SoundBlaster Audigy 2

Hardware - The latest and greatest audio hardware from Creative Labs reviewed.

Creative officially unveiled the sequel to the Audigy soundcard a couple of months ago amid much excitement among those in the know. The original Audigy is something of a landmark in audio hardware, cementing Creative as the industry leader. The anticipation is therefore high that the Audigy 2 will embody yet another step towards audio-excellence for PC owners.

Whilst technologically-wise the card isn’t as revolutionary as the original Audigy player, solid progress is displayed in the shape of DVD audio support, 192kHz/24-bit playback, 6.1 channel audio support, Dolby Digital EX decoding and THX certification. Lucas Film were certainly impressed it seems, but will the canny PC upgrader be as enthusiastic about shelling out for this new piece of kit?

As ever, installation is a fairly simple prospect of removing your old audio card, and locating your new toy in a free PCI socket, this done you’ll need to replace your casing, boot-up your PC, and use the bundled drivers and software to get your ears humming.

On this front, its pleasing to note that Creative have spruced up their software for the sequel, not only is everything a little more easy on the eye, its much simpler to use and easier to navigate as well. Not a massive improvement, but its nice to see that matters have been made easier for us, still.

With regard to the specification, here’s some technical titillation for those of you interested in comparing the cold hard facts:

High Definition Audio Quality for Playback and Recording

24-bit Digital-to-Analog conversion during playback with sampling rates of 8, 11.025, 16, 22.05, 24, 32, 44.1, 48 and 96kHz in 6.1 mode and up to 192kHz in stereo mode

24-bit Analog-to-Digital conversion during recording in 8, 16 or 24-bit at sampling rates of 8, 11.025, 16, 22.05, 24, 32, 44.1, 48 and 96kHz

SPDIF output up to 24-bit at 48 or 96kHz

ASIO™ drivers for low latency (as low as 2ms) multi-track playback and recording at 16-bit/48kHz

Advanced Audio and 3D Audio Technology

Dolby Digital® audio decoding to 5.1 (digital or analog modes) or Dolby Digital® EX decoding to 6.1 (analog mode only) speaker channels

Hardware acceleration of EAX® and EAX® Advanced HD™ for games

32-bit Professional Quality Effects Engine with support for real-time digital effects like reverb and chorus across any audio source