound blaster card has had this type of driver support from Microsoft ?
This card works with Linux and Macs too.

Reply 16 of 30, by swaaye

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Yeah I think it is one of the best supported sound cards, but that is mostly because the community pressured Creative to keep it supported. They tried to abandon Audigy when Vista was released.

Look up some of the history with Daniel K and Creative.

Reply 17 of 30, by RichB93

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It's wasted on newer machines. You can use it as a basic output device, nothing more. You're better off buying a cheap DAC if you want high quality; or just use onboard which is more than good enough nowadays.

On an 98/XP machine however, it may be worth using if you want to take advantage of the WaveTable and EAX effects. Personally for XP~7, I'd use an X-Fi if I wanted those features.

Reply 18 of 30, by swaaye

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That's not true. You can use soundfonts and Alchemy works with it. It also has CMSS3D to downmix multichannel sound to headphones nicely. Everything is there minus gameport because that's not supported after XP. I'm pretty sure its firewire port is still functional too.