PCA Forums

.. and this time it'll be one for all, like nvidias unified drivers. They should be available around August, read more about them right here . About time they release new drivers which will hopefully fix some bugs.

You read the article in PC Gamer? Doom 3 will support 5.1 natively and Carmack contacted Creative and told them their drivers don't work. Lol!

UT2003 will have 5.1 support also, Dolby certified too. Hope Creative releases these drivers before UT2003 gets released.

I hope this works out, but Creative tends to drag their feet on driver updates, so I'm not holding my breath...

Do any of you guys know if the new audigy stuff will do decent semi-pro level sound recording??

Or if should look into something else?

The Audigy is a nice card and the Platinum/Platinum EX might be what you need ... but this really depends what semi-pro level you expect.
You'll have to look for something else if ya need 24-Bit/96KHz .. which might be partially a driver issue. So it's more a card for the gamer/multimedia enthusiest. It is a good mix for the starting musical artist that also enjoys EAX in games on the same machine.

The German computer magazine C'T had a recent roundup of 10 highend soundcards.
A nice card for full 24bit support is the Maya44 or Inca88 from Audiotrak , you can check their english webpage for more details.
There are other good cards in the roundup, not easy to suggest one definet winner, they all have different configurations.
The prices of the tested cards range from ~$180 to $510 ....

I just recently got rid of my Audigy. I had some problems with it, was not happy with Creative's driver support and bloated software.

I then did some experimenting with other soundcards (up to this point I had only owned Creative soundcards, from SB16, to Live, to Audigy). I am an avid gamer and just have not come away with a very good impression of EAX. While it's good in theory, the sound placement always left me unsatisified. Voices and sounds too many times either too distant when it should not have been or distant sounds/voices too dominating when it should not have been. This is not even to mention how much more of a performance hit was encountered when EAX was enabled.

I first tried the Phillips Seismic Edge. I didn't care for it. The sound just wasn't as crisp as the Audigy and the input from My Leadtek TV card was way to low (had to turn the volume on my Logitech Z560 halfway up to even hear it.) The card just wasn't very configurable.

I then got the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. I am very happy with this card. Sounds every bit as good as the Audigy and maybe a tad better. The software is not bloated at all and easier for me to make sense out of and use. I particularly like the option to use the two processors on the soundcard to have a selected effect coming from the front speakers and another (different) effect coming from the rear speakers (using the effect fader controls). To my knowledge, the Audigy cannot do this. I also like the EQ to be able to do what I want with the sound in any application rather than just having the effects option.

Then I hear about these new drivers coming out. That's always the way it goes right? Well my son now has the Audigy in his computer (he is also having some sound stuttering and dropout problems with it) so it will be interesting to see just what these new drivers do when they get here.

New creative audigy drivers from creative's site.
http://www.americas.creative.com/suppor ... =205&OS=13

These drivers are revision 5.12.1.253

Originally posted by FlyingPenguin
You read the article in PC Gamer? Doom 3 will support 5.1 natively and Carmack contacted Creative and told them their drivers don't work. Lol!

Id software was using Philips Acoustic edge in their DoomIII demo systems at the recent Quakecon 2002. Of course if the game works without any problems on an Acoustic Edge, then the other cards will be alot easier.

The 24-Bit/96KHz specs Creative claims for the Audigy are marketing crap.
http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2002 ... dex.x?pg=7

Mike89: I playd Half Life with EAX. The reverb was wayyy too much. In comparison EAX in System Shock 2 really added to the experience. Overall though I did prefer A3D since it was more realistic.

As for the Santa Cruz people say it has great sound quality and solid drivers. Only knocks on it are that it doesn't do EAX games quite as good as the Audigy {especially Infinity engine games like Baldurs Gate} and doesn't do EAX Advanced games either {only Audigy does for now}. I'll soon find out since I just picked up a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz from buy.com for cheap.

Half-Life has WAYYY too much over-the-top reverb in 3D. The positional audio doesn't really sound very good. Standard wave mode sounds best in HL.

After all the problems everyone had, including me, I finally abandoned SB. I know it's more expensive but the Hercules/Gulemot Game Theater 6.1 is awesome!! $107 buck by the way. It's an external box with a small PCI card that is just internal inputs. The box has midi ins and outs, optical in and out RCA and mini outs, mic out, headphones, two usb ports and a game port.

With the onboard C-media 5.1 on my new IWill XP333 (which sounds as good as my old SBLive in games IMO) I'm happy to bid the old SBLive and it's cranky PCI channel issues a fond farewell.

I'm going to donate it to the Red-Eye LAN party when I go next month so they can raffle it off

Well after doing testing I would say Santa Cruz is a nice soundcard. One thing that really stands out is its control panel. And its Win2000/XP drivers are solid.

Audigy is better in games with certain games being more noticable. Thats not to say the Santa Cruz is bad in games.

Sound quality wise, both are about equal.

Both soundcards are good and can be safely recommended. And the Audigy and Santa Cruz are better and an upgrade {somewhat} from the SBLive. However to go to one from the other is a sideways move.

I don't like my platinum. I'm thinking about boxing it up and sell or trade it. I want to get a santa cruz card. Right now I'm using the onboard C-media too.