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Testing the Audigy
An Anonymous Coward writes: "The Audigy is Creative's latest Soundcard range, a long overdue upgrade to the aging Live! range and coming in a year where Creative have faced some of their stiffest competition since the Aureal Vortex 2 was released.
3D Spotlight's complete review of the Audigy Player covers pretty much everything you will want to know, from Drivers to API Support, Connectivity & Performance Conclusions." The review doesn't mention how the Audigy works under any open source operating systems, though.
I'd be surprised if the audigy ever worked on linux etc since they haven't even managed to get it working properly under windows XP (playback glitches, soundfont control acting oddly, surround sound apparently not working, all this on a brand new machine).. the europe.creative.com support forum is full of such stories.. come on creative, get the finger out.
The one thing I couldn't belive was how Creative faked the noise clean-up ability of the audigy. In the demo they presented in the software, they simply used to audio files and cross-faded them. Now from the tests that I did on it, the clean-up wasn't bad, but was nowhere near as good as the demo had presented it to be.
I have any audigy gamer. It still suffers from the same lag that the live had when under a MP system....
Scott Cassaday
The Live was made to do sound in real time, not to make quality sound. This is why people buy professional sound cards - they are made to make great sound, but not to do it quickly. I think that the live sounds O.K. but still muddy. Through a good stereo system it sounds terrible. I guess that the same people who spent a couple grand on a home theater system (And wanted to play through it...) would buy this card.
Sadly, I don't believe Dolby 5.1 digital output still is supported by the EMU10K1 (SB Live) drivers. This despite the fact that the SB Live Dolby 5.1 capable cards have been out for quite some time. How can you expect to fully test a new sound card under an open source OS's when features that have been out about a year still aren't supported?
It is creative's decision.
Maybe you aren't fallowing that much but companies like C-Media,Philips and more are e.g. changing to 6.1 format, providing 24bit (allthough card can't produce) S/PDIF outputs for $25! The cheapo card I have from C-Media (Zoltrix brand) has real cool specs.
I used AWE64 before, gave up both the card itself and Creative brand when I saw they offically say "it is an old card, not supported" and "upgrade to live(!)"
Creative does what it does in every 2 years. I don't want to guess evilly but if it fallows AWE64 abandoning policy, you will see Live drivers rarely updated than never updated at all, basing them to a generic driver. (Talking about non Open Source systems/drivers of course).
I learned a lesson. If I get real impressed by a Creative product, I remember my AWE64 nightmare on win2k than look for similar/better specs of "so called" no name, Taiwan brands.
The best part about the Live! in my opinion was the introduction of the Live! Drive. For those of you who don't know what that is, check into it. It's a module that fills a full-size drive bay on the front of your PC, and has controls like Volume, alternate inputs, bass/treble, etc. It (in my opinion) has revolutionized the sound card market. I was happy to hear that the Audigy came out, hoping now the Live! prices would drop, but as of yet, I haven't seen any decrease.
As far as the difference, a salesman (yes, a salesman!) told me that it just "has more power". I have to say that Ghost Recon sounds just as lifelike as I thought it could get on the Live! system, but I don't think that it lacks anything due to 'not enough power'. I guess we'll see.
And they said zombies weren't real!
These guys at alienware do linux stuff and they're offering it on some systems (they do high priced systems but they're p1mp-455 n!c3). note that they also do windows systems, so just cos they've got the audigy and they'll put linux on your box doesn't mean that the audigy will work with linux.
I'm pretty annoyed that the breakout box only comes with the super-extra-deluxo-hyper-expensive version of the audigy. The really really really good thing about the audigy is that it'll probably help bring the Live's price down to stupid cheap prices.
I know that Live! had some problems w/ 2000 and XP -- have those been worked out? does the Audigy have the same probs?
FreeBSD for the impatient.
Why would anybody want a product from Creative Labs? I have several, now aging. I will not by them again. Their driver support is abysmal. They also insist on trying to install tons of buggy, useless bloatware software that rarely gets used.
When I first upgraded my system to 2 procs and installed Win2K, I found my system constantly crashing during games (Quake 3). It seems Creative Labs Liveware 3 stuff was not SMP safe. In fact they knew about it, but have they done anything to resolve the issue? The cure in the case of SMP Win2K is to use the drivers that ship with the OS.
I also have a DXR3 DVD decoder. It works great under NT4... but did the lazy bastards every release Win2K drivers? NO! They pretended to, stringing people along for months with late beta drivers that were buggy. I don't know what their excuse is: the card is a repackaged Hollywood Plus card, and Sigma Designs had complete drivers a long time ago.
Creative Labs support of the Live! cards in Linux was initially dreadful. It took a while for them to go down that road at all. Will the Audigy be the same, or have they been more helpful this time?
The Creative Labs news groups used to be a good forum for support. Something that you need a lot of with Creative Labs products. The news server (news.creative.com) seems to have been buggered for months, even though it's still mentioned on their web site.
All Creative Labs offers are cheap components. Literally. IMHO, they're not worth effort.
The sound card market is a perfect example of what is wrong with the computer industry today. Upgrading and adding features for the sake of upgrading and adding features. It has nothing to do with what the market wants or even really needs. Why don't these companies work on producing lower cost quality soundcards that work reliably and have drivers that work across all platforms. I give it 3 years till they are pushing something like Dufus Digital 5-Dimensional Totally Immersed 7.2 Surround Sound that is absolutely no better for 99.9% of the hearing population than regular 5.1 is today. However all the audiofile nerds who self-profess to be immune from banal marketing ploys will be the early adoptors of the new technology.
There's a point where a technology works just fine for the vast majority of the world. If the computer industry invented the wheel, we'd now be forced to upgrade all our cars to tires that are accurate to 99.9999% of a perfect circle versus the outdated 99.999% technology (that is no longer supported) of last year.
The OpenSource drivers for the emu10k1 in CVS on the 'audigy' branch at http://opensource.creative.com/ allow the Audigy to work 'perfectly' under Linux. I've had no problems thanks to some great volunteers in the community with sound w/ my Audigy under Linux. Might I also add that when I enable sound under Linux in 3d games, I don't take a performance hit like I do in windows :)
Look through the mailing list archive for instructions on how to install the CVS version of the drivers for the Audigy.
and an audiophile is usually brown eyed... because they are full of crap up to there.
DONT ever take the word from an "audiophile" as golden, most are stupid,liars, or just plain posers.
Come on, they think you believe them ehrn they say they can hear the difference in speaker cable. Funny how a scope cant see the difference buttheir ears can... Wow, ears that are better than precision analog test equipment.
fact - if they say that they are an audiophile, they are going to BS you from that word on.
If you like what you have, then stay with it.
Audigy is still not near the level of a professional sound card, although it is a step closer than Live! Platinum. In fact, there are still several consumer cards out there that are better for sound production work than anything Creative makes, so if that's your interest the Audigy is a waste of money. But for gaming, Audigy may well be the best card out there.
Hes right. If you have a dual board with a Via chipset, the sblive can skip and lock the system. This is a well known issue.
I couldnt run SBlive in either of my dual win2k/linux boxes, So I picked up a yamaha pci for 15 bux, and it works flawlessly.
I also picked up a Audigy, and no more skips. The only annoying thing now, is its startup logo the I cant seem to disable in windows. Im also camera shopping and I needed a firewire port for that, now I have one. The bass does sound a little weak, but that might just be me.
All in all, if you can pick one up for 50-60 bux, its worth it. (check pricewatch, seems 55 is the lowest)