Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Internal Sound Card

I bought this card as an upgrade for my default Dell system, having done a little shopping around for a good deal. I was attracted to this card for several reasons - A) It supports 5.1 surround sound (just got some new shiny speakers to play with y'see), B) I trust Creative to make a reliable and compatible product, since I'm not a computer whiz, and I don't have the time or experience to reconfigure stuff just to get it to work, and C) The price is just about right. Installation was a breeze - like always just follow the instructions carefully and make sure everything is connected before you close the case - this model comes with a separate cable to link the sound card to the digital port on the CD drive. My XP system detected everything right away, and the software installed without a hitch. There's a few different programs bundled with the card, including EAX, THX and speaker configuration support, all of which is nicely presented and was helpful when setting up my speakers. The 5.1 surround support is just as groovy as I'd hoped, and the card software made it a breeze to adjust the levels, configure Winamp 5 to play through all the channels, and add funky effects. I don't really have much use for all the software included, but I can imagine if you were starting from scratch, or, conversely, quite an advanced user, you might enjoy the various different functions included here. I'm a bit middle-of-the-road to need all the bells and whistles, but I appreciate them being there. So, easy to setup, easy to use, simmering with latent power and nicely priced. I admit that I was also persuaded to get this card for secret reason D) It came bundled with Raven Shield (and Angel of Darkness, but I'm treating that as a fancy test for my speakers rather than a `real' game...I'm such a snob) which sounds awesome through this card. A great buy for a lower end user who wants to ramp-up their audio experience without breaking the bank (or an eardrum). Recommended.

This is one of the best sound cards you can get for this price. Using it will give you around a 10FPS boost when gaming as it has a very low cpu load (if you have a onboard sound card, the sound processing load is sent to the cpu but with this card, all processing is handled within the card) It is great for working with audio editors and studio apps like FL studio as it has great asio support and can handle hundreds of sound streams at 1 time with out skipping and with out putting a heavy load on the cpu. This card does wonders for music. using the eax console, you can make all music really sound 20-30 times better, the advance eq has a feature that will increase the detail of all audio making all music sound much better. PS some people on many different forums have been able to use creative x-fi drivers for this card and enable x-fi sound features. (i don't recommend doing this unless your very skilled with regedit as theres a high risk of something going wrong and you will need to spend hours in the regedit tool in windows)

I'd just like to say that I was immediately impressed with the sound quality after I clicked on My Computer right after installing it. The stereo separation seems better than my old SB PCI 128. I purchased this soundcard for music production and for it's MIDI capabilities. You don't see MIDI specs in most soundcard ads or reviews anymore and this was very worrying to me. With the use of Soundfonts I'm unlimited in terms of instrument sounds. The critics didn't lie about the bugs and quirks though and the bloat. I now have to wait on my mixer to load in order to change the volume. That used to be almost instantaneous with my previous soundcards. Sometimes it gives off an extremely loud popping, squealing noise though its only for a fraction of a second at a time. When it happens you feel really weird after. If it went on for any longer I feel that it could cause hearing damage and/or damage to your audio system. I'm not sure whether that's the infamous "Squeal of death". Here and there, there are bugs in the soundfont bank manager. Even so, none of these issues have prevented me from making and listening to excellent sounding MIDI music via soundfonts. Soon after installing the card my system rebooted almost randomly while playing a MIDI file. My system doesn't usually do that. Also sometimes some other wierd things happen that didn't happen before. I am very happy with my purchase. I love the feature to add realtime reverb to the mic input and the realtime audio clean-up. That helped me out while watching TV on a noisy channel. I felt a little disappopinted when I discovered that you could listen to any MIDI file using any SoundFont with the Synth-Font program. I guess it felt like the card lost some of it's exclusivity. Another spoiler was that while waiting for my Audigy 2 ZS, Creative announced the X-Fi series. They talked about how much better it was than the Audigy series. That was a tough one. I had consolation in the fact that at my level its going to take my quite a while to harness all the power of the Audigy 2 ZS so the X-Fi would have probably been a waste on me. Plus the Audigy 2 ZS is cheaper.

First, the something you should know. If you are upgrading from a previous Sound Blaster card you will need to completely uninstall this card, the drivers and all files related to it. The Sound Blaster website has a very clear cut article on how to do this. If you do not completely uninstall your previous card this new one will have conflicts and lock your computer up. Also you will need to download the newest updates for the card and make sure your BIOS is updated (something you probably need to do anyway.) The process took about 45 min but once it was done this card absolutely rocks!!! And now the performance. If this is your first plunge into the whole THX/true Dolby surround sound experience on your computer you won't regret buying this card. Since installing this card I have replayed Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, URU and other games and it's a whole new experience. With my 5.1 surround sound speakers the sound was crisp, clear and definately worth the $85.00. I am not a hardcore "tech guru" so I can't get into the serious stuff that some of the other people here have: They seem to have done a good job with those reviews, so I'll leave it at that. But if you are looking for great surround sound and don't want to spend loads of money this card is for you.

I bought this because I wanted a firewire connection to edit video, while keeping my audio set up the way that I had it (I had a Creative Audigy card that worked fine with my Edirol speakers). The audio doesn't work at all on Windows XP nor the latest version of Ubuntu. I had to switch back to my old card. So now I'm out $90+

Incredible sound, great features. Oh man, where to start. First off it is 7.1, 6.1, and 5.1 compatible I use 7.1 with the Creative Inspire T7700 speakers and it is amazing the difference you can hear in games. Also 24-bit audio, which can improve the quality of even regular 16-bit songs. It has every audio technology available, more than your home theater or ampliphier probably. DTS-ES, Dolby Digital-EX, THX, EAX, as well as a zillion software programs, and possible configurations and settings (you can make it sound like your in a cave or a concert hall, or add karaoke, what ever you want). This sound card is also essential for recordings. And for only $90 you'd be crazy not to allow yourself a little luxary for your pc experience.

I agree with Ken on this totally. I have 15 years of sys admin work under my belt and by far this was the hardest install of my entire life. Last time I called for support it was for a raid array failing, this was just a simple install of hardware. Support could not help me after two hours of talking with their "experts". The final resort was to reformat my machine. Granted I needed to anyway, but still had massive issues with installing it. I ended up with just installing this with DRIVERS only, since the software was error-ing out constantly. To boot it does not work with my power Mac on the way :( If you are not technically savvy, this is not the card for you.

Production of this card has been discontinued with no upgrade available. The Creative Audigy 2ZS and Platinum 2ZS cards provide a host of features including full support for a variety of speaker configurations trough 7.2, a joystick/MIDI interface, Optical SPD/IF, and an IEEE 1394 Firewire Port. The Creative Software for the Audigy 2ZS is powerful, extensive, and easy to use. An ideal card for gamers, Home Entertainment, and Home Studio. Unfortunately, none of the newly-released Creative Products are backward- compatible with the 2 and 2ZS. Gone is the Firewire interface, the game/MIDI port, the SPD/IF. So you cannot upgrade and existing system based on this card with any Creative products. But the worst 'feature' is Creative's clueless Support Team. If you have a problem with this card (e.g. adding a new device causing a contention problem on the bus or whatever), the procedures for completely removing the card, it's drivers, and software hooks in the Registry are draconian to the point of multiple boots into "Safe Mode", a Creative Tool which is supposed to remove all Creative reverences, followed by such nonsensical directives like completely blowing away the C:\TEMP and C:\WINDOWS\TEMP directories and then emptying the Recycle bin! I had a card which seemingly failed (would no longer record and which failed the Creative Diagnostics) - it played perfectly but wouldn't record. I was three weeks out of warranty and nobody at Creative would help me diagnose the problem. I purchased a new replacement card and installed it only to find it had the same problems - so I took the original card to another machine and it installed perfectly without errors. I wasted two weeks with Creative Support and their crazy diagnostic/fix procedures. When nothing else would work, I downloaded some obscure drivers from their site (which wasn't referenced by Support or in the FAQs) and finally it worked just fine. The biggest complaint here is the methodology used when installing this card for the first time. It simply cannot be completely uninstalled using their own software and the Windows Control Panel. Vestiges remain everywhere apparently even after using their special cleaning tool. There is no excuse for this. I now believe that somehow, running in the background perhaps, Creative automatically 'upgraded' my drivers which broke the system. I am not surprised that Creative no longer produces this fine product - they created a Support nightmare for themselves (e.g. an Audigy 2 is identical to a 2ZS except all the pins for the additional features are missing with the pads soldered off). They probably had several incompatible versions of the exact same card all requiring different drivers, etc. to work with their software. I was forced to fix these problems myself because I had become so locked into the features on the original card I had no choice. Fortunately, the replacement card was available trough a third party with an extended warranty. I will avoid Creative Products completely in the future no matter how good their specs and reviews - they apparently violate the most basic rules (at least for Windows/XP) in that their product cannot be completely uninstalled via the Control Panel and leaves countless junk in the Registry - then when something goes wrong they waste days trying to support you (the Support Team is very responsive but overwhelmed). Too bad.

sehr gute Soundkarte egal ob Spiele & Filme gesehen werden !!!