I’ve now got a pretty decent system. P4 3GHz, 1 Gig of ram, geforce 4 ti4600.
But my sound card is only a Sound Blaster Live. I have my eye on a Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS.
Any input? Should I upgrade? If so is that a good choice of card?
Do you have speakers that’d make it worth it? That’s my major question.
I dunno, I’ve never been much of an audio person as long as everything works. I’m still using the first set of speakers I bought for this rig and until I upgraded motherboards, I was running the SB Live. I haven’t noticed a major difference and don’t think I’ve ever said, “Wow, if only I had 32 channels of THX sound” or something. They boom in a satisfying fashion and my music sounds good.
I’ll agree by saying that it’s probably only worth it if you have speakers to do the sound card justice.
With the Audigy 2 ZS, I’d be looking at a 5.1 setup or better.
That being said, I recently upgraded to an Audigy 2 ZS. I also upgraded my speakers to Creative T7700s (a 7.1 setup). I’ve got the rear speakers on the wall behind me at ear level, and the two side speakers are on a shelf and a windowsill. After all of that, I am VERY impressed with the new sound performance. The first thing I played with the new setup was Ghost Recon. We were inside a ship, and I fired one shot - and then I heard the casing bounce down the steps behind me. I could literally track where the casing was bouncing by sound alone. Very nice (especially for someone who had two speakers up until a few onths ago).
If you can find the Audigy 2 ZS Gamer, you might want to try it. It’s the same card, but packaged with 5 games that use EAX (Splinter Cell, Jedi Academy, Halo, Rainbow Six 3, and [cough] Tomb Raider:Angel of Darkness). If you don’t own any of those games, it could be a great deal.
The Audigy 2 ZS is pretty much the reference sound card these days - all the top rigs from Alienware, Falcon Northwest etc are using it. Just make sure you have good speakers!
I have a cheap 5.1 creative speaker system. And I think I have the satelite speakers too close to me (they are attached to the 4 posts of a ‘high sleeper’ bed) because I have never been as impressed with the eax effects as when I plugged 4 standard speakers into my old pci 128 sound card and messed around with the eax sdk. They were much more spread out. Either I have a crap set or the satelite and subwoofer setup is not all it’s cracked up to be.
sod that. I over analize things. I’ll just buy a better x.1 set some day.
I have splinter cell (and it’s sequel) and don’t want any of those other games mentioned. I’ll just buy the one bundled without games (If I decide to buy at all)
And if I decide to get new speakers as well, any that you can reccomend that won’t break the bank?
(P.S. I have been eternally spoiled by my dad’s £10,000+ music system. Talk about feeling sound!)
As to setting up your system, the Audigy comes with software to help you figure out the delay for each speaker. IIRC a sound starts rotating around you and you can increase/decrease volume and delay as necessary until you get the correct setup.
Speakers are much more subjective. Like I said, I’ve got the Creative T7700 7.1s. Not the best, but I’m happy with them. They were recently on sale here (Dallas, TX) for $99 US.
Doing a quick look at prices for the Klipsch Promedia 5.1 and Creative Gigaworks S750 I see that they are around $350 US. Ouch! They get great reviews, though.
I also found a review from some guy who did just what I did - hooked up an Audigy 2 to a set of T7700s. Not exactly a scientific review, mind you, but it’s something.
You will be suprised how much better the audio will sound when you get the Audigy… Even using the same speakers, you will notice a pretty big difference.
But as pilot141 said, you will want to upgrade the speakers to get the full potential of the card… and for the money, it is hard to beat the quality of the Creative T7700 7.1.