Customer Reviews

Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy Gamer Sound Card

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

My motherboard has problems with many sound cards. I was expecting to have problems with this card too; but luckily, I was wrong. I popped it in and WindowsXP automatically found and installed drivers for it just fine. I decided to `stress test' it by playing an MP3, RA file, MPEG, virus scan, and a few other programs at the same time. I've had some cards that would hiss and skip if there was any stress on the system. Amazingly, this card played everything beautifully.

As you may know, Phillips new sound card allows for adding different effects to sound. I.e. you can have everything sound like it's coming from underwater. The Audigy allows for the same type of effects. The Audigy doesn't have as many effects as the Phillips card, but the effects are more useful. You can turn male voices to female voices, change the pitch of the sounds, make it sound like an alien is speaking, etc.

The sound processor is four times faster than the Live! line. In addition, this card comes with a 1394 (firewire) connector, so you can plug in digital cameras, or network two PCs together through it. I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds cool. I just have to talk my friends into buying this card ;-)

I doubt there will be any games that support this card's new effects for several months. So if you already have a Vortex, Live!, or other good card, there is no reason to run and buy this. If (like me) you need a card right now, or you're still using a 16-bit card, there is no reason not to get this. Low memory systems might not be able to use all of the programs the card comes with. Many of the want to run all the time and are real memory hogs.

All in all, an excellent card.

Soundquality: 9/10

This card has got much more power than the previous Live!-cards and everything sounds great. It doesn't get the full 10 because of the lack of A3D-support (IMO better than EAX, but EAX isn't that bad...) and mere average MIDI-sound (Generalmusic) Don't be afraid though, there are some excellent Midifonts circling around the internet..

Software: 8/10

Not too much musicprograms but 2 great games: Giants and Deus Ex. An odd choice by the way since the sound of these games aren't the 'best ever heard'. But it's a good deal, since these games are fun to play.

Price/Quality-ratio: 10/10

This card isn't too expensive and it sounds very clean and clear; it's also got 5.1-support and the firewire-port is a welcome addition.

5 stars? Not quite... this baby still _hates_ mr. KT133 and KT266...

Ease of installation: 4/10 (VIA+AMD based system) | 8/10 (Pentium based system)

Checklist for VIA:

- Flash Bios, if it goes wrong you can buy a new mainboard...
- Install the new VIA 4 in 1 drivers, hope it goes allright (computer will behave rather strange if it doesn't..)
- Tweak Bios: prepare to spend several hours tweaking this thing..

If you don't do this, Windows is likely to crash often and the card produces a loud, crackling noise..

"Plug 'n Play huh?"

Concluding Thoughts:

This card is a great deal, reasonably priced and good sound but almost reaching 5 stars it trips over "Ease of Use" and loses one for being a frustrating brat and costing me three weekends pulling of utter frustration :)

Now everything's allright and I'm not at all disappointed. Just... be prepared :o

i am running a 1.4ghz athlon on an msi k7ta 266 motherboard, with 256mbs of ddr ram and a geforce 3 ti 500 video card. when i installed the xp operating system i was able to update drivers for everything except the philips sound card. i was able to find the beta drivers but they ended up being pretty lousy. coming out of stanby the only sound would be loud hissing. i have klipsch promedia 5.1 sound system so good sound was a must. i tried this audigy x-gamer and it worked perfect. no snags on the install, downloaded the drivers from the sound blaster site. the sound from this card is great. if your a gamer you gotta try this card.

I had no idea this card would make such an incredible difference than the factory card that was in my system. This is truly audiophile quality for those that really can't afford to be an audiophile. Creative claims that with their 24-bit/100dB SNR that you can listen to MP3/WMAs, CD's and any stereo music with high definition audio clarity surpassing high-end home theatre receivers and now I believe them. And for this price? It is incredible and most don't even know it exists. I bought a logitech z-560 speaker system and it sounded great with my system. Then a guy at a certain store that rhymes with gest guy told me that this would help the sound. What an understatement. It took a while to get hooked up properly (call creative and make sure all is set up right, they are very helpful) but when it worked I was flat out astonished at the clarity and power without hiss or ANY distortion. And all for less than a low quality home system amplifier by itself. This sounds every bit as good if not better than systems well over a grand. Toss out that old soundcard or even a new one and do whatever it takes to install one of these. It is certainly worth it.

The Sound Blaster Audigy Gamer is one of the best in the series. its low price tag and high performance is an attraction for any in-depth gamer or just advanced computer enthusiast. Its outputs allow for maximum output, and when paired with the Creative Inspire 5.1 speaker surround system, it makes your computer a virtual movie theater for DVDs. And just a note, contrary to previous reviews, for a relativiely low price ($ 30 or $ 40 I think), you can get a daughter card that connects easily to any Audigy or Live card that includes 2 SPDIF Input and 2 SPDIF Output, as well as an Adapter for TOSLink (Great for digitally recording music to your MiniDisc). EAX support and Audigy's amazing 3D sound performance should bring light to the darkness of your computer's monotonous tones. Its worth the price!!

The Audigy X-gamer is an awesome card. I've had mine for over a year now and it is still pushing out my movies, music and games with impressive power!

Still, as I tend to run Linux (as I'm studying for multiple Linux certifications), I like being to listen to music. Linux' base for sound-card drivers is so far behind it's sad. If you're planning on running this card on a Linux system, you better be familiar with compiling your kernel, and making sure you have the latest driver downloaded (which is NOT provided by Creative).

With the Audigy card, if you pick and choose what you want to install at the start (Usuaully, I skip things like the IMtuner, oozic player, and Demo package as it really just takes up space for me...) it doesn't take as long as it would otherwise. Also, you'll run into less problems.

The install for me took about 15 minutes (Creative Labs Jukebox and the drivers), including the restart.

I bought this card to replace my onboard audio which started to play an annoying buzz thru my speakers.

All I can say is WOW!

The sound is so much clearer and stronger than before. There are many different sound profiles that you can choose from to change how the sound is heard (for example, concert hall, heavy metal, jazz, etc) in addition to being able to specify what type of speakers you have (desktop, surround sound, etc).

I installed this in about ten minutes (including opening up the computer) with no fuss whatsoever on a Win98SE machine. I uninstalled software for the onboard sound and then disabled it in the bios before putting in the new card so there would be no conflicts. There is a poster foldout that has diagrams and instructions for how to install along with a sidenote for WinXP users. It has the standard line-in, line-out, mic jacks along with a digital-out plug for Digital surround sound speaker systems or 3 plugs for an analog surround sound system. If you want to use the joystick port, it will require an additional slot being used. It comes with a digital and analog cable to connect to your internal CD-Rom/DVD-Rom. The big surprise is the FireWire port on the card. The box says you can use this for a computer to computer connection for gaming (using FireNet software on the CD), but I see this as something you can use to connect to an external hard drive, digital camcorder or some of the newer portable music players.

Some people complained about all the bloatware (I can't really argue that point), but during installation you have the option to do a full install, drivers only install, or a custom install (I did) which you can pick and choose what you want to load on your system. This version also comes with the games Deus X and Giants: Citizen Kabuto.

This is by far the best sound card available. You get the best quality (no flickering in the background), great MIDI, plus much more for a great value. I have it running on windows XP perfectly (all you have to do is download a driver from their website-...). Believe me, the Audigy will stay in your PC for a long time.

For shear sound quality alone, I would have to give this card 5+ stars. This card is leaps and bounds better than my old TBS Montego II. It supports EAX (which is what I wanted it for. Hardly anyone uses A3D anymore), 5.1 speakers (to be bought soon) and the fire wire port is a welcome addition (no more USB external drives!)
However, getting it installed and running is a diferent story. It took me two days and a two and a half hour long call (which I was paying for. Creative has no 1-800 number) to Creative tech support to get this thing working right. It seemed that the drivers they shipped this thing with would allow master volume to reset to 100% on everything, so every time I rebooted, I got blasted with Windows sounds. However, once the new driver was installed, everything is working great.
All in all, I like the Audigy Gamer. I just wish it wasn't such a hassle to get running.

First of all, buy it! it is awesome.

Hardware installation was quick and easy. the manual was helpful.
The drivers included are not signed by MS for WIn XP. You will have to download the patch for them ... the moment you install them you will experience problems, don't reboot. add the patch and then reboot. be sure to uninstall all other soundcards and thei drivers and disable onboard drivers before doing anything.
Why doesn't sounblaster let you download the complete set of drivers?? It is a hassle. Also the installation took me a good 15 mins. So get a beer and a bag of pretzels....after installation you will love this card. EAX HD is simply amazing....buy Jedi knight Outcast and play it! you will learn the ways of the Jedi with it.