Customer Reviews

Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Notebook Sound Card PCMCIA

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I was very pleased with the Audigy 2 ZS Platinum card I got for my desktop PC, so I was excited when I learned Creative was producing a PCMCIA version for notebooks. This is a great sounding card with some nice features- but there are some other things you should probably be aware of before you buy one for yourself.

First off, here are the good things about the card:

- Reliable, good sounding card with nice optional effects (EQ, reverb, etc.)

- The headphone jack has a cool red light inside it, making it easy to locate the jack without having to squint around looking for the right one.

- Optical and analog in/out, and a special cable for connecting to 5.1 and 7.1 speaker setups.

- When no sound is playing, this card is silent. I mean so silent that two times I actually thought there was something wrong until a sound actually played. It's very impressive, but takes some getting used to if you're accustomed to always hearing some hiss or hum in your headphones when you're plugged into a computer.

But here are the things that may not be obvious until you actually own one:

- When the card is plugged in, you cannot use your notebook's built-in speakers; you MUST use headphones or external computer speakers, and only the audio connections on the card itself will work. If you normally use your notebook with headphones or external speakers, this won't be an issue for you, but if you're used to playing games on the notebook's built-in speakers, your behavior will have to change.

- The card comes with no printed documentation whatsoever, other than a little insert saying that you can't use your built-in speakers. To install the card, just plug it in, then insert the driver CD when the Add New Hardware wizard asks you to. After the drivers are installed, you can run the software installation off the CD. (There is an electronic user's guide with installation instructions, but you can't install that until after the card and drivers are already installed!)

- Note that you do not have to disable your built-in audio or uninstall any drivers. In fact, you shouldn't because you'll have to use your old integrated audio if you ever need to use the computer speakers. When you plug in the Audigy card it automatically becomes your notebook's default sound device, and when you remove the card the integrated audio works again. It's pretty seamless and reliable. You probably shouldn't do it while a game's running though.

- I have learned that the card does not plug in to some notebooks correctly. (The thick end of the card that has audio connectors prevents you from pushing the card in all the way.) Check out the forums on www.soundblaster.com for more info- I think Creative is mailing adapters to people who experience this problem. (I have a ThinkPad T42p by the way, and I didn't have any trouble.)

- If you're thinking of getting this card as a way to improve gaming performance, don't. Yes, technically, by offloading sound generation tasks from integrated audio to the Audigy card your computer frees some of its own resources for other things, but unfortunately this does not translate into any noticeable difference in gameplay. (In fact, if you're not prudent in your selection of which of the bundled programs to install, you may end up HURTING both performance and reliability instead of helping it.) The real power of the Audigy is its ability to transform audio with digital effects and to deliver high bitrate multi-channel sound. About the only ways to really improve performance on most notebooks are to upgrade RAM, get a faster hard drive, and disable all services/startup items that you don't need.

- If you're like me and you like running a LEAN system for maximum performance, don't be fooled by Creative's "drivers only" option. If you don't install at least the Creative Volume Control, Creative Speaker Settings, and Creative EAX Console, your ability to use this card will be severely limited. (It's the same way with the desktop Audigy.) I ended up doing a full install of all the bundled software and then used Mike Lin's free Startup Control Panel to disable the following startup items: CTDVDDET, CTPerformanceUtility, Creative Detector, and Creative MediaSource. Plus I had to manually uninstall the idiotic MediaSource Go! launch bar that attached itself to the top of my desktop- I couldn't make that one go away by editing my startup items. (The software also installs a service called "Creative Service for CDROM Access" but I'm not sure what it does yet.)

- Note that without the Creative Speaker Settings program installed you will probably not be able to use your computer's built-in volume and mute buttons (again, they're normally tied to the integrated audio). Make sure to check the "Synchronize with Control Panel" option to get that functionality back.

This is a PCMCIA card. New laptops (e.g. Dell Inspiron E1705) have ExpressCard slots. This is a new standard but it is not compatible with PCMCIA slot. Before going for this card make sure you have a PCMCIA slot in your notebook, or else the card won't fit. There is no ExpressCard soundcard yet.

The message of May 29, 2005 on this thread is very important because it is the first that points to the different lengths of this card as model numbers vary. The message points to a link where card users are debating this problem. The problem is that one version of this card seems to be shorter than the official PCMCIA specs (85.6 mmm) by a millimeter or so, which makes it not fully connect in some laptops.

Pay close attention therefore to the 3 model numbers of the 3 PCMCIA products offered at Amazon.com and elsewhere under the label "Audigy 2 ZS Notebook". As a clue, I use the dates when these products were first offered at Amazon. Going from more recent to less recent, the model numbers have been 70SB053000012 (March 2005), 53SB053000003 (Feb 2005), SB0530 (Oct 2004).

The card is excellent and deserves 5 stars, but I take one star off to signal this confusion from the manufacturer (primarily) and Amazon. No excuse to let people in the dark about such a basic matter.

Background: I usually spend about 5-6 hours a day listening to music on my laptop and have about $800 worth of headphones with a $500 headphone amp. I'm pretty picky about my sound cards and they can make all the difference in the world.

First a quick note on system noise... Before buying this card, I could tell what my laptop was doing just by listening to the background noise on my headphones. With sensitive headphones, the common programs that tend to consume CPU each have a specific sound pattern that can be heard over the headphones. For example, I always knew the virus scanner started or when an indexing program started by the sound that it would make over the headphones. With the Audigy 2 Notebook card, all of that background noise is gone. This is very good.

Next sound quality: in short, excellent. It is so good in fact that I immediately noticed a difference between applications that play music. I used a CD (instead of an MP3 or WMA) and listened to my favorite track with several music players. The Creative MediaSource (player that comes with the card) sounded better than iTunes. I wasn't quite expecting this and I'm not overly happy about it either (I've bought a fair bit of music through iTunes). Other players seem to have better quality as well so it isn't just MediaSource that sounds better. After a bit of investigation, I was shocked to see that iTunes uses QuickTime for its audio and QuickTime apparently only uses 16 bit sound (the Audigy is full 24 bit). (If you want to see this for yourself... go to control panel, quicktime, choose 'Sound Out'). I can't really fault the card for ruining iTunes for me but I only use iTunes on my laptop and my laptop only had 16 bit audio before. I hadn't noticed before installing the Audigy.

The problems:

- Volume buttons on your laptop do not affect the sound volume on the audigy. This is a pain. If a good song comes on, you need to find the software volume control to turn it up. This was almost enough for me to give the card 4 stars. Others may not care as much

- iTunes was no longer able to use DirectSound (it was crackling). Not a bit deal although I do notice that lack sound quality in iTunes now. I hope this gets resolved at some point because I do like iTunes.

- The install takes time. You also need to use the install CD first before downloading the latest versions of the drivers and software.

Anyway, overall, I'm very happy with the card.

I just installed this last night, and the installation was super easy, and the sound quality is incredible for a notebook with Rhapsody and DVD (Bourne Supremacy was the maiden voyage). No more tin can sounding built in speakers. You can also record with it for people who are looking to do that, a big plus. I have it hooked up with Logitech z-5500 speakers, and the sound rivals my home stereo set up, which is no slouch either. Will be checking out the DVD-Audio and game sounds next! Run, don't walk to buy this if you have a notebook. I can't believe it took them this long to do this, but since it works for up to 7.1 sound, it should last a while.

Hi

I am giving a 5 star rating only because of the awesome work done by Creative in providing 5.1 and 7.1 output etc.

But if sheer sound quality is only your concern, then consider the more expensive Echo Indigo IO or Echo Indigo DJ.

If like me you just use a good quality headphones (I use Grado SR80), and ocassionally a desktop speaker system to primarily listen to music and watch DVDs, then Echo Indigo IO is simply excellent for a PCMCIA sound card. Evidently improved performance over ZS Notebook. (Then again for pure sound quality, also consider Headroom Total Bithead (USB Soundcard)).

Nevertheless, if you have a 5.1 or so speaker system into which you plug your laptop, or want a sound card for games with features optimised for them, then Audigy 2 ZS Notebook will be a totally awesome purchase.

On an ending note.. Koodos to Creative for clubbing all the bells and horns into one small compact form factor.

I have never written a review for any product I have purchased -- the fact that I am moved to do so now is a testament to how terrible my experience with this card has been.

I am a composer who purchased this card as a means of running some modest audio and notation software on my laptop when traveling away from my home studio. I bought it mainly for the ability to employ soundfonts. When I installed the card the first time (on a COMPAQ Presario 2100, with 1.9 GHz Celeron and souped up to over 750MB of RAM), the card showed two soundfont synths (A + B). When I downloaded and installed the web updates, I lost one of the synths. In an attempt to get it back, I uninstalled the drivers and software (after trying many other fixes to get the 2nd synth back) and reinstalled. Since that point (three installs later, as 'clean' as I can get them), the card won't even admit to having ONE soundfont synth -- thus making the use of soundfonts impossible!

There are a host of other problems. After doing some reading (which admittedly, I should have done before buying...lesson learned), I discovered that Creative seems to be almost legendary for its lack of adequate documentation and technical support. I have found nothing on the web thus far to help me with this problem of soundfont recognition -- and other users have had the same issue. The response from Creative -- silence.

Other issues:

- Often crashes on reboot after first install.

- Applications suck up over 300MB of disk space.

- Limited installation options and placement of annoying icons on desktop after install (no option not to do so).

- Uninstall leaves tons of clutter behind on hard disk and in registry.

- In "advanced" configuration mode, the ASIO drivers (another reason for my buying the card -- low latency) pop and crackle something fierce, when they work (see next).

- Numerous Blue-Screen-of-Death crashes when trying to run VSTi synths off of the card. With my system, at least, this card is hardly stable.

- None of Creative's updates address any of these issues -- I've downloaded and run them all with no improvement.

I've tested this thing every way to Sunday on my machine. For me, at least, it's a worthless waste of my PCMCIA slot. Maybe it's a good card for games...I don't know. I suggest, whatever you plan on using it for, that you do a lot of reading before you spring for it. I've learned my lesson, and will never buy from Creative again.

I have nothing extra special or unique to add... just want to say that this product does what it says, and it does it very well. What I didn't expect to like most about this card was the recording options... but it really has a lot of great features in this regard.

This card is useful if:

You use your laptop as your main computer, and use seperate speakers (5.1 etc)

You need better recording options when on the road

You have a nice pair of headphones, and aren't happy with the output your laptop has.

This card does exactly what it says, and flawlessly, for me.

one reviewer stated that the headphone jack had a nice red glow, which it does, but that is actually a SPDIF laser output. SPDIF is for digital sound (especially surround) which your dvd player will probably accept, though youll need to buy a fiber optic cable.

potential buyeres need to be aware that the original version of the Audigy2 ZS does not fit the PCMCIA slots of several notebooks. For details about this problem, refer to Creative's discussion forum:

http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=pcmciasb&message.id=233&view=by_date_ascending&page=5

The card I purchased at Amazon was the shorter version and so would not fit my laptop. As of this writing, I'm still having problems getting a replacement from Creative.