Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum Soundcard

by Creative

Product Details

Product Manual [2.55mb PDF]

• Shipping Weight: 3.3 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00005OSUE
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 10, 2001

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a good sound card if you are in need of a studio, November 7, 2001

By 

Black Cat de La Bear "see that dark shape o'r... (those dark halls) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum Soundcard (Personal Computers)

This is a good sound card for those who wanna be a radio announcer or want to make voice-overs to sFX in radio dramas, but for gamers it's just a lot of fluff. If you are into recording and singing I suggest going all the way and getting the Platnum ex, if you are into games, I suggest the Gamer version, it's (. . .)cheaper and comes with Giants to boot. This card emulates 5.1 channels in most games but is not as good as Phillips in correctly emulating them. The only games I had a real problem with were Baldur's Gate Series(all of them including SoA&ToB). These games cannot emulate speech through the center channel but instead emulate the music/fx in the center. This bothers me personally because BG is my favorite game. Phillips will play speech through center in ToB but not in the others. IceWind Dale works great with this Audigy card but Baldur's Gate II SoA/ToB is terrible. The best games are Creative's 'featured' games, including Diablo, Deus Ex, and a handfull of others. BGII/ToB is on the EAX list but it doesn't work in 5.1(at least not appropriately)
'Advanced' HD EAX has yet to prove itself. When games come out(next 6 mo) This card will show what it can do(hopefully). Not trying to disappoint but the Goldmine Demo was not that impressive to me. This Demo was supposed to show the cards full potential with EAX advanced. Birds chirping arounnd and wing flapping was pretty life like but the other things you can do were nothing shocking. I did notice a bunch of static when I tried to run some game demos in EAX that were supposed to be HD Advanced It is probably a driver issue that will be fixed when EAX 3 comes out.
To conclude, do not buy this product just because it's from Creative, that is not a good reason at all and they're are better cards out there. Hercules is comming out with Maxi Theater X, a 6.1 sound card(six speakers and a sub= 7!) For right now there is Phillip's Acustic Edge which has an excellent player and Power DVD.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars - Amazing equipment -, February 16, 2002

By 

Ciprian Nedelcu (New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum Soundcard (Personal Computers)

I bought the sound card last night and I am sure it deserves writing a review. The installation was very easy, although I am not a computer specialist. Took me about 15 min. I read quite a few reviews that the card and software are not compatible with Win XP which now I know is completely false. After I turned the computer on, windows detected new hardware and asked for drivers. I entered the CD and in about 30 sec I was able to play mp3 files with windows media player through the front panel toslink/rear speaker/headphone connections. It is recommended though to update drivers from creative website, which I did. Software instalation was also flawless.
Now few things that I found really awsome on the card:
- Sound quality is unbelievable, be it MP3, audio CD or game. I did not hear any noise/clicks, and I listened carefully...
- Ripping speed is fascinating (for my "elderly" system)- one CD every 5 min, which is pretty much the time needed to read the cd
- Software is really easy to learn to use and I think I can probably uninstall windows media player now
- The remote control is probably the single best feature available. Before, I knew my computer lacks something but I didn't know what... Gives you full controll and more (shut down/start apps./etc)
- The eax sound effects are also incredible (although many probably not that usefull). Best are Advanced EQ and Audio cleanup
--- I still have to try the rest of the software and my dvd is broken so I don't know how dolby 5.1 works but only for above features the card is worth buying
Cons (so far): $$$.$$
Good job, Creative Labs!
My system: AMD 800Mhz, 384 Mb, 30Gb HDD, Phillips 4x4x32, Nvidia TNT2 16 Mb, Westell ADSL 1.5 Mb/s connection, Win XP Pro, Technics SA-DX1050 amp/ Technics RP HT700 headphones/ Technics SB CR77 speakers; TOS-link optical cable for connections.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Top notch sound card with the features I wanted., February 22, 2002

By 

Kenneth Helms (Fort Wayne, IN USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum Soundcard (Personal Computers)

I've been using my Audigy for about a month. First, ignore the comments that it doesn't work with XP. Mine works fine with XP using the drivers download from the Creative web page. I bought it because I have a stack of old vinyl albums collected in the 60's and 70's that I want to put on audio CDs (since they are not available commercially as such). The Audigy Platinum makes that job much easier by putting the audio Line In connectors on the front of my PC. Standard stereo cables work fine without the need for an assortment of adapters or trying to decipher the tiny hieroglyphics on the sound card bracket. We also used it for some direct-to-disk recording with a microphone last week and it worked fine for that as well. The audio editing software that came with the Audigy was much easier than trying to do the same with a cassette deck. Again, having a real microphone jack and level control on the front of the PC made it simple to use. I used it to create a couple of MP3 disks and they play fine on my portable CD MP3 player.

It was a bit of a pain to install the internal cables and the drawings in the manual didn't exactly match my unit. Even so, I managed to get everything installed and working in less than an hour. I haven't bought a set of 5.1 speakers yet but probably will since I sometimes watch DVDs using my PC. The sound from the card using my existing stereo speakers is fine regardless of the source of the sound.