The New Creative Sound Blaster Audigy2

[edmundsy]

Has anyone seen a review of how well this card performs with respect to the Creative Live! and Creative Audigy?

I currently have an Audigy, and it sounds pretty good to me. I wonder if Creative is trying to fool consumers into thinking its new card is another marketing gimmick. Many were fooled into thiking the Audigy can output in 24/32 bits, when in actual fact, the internal processings are done at that resolution, only to output everything down at 16 bits.

I really wonder if that's the case with Audigy2. Any of you guys out there have a 32bit sound card? Can you tell the difference between a 16 bit and a 32bit one?

I had a friend telling me it's no point listening to music in 32 bits, since CDs only have 16bits resolution. On the other hand, I have heard people installing a special Winamp plugin that allows mp3s to be played back at 24/32bits, and they claim it sounds better. Could anyone comment on that?

[M1ckey M0use]

Maybe it's not a good idea to buy Creative hardware.

According to this

http://www.theregus.com/content/4/26387.html

article, Creative is one of the first PC hardware that supports DRM.

"To protect against unauthorised duplication, Sound Blaster Audigy [or Sound Blaster Live!, in the other readme] shuts down its digital output when encrypted files are played back through a Microsoft DRM supported audio player (for example, Creative PlayCenter)."

[Chu]

>> Creative is one of the first PC hardware that supports DRM.

I believe that any WHQL audio driver supports DRM to some degree because of certain DX bindings, but I could be wrong.

For me though, the thing of upmost important in a sound card is Sound Quality, which is why I went with a Terratec 24/96 (plus, I couldn't resist the price when I saw it in Guitar Center's used bin). If the Audigy lives up to this level, well . . .

then I'd still probably go with Terratec because ALL THE USELESS CRAP that creative tends to load up on your system. The Audigy is worse then the RealONE player when it comes with trying to take over your system, and is as bad as Microsoft when it comes to business pratices (but just isn't as good at the execution). For this Creative will never get another cent of my money. Yes, I know if you dig around there are ways to install just the drivers, but most people don't.

-Chu