Why, did you measure something wrong?
Unless there is some audible harmonic distortion in-band; some measurable unwanted filtering (db droop) due to wrong values; non 'clean' DC rail causing noise; or actual leakage, there is absolutely no need to change the capacitors.

What people believe they would benefit from without knowing what the purpose of a capacitor in a circuit... better sound?
Who started this 'recapping without a cause' trend anyway?

Audigys all sound like crap. Muddy sound and a lot of distortion. Just wondering if anyone put better caps on one and found that it helped. The caps on every audigy 1/2 I seen are meh to low grade junk, was just wondering if anyone tried it and what the results were.

I think the only complaint I have with Audigy is hiss on headphone mode. Audigy 2 doesn't have it. These cards all measured to have very good signal quality though so I don't know what's up with the capacitor overhauls. I'm not sure if capacitor aging could come into play at this point however...

One thing I know for sure is Audigy sounds better than a SBLive. If you want to explore making a card sound better, that would be something to look at. It may be DAC related though. The rear output of SBLive is noticeably better sounding than the front out and they are on different DACs.

Yeah it may be the DAC that makes the sound so muddy on audigys. But given the age of the cards and the fact that most of the cards have general use capacitors age may play a role too.
I do know that most of the Audigys I come by have a bit of distortion, manly with the sound it up all the way.

I'm going to guise that no one have done this here? No biggy, I was just wondering.
I bought a new card and my to some mods to my older audigy for fun.

You can always spot check ESR, but you'd want a proper LCR meter for that. Not cheap.

Desolder and test the caps. If they are outside of spec, feel free to replace them, if not it's PEBCAK

I know they used crappy power filtering caps at the bottom right of the Audigy 2 and ZS, where bigger or additional caps will clean out crackling. Otherwise op-amp upgrades might be the more interesting area for experimentation.

Ampera wrote:

PEBCAK

+1
Leave the caps ALONE, they've done nothing wrong, PLEASE! 🤣

James-F wrote:

Ampera wrote:

PEBCAK

+1
Leave the caps ALONE, they've done nothing wrong, PLEASE! 🤣

Explain how general use caps nearly 15 years old with a rated life span on the lower side can't be a problem?

Not saying caps is why most audigys sound like shit, I'm sure it's more then that. But it could explain why so manny of the cards I had have such high level of distortion. Given that they have digital out puts I'll try one of my cards with a external DAC.

I would avoid Audigy 1 altogether.

Here's some solid comparison from long ago
http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/creativeaudigy2/index.html

Caps don't wear predominantly from age. They usually wear from use. More specifically, they wear from thermal stress. Given two caps A and B with otherwise identical use, if you hit B with loads causing 10 deg C uniformly higher temperature, the service life of cap A will be twice as long as cap B.

So, you can't tell if a cap has failed by age, nor can you necessarily tell visually. The only way to know is to test and there's a good chance you're wasting your time if you do that. Do it only if you have reason to believe something is wrong.

I always say, don't fix it if it ain't broken.

I don't know about sound cards (though I did a full recap on a CT2230 some months ago) but preemptive replacing 30-years-old psu (and maybe mobo ones) caps with new quality ones can actually save your system.
So if one is capable for the job there are good reasons too do it - worst case scenario it's wasted time: better than a wasted system.