Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum Sound Card

List Price: $199.99

Features:

• All the analog and digital ports you'll need for simple desktop connectivity including a super-fast SB1394 FireWire port
• The only PC solution to enable the Advanced Resolution era of 24-bit music fidelity with 192 kHz in stereo and 96 kHz in 5.1
• The best Sound Blaster clarity ever, rivaling home-theater audio quality for music, games, and movies
• Experience superior multi-channel audio from MP3s, CDs, 3-D games, and Dolby Digital EX movies with a rear center speaker
• The most exciting features yet with library search, automatic playlist volume matching, and hiss removal for MP3s

Accessories:

Creative Labs Inspire 6600 6.1 Computer Speakers (7-Speaker, Black)

Customer Reviews:

my last review [Posted on 2003-06-05]
i looked around, and WinAmp CAN support the controller, although it takes a bit of working with it to get it going, but if you're familiar with sound blaster products, having to work on something to get it working should NOT be a new concept for you.
anyways, yeah, it can run winamp, powerdvd, etc.
again. i'd go with it again if i had the choice.
happy shopping!

WIRELESS [Posted on 2003-07-22]
I heard that wireless keyboads and mice are incompatible with the audigy 2. Is this BS?

Made by Satan! [Posted on 2003-09-02]
Well ok, after building my own "Dream System 4" I decided to go all out, even on the soundcard. Going by the specs with this card it was second to none. Going by the other customer reviews I read, it made me think twice about getting it judging by a lot of the problems that were addressed. But, I decided that "none of those will happen to me, it will work fine" WRONG. First off for a brief hardware setup. I installed it on a Athlon XP 2800 powered system with dual 80MB 7200 ATA 133 drives, 1 Gig RAM and an Nvidia GeForce4 Ti4800 8X AGP Video with the Logitech X-680 surround speakers.

Now for the problems. That's all I had. All that system robbing software (reminds me of AOL), system crashes, hung installations, more system crashes, numerous calls to both Microsoft AND Creative only to get stuck editing my registry (always a treat) and downloading numerous "patches and updates", all being a waste of time. After downloading the "updated drivers" the problem only worsened. System crashes, hangs and even more system crashes.

Sooooooo after 3 months of beating myself up (I REALLY Wanted this thing to work properly) I YANKED IT! Time to end the headaches! I went out and picked up the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz card and it has worked FLAWLESSLY!

Maybe someday (if I don't throw it on Ebay first) when Creative actually gets creative with there software so it will work correctly, I will put it back in. But for now, it will sit in the box and collect dust!

I Am So Disgusted [Posted on 2003-09-18]
This is a tragedy. I've been a staunch supporter of Live! cards since they came out but their quality and support went down the drain. The Audigy 2 Platinum is not plug & play compliant. The end user shouldn't have to install the card and adjust the BIOS and hardware configuration to get the card to work. All this card gives is loud pops, skipping and computer lockups. A reinstallation of the operating system didn't help. There aren't any IRQ conflicts either! Tech support was useless, they don't have clue. The sound of the card is great but that means nothing if there is popping and skipping in the music.
I wasted $165 and i will never buy another Creative product again.

CONFLICTS CAUSE CRASHES [Posted on 2006-12-24]
I, like another reviewer, figured a problem wouldn't happen on my computer - WRONG! This card has many great features. I can't rate it at 0, but can't rate it at 5 either. After having it crash my system on numerous occasions while gaming on-line I did some googling. Creative seems to have a MAJOR flaw that only the best techies can correct through a lot of tweeking and changes being made to their system (something we average Joes can't do nor want to attempt by messing with internal settings). I bought this card with the intent of its' major use being for gaming purposes. When I originally installed it I was enthralled by the sound and other capabilities. I eventually got around to going on-line for gaming and ... CRASH! (Does not occur when playing games off-line). Was only then I found out that this seems to be an issue with many and Creative has no solution (at least no solution I could find if others comments at having to deal with Creative were any indication). If I had to do it over again, I wouldn't. I'd do more research and probably went with another manufacturer. If Creative doesn't come out with a fix of some kind I will chaulk it up to an expensive lesson learned and place Creative on my "Never Again S#!@ List." You've been warned!

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