Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: [review] Audigy2 (Read 5342 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

[review] Audigy2

Over at Toms hardware you can find a review from the "new and improved" audigy2 soundcard.  Basically the Audigy2 is what the Audigy had to be in terms of features and quality.  Finally 24-bit/ 192 kHz are really supported but sad enough the Audigy2 again suffers from the same 16-bit/ 44.1 kHz upsampling that made it's predecessors unpopular with the pc-hifi crowd that many of you here are.

Quote on the 16-bit/ 44.1 kHz "issue" :
Quote
The 16-bit/ 44.1 kHz tests gave positive results, though not the same level of quality. This is because when the Audigy 2 resamples all the 44.1 kHz flow rates in 48 kHz, corresponding to the DSP's internal frequency, rates above 48 kHz do not get resampled. So here we have a paradox: the Audigy 2 produces near-perfect sound in 24-bit/ 96 kHz playback (i.e. DVD Audio), but is not as good in 16-bit/ 44.1 kHz playback (such as CD Audio).


Conclusion :
Quote
With the Audigy 2, Creative has shown how skilled it is in multimedia sound cards, and has gone even further into product versatility. The Audigy 2 is a total success both for its features and its sound restoration capacity. We cannot say it enough: its converters and analog outputs are a model of their kind for most non-professional usage. And promoting DVD Audio is another good point, though it means others in the PC and hi-fi industry should work at making this support as affordable as CD Audio. Dolby Digital EX and the capacity to restore sound in 6.1 is also very welcome, though we would have liked DTS decoding, if only in 5.1. Most Home Cinema buffs will agree that more quality is better than more channels, though they are not mutually exclusive. Apart from this detail, the Audigy 2 is without any doubt a must-have multimedia sound card.

But this quality and all this innovation come at a price, literally, which is what you will pay for the card. Not everyone can afford to shell out $199 just because they feel like it. For someone who only plays games, the Audigy 2 is the very best sound card. But they will only be using a small portion of its capacities: the EAX Advanced HD, CPU performance and surround sound quality. All the other functions, however attractive, make it work out to be very expensive. So, our gamers would be better off with the Audigy 1, which has all the advantages of the Audigy 2 in games, with a slightly lower sound quality. On the other hand, if you use your PC for playing music or watching DVDs (as gamers may do), then you have no reason to hesitate, provided you use speakers worthy of the Audigy 2. And you will be satisfied with the Audigy 2 Platinum and its IR remote control and digital inputs/ outputs. Amateur musicians will also love its converters, the full 24-bit/ 96 kHz support and the ASIO drivers.


Read the review over here

[review] Audigy2

Reply #1 –
I've read it in French yesterday.

The DVD-A playback is at last explained :

Quote
The software package contains a DVD Audio Player which runs automatically when a DVD Audio is put in the DVD-ROM drive.

(...)

It is important to note that as soon as the DVD Audio playback module is run, the card deactivates all the digital outputs, both on the card and on the input/ output rack. This is a restriction imposed by DVD Forum to prevent digital copying.

[review] Audigy2

Reply #2 –
hehe...I bet he just took an Audigy and changed some letters on the chip for his A2 pics   

[review] Audigy2

Reply #3 –
Does he address any problems in relation to Via chipsets?

I am still incredibly lerry of Creative products after the numerous problems I've had with my Sound Blaster LIve! and KT133. Though  it appears that they have either been worked out, or my card just went from being "bad" to being "good". Of course, now music skips but I think that has something to do with WinXP and not nessecarily the hardware.

[review] Audigy2

Reply #4 –
"skipping" is caused by function which is supposed to return current playback position (IDirectSoundBuffer::GetCurrentPosition()) randomly returning garbage, which is a common problem with audigy drivers. FYI, i've never heard a single "skip" on winxp with my sb128pci. available solutions: disable hardware acceleration in dxdiag, reconfigure your playback software to use waveOut instead, or change DirectSound settings in your playback software not to use hardware mixing (AFAIK only Winamp with recent out_ds has that).
Microsoft Windows: We can't script here, this is bat country.

[review] Audigy2

Reply #5 –
So, let me get this straight.

Currently, using PP's SSRC enabled plugin, we resamble everything down to 44/16 to keep it from wrecking quality with Audigy 1 boards.

Now, with Audigy 2, we have to use the plugin to resample everything UP to 24/96 to keep it from wrecking quality?

- Agent 86

[review] Audigy2

Reply #6 –
Is this review a joke?

" In general, AC-3 sound is coded in 18 bits, so the standard output of an AC-3 flow is 384 Kbps (6 channels x 18 x 48 kHz)"


"So a DTS sound track codes in 20 bits (specifications allow for coding in 16, 18, 20 and 24 bits) instead of the 16, 18 or 20 bits with Dolby"


With this kind of sentence, I do not understand how you can do a proper review of a sound card...
What is annoying me is that I am able to clearly see that this is wrong, but because it is audio related.
So perhaps in other fields reviews from Tomshardware could be as wrong as this one.

[review] Audigy2

Reply #7 –
Quote
Now, with Audigy 2, we have to use the plugin to resample everything UP to 24/96 to keep it from wrecking quality?

No, you can still resample to 48 KHz to keep the quality. The bad mode is 44 KHz, but not 48 KHz or 96 KHz.

At 44.1 KHz mode, the intermodulation distortion value (IMD) is pretty bad (>1%) , compared with the other modes or other good cards (<0.01%), very probably due to the poor resampling.

[review] Audigy2

Reply #8 –
Quote
Is this review a joke?

" In general, AC-3 sound is coded in 18 bits, so the standard output of an AC-3 flow is 384 Kbps (6 channels x 18 x 48 kHz)"


"So a DTS sound track codes in 20 bits (specifications allow for coding in 16, 18, 20 and 24 bits) instead of the 16, 18 or 20 bits with Dolby"


With this kind of sentence, I do not understand how you can do a proper review of a sound card...
What is annoying me is that I am able to clearly see that this is wrong, but because it is audio related.
So perhaps in other fields reviews from Tomshardware could be as wrong as this one.

Yep... Already seen that nonsense before from him... Strange that no one has complained and demanded a correction... If you don't know how something works, then you make things up to look more professional since you'll only end up looking a fool... (Although Tom's hardware has always sucked pretty hard... The other large review sites seems to go the same way...)

[review] Audigy2

Reply #9 –
Quote
Is this review a joke?

" In general, AC-3 sound is coded in 18 bits, so the standard output of an AC-3 flow is 384 Kbps (6 channels x 18 x 48 kHz)"


"So a DTS sound track codes in 20 bits (specifications allow for coding in 16, 18, 20 and 24 bits) instead of the 16, 18 or 20 bits with Dolby"


With this kind of sentence, I do not understand how you can do a proper review of a sound card...
What is annoying me is that I am able to clearly see that this is wrong, but because it is audio related.
So perhaps in other fields reviews from Tomshardware could be as wrong as this one.

whats is wrong ?

6 chanels *16 bits *48khz with 1:12 compresion is 384 the standard for an ac3 dolbydigital track
6 chanels * 18bits * 48khz with 1:12 comression is 432 which is the bitrate of DTS encodet ac3 tracks

where is he wrong ?
Sven Bent - Denmark

[review] Audigy2

Reply #10 –
Quote
Quote
Is this review a joke?

" In general, AC-3 sound is coded in 18 bits, so the standard output of an AC-3 flow is 384 Kbps (6 channels x 18 x 48 kHz)"


"So a DTS sound track codes in 20 bits (specifications allow for coding in 16, 18, 20 and 24 bits) instead of the 16, 18 or 20 bits with Dolby"


With this kind of sentence, I do not understand how you can do a proper review of a sound card...
What is annoying me is that I am able to clearly see that this is wrong, but because it is audio related.
So perhaps in other fields reviews from Tomshardware could be as wrong as this one.

whats is wrong ?

6 chanels *16 bits *48khz with 1:12 compresion is 384 the standard for an ac3 dolbydigital track
6 chanels * 18bits * 48khz with 1:12 comression is 432 which is the bitrate of DTS encodet ac3 tracks

where is he wrong ?

Ehh... Well since AC3 doesn't have a fixed number of bits per channel nor sample, that type of calculations are impossible on a lossy formats like AC3... For example, the channel used for the sub is a LFE channel which only encodes only around ~0-500Hz (as far as I know) and thus uses far fewer bits than those who has to go from ~0-24000Hz...

[review] Audigy2

Reply #11 –
"whats is wrong ?

6 chanels *16 bits *48khz with 1:12 compresion is 384 the standard for an ac3 dolbydigital track
6 chanels * 18bits * 48khz with 1:12 comression is 432 which is the bitrate of DTS encodet ac3 tracks

where is he wrong ?"


The content of these 2 sentences is rubbish, or useless (like a bag of rice goes lose in China...).

Well, I don't know exactly, if there is a "standard" bitrate for ac3 or not, and if there should be, I don't know the value...
But I know:
More common for 5.1 ac3 is: 448 kbit/s, not 384.
These 448 are the upper limit of bitrate for ac3. That's one reason, why ac3 does not sound very well.
The other reason for lower quality of ac3 sound (besides low bitrate for 5 - 6 channels) is likely:
It is an old format, like mp3, so compression techniques are not uptodate like today: mpc, Ogg....

erm, 2nd sentence:
why the hell, should an ac3 track be encoded to dts ??
That would be transcoding, why should anybody, or company, do such crap ???

Furthermore:
AFAIK 432 kbit/s is not fixed for dts.
One advantage of dts is: it is not limited in bitrate. So one reason, why dts 5.1 sounds better than 5.1 ac3: That dts track will have a higher bitrate than 448 kbit/s ac3.............
Today there are even 24/96 5.1 dts tracks on DVD, readable even by DVD-Video-Player !!
(the trick is: they will read a core signal of 48 kHZ, and pass that through digital out.)
Disadvantage: the core signal of 48 kHZ has a low bitrate.

I have not heard myself these new discs (example: DVD-A Queen - A Night at the opera, playable on DVD-V), but I assume they do it this way, to "convince" (better: force) people to buy DVD-A player, perhaps even new amps with dts96/24 decoding-capability.

[review] Audigy2

Reply #12 –
i remember (from the olde goode HydrogenAudio AD2001) that actually 640kbps is the upper limit for a Dolby Digital 5.1 track with DVD, whilst 384 being the limit for a cinematic digital track. Of course i can be wrong... but i'm quite sure 

[review] Audigy2

Reply #13 –
lots of dvds are 448 kbits ac3, but the majority probably are 384 kbits.  I've never seen another bitrate, other than the 2-channel 192 kbits.  DTS standards I am unsure of, but I know some tracks are ~700, and the really good ones (usually on special edition 2 dvd sets) are ~1400.
 

[review] Audigy2

Reply #14 –
Ac3 allows 640, and perhaps higher, but I do not remember.
If you want to check, the standard is available on mp3-tech.org (it is name atsc-a52)