Product Description

With the introduction of the Sound Blaster Audigy 2, Creative has once more raised the bar for PC audio, bringing to you the most definitive audio experience yet!Sound Blaster Audigy 2 delivers high-quality multi-channel recording and playback at up to 24-bit/96kHz and is the first PC product to offer playback of Advanced Resolution DVD-Audio at an astonishing 24-bit/192kHz with a stunning Signal-to-Noise ratio of 106dB, delivering spectacular audio quality that has now redefined PC audio standards. With EAX Advanced HD, 6.1 speaker support and Dolby Digital EX support, movies and games will be experienced with a breathtaking level of immersion and intensity, while SB1394 allows super-fast transfer of audio to external players.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19513 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Creative Labs
• Model: SB0240P
• Dimensions: 3.00 pounds

Features

• The only PC solution to enable the Advanced Resolution era of 24-bit music fidelity with 192 kHz in stereo and 96 kHz in 5.1
• The best Sound Blaster clarity ever, rivaling home-theater audio quality for music, games, and movies
• Experience superior multi-channel audio from MP3s, CDs, 3-D games, and Dolby Digital EX movies with a rear center speaker
• The most exciting features yet with library search, automatic playlist volume matching, and hiss removal for MP3s
• Pure recording path captures the quality and subtle details of your audio creations

Amazon.com Product Description
For the highest-quality audio experience, 16-bit is just not good enough. Step up to Sound Blaster Audigy 2 to hear the amazing difference that 24-bit Advanced HD makes. It delivers astonishing clarity and audio details that are inaudible on current 16-bit audio solutions, bringing your music, movies, and games to life.

Sound Blaster Audigy 2 offers Advanced Resolution DVD-audio playback up to an astonishing 24-bit/192 kHz in stereo, and delivers an ultraquiet 106 dB SNR that's far superior to ordinary CD and MP3 playback. With 6.1 speaker support, your games and Dolby Digital EX movies will sound more encompassing than ever before. The new Creative MediaSource music player will revolutionize your MP3 experience with its intuitive interface and rich feature set, while the Audigy 2 chip with EAX Advanced HD support delivers awesome power for gaming. Get Sound Blaster Audigy 2 for 24-bit/192 kHz audio fidelity--it delivers simply the best audio quality for music, movies, and games. Nothing else comes close.

From the Manufacturer
With the introduction of the Sound Blaster Audigy 2, Creative has once more raised the bar for PC audio, bringing to you the most definitive audio experience yet. Sound Blaster Audigy 2 delivers high-quality, multi-channel recording and playback at up to 24-bit/96 kHz resolution and is the first PC product to offer playback of Advanced Resolution DVD-Audio at an astonishing 24-bit/192 kHz with a stunning signal-to-noise ratio of 106 dB, delivering spectacular audio quality that has now redefined PC audio standards.

With EAX Advanced HD, 6.1 speaker support, and Dolby Digital EX support, movies and games will be experienced with a breathtaking level of immersion and intensity, while SB1394 allows super-fast transfer of audio to external players.

Advanced Resolution DVD-Audio
The only PC-based solution to enable the Advanced Resolution era of 24-bit music fidelity with 192 kHz in stereo and 96 kHz in 5.1. Sound Blaster Audigy 2 brings you the purest music-listening experience on the PC with support for the music industry's latest high definition format: DVD-Audio, which reproduces music with greater brilliance and clarity compared to audio CDs, while preserving the depth and warmth of the original recording.

Sound Blaster 24-bit Advanced HD Audio
The best Sound Blaster clarity ever, rivaling home-theater audio quality for music, games and movies--vastly superior to host audio. Sound Blaster 24-bit Advanced HD audio performance at 106 dB SNR in the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 delivers up to eight times better clarity than host audio. The new Audigy 2 chip, premium quality 24-bit/192 kHz digital to analog converters (DACs), and a true 24-bit Advanced HD audio path ensure "hiss-free" audio fidelity and exceptional clarity of 106 dB SNR. Powerful Audigy 2 processing enables full 24-bit/96 kHz audio resolution in discrete 5.1-channel surround sound with playback of Windows Media Audio (WMA) 9 Professional, the Web's first digital 5.1 surround sound audio codec from the Windows Media 9 Series.

THX-Certified
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 is currently the first and only add-in sound card to be THX-certified. Being THX-certified means that the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 has passed the most stringent and rigorous audio quality and performance tests set by THX, the audio experts in the movie industry, so you can be assured that the awesome THX audio experience you've enjoyed in the cinema will be reproduced faithfully on your PC.

6.1 Surround Sound
Experience superior multi-channel audio from MP3s, CDs, DirectSound 3D games, and Dolby Digital EX movies with a rear center speaker. Sound Blaster Audigy 2 enhances immersion with improved directionality and ambience perception delivered through an additional rear center channel on 6.1 speaker systems, bringing vivid and intense realism that will thrust you right into the heart of your favorite music, games and movies.

Creative MediaSource
The most exciting features yet with library search, automatic playlist volume control, and hiss removal for MP3s. Creative MediaSource provides you sophisticated and intuitive control over your entire MP3 and music library. Its intelligent search engine helps you quickly locate songs. SVM (Smart Volume Management) helps you maintain a balanced playback volume level across your entire playlist so you won't have to adjust the volume between songs. Audio Clean-Up gives even your old music collection a facelift by removing hisses and clicks from recordings of old cassette tapes and vinyl records.

24-bit/96 kHz Recording
The purest commercially available recording path captures the quality and subtle details of your audio creations. Sound Blaster Audigy 2 lets you make rich 24-bit recordings to your PC from analog sources with an unprecedented 24-bit/96 kHz recording capability, while ASIO support allows compatible music creation software to link directly to ASIO compliant hardware, allowing multi-channel recording simultaneously at 16-bit/48 kHz at ultra-low-latency of less than or equal to 2 ms.

EAX Advanced HD Gaming
The ultimate platform for delivering unparalleled audio realism from the hottest gaming titles. Sound Blaster Audigy 2 gives you the ultimate game audio realism with its built-in EAX Advanced HD technology, which delivers accurate reverberations, seamless audio transition between environments, effects processing power capable of simultaneously processing multiple environment effects and more. All of which can now be enjoyed in over a dozen premier game titles, including Unreal Tournament 2003, Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness, Neverwinter Nights, Hitman 2, and Soldier of Fortune 2.

Customer Reviews

Worked, Happy and Now with the Music
Everything in life should be this simple.

If you want a basic card for your basic sound look no further. I'm not going to bother you with detailed tripe because I really can't hear the difference and if you are playing 128 mp3s you won't ether.

We plugged it in, loaded the software and she ran from the get go. Darn happy and come to think of it we have never had a Creative Lap product that we had to shoot.

One thing, see if you can buy one used. Save some money folks.

Good luck and don't forget as Red Green says, "if the women don't find you handsome they should at least find you handy".

Mike

Hardware is exceptional; drivers are abysmal.
I use a couple of Audigy 2ZS in my recording business. No other soundcard on the market, then or now, offers the flexibility and just great sound capturing capabilities of this card. Interestingly, all the later Creative products no longer support 192k/24 bit sampling, so this card is truly unique. The only other manufactured card supporting this brilliant sampling clarity costs US$250 more!

If you only get a hold of one of these cards to see how good audio CAN be on your computer, do it. It's jaw-droppingly good.

But I have to reinforce the driver problems described by others. I have dealt directly with the driver team at CL, and to say they are unhelpful is an understatement. Early drivers (e.g. those shipped on the CD) had some pretty bad flaws, but at least they allowed the card to work to its full potential (which is really astonishingly good!).

All the latest drivers (since late 2005) use the Creative "universal" driver model, which means they are designed to work correctly ONLY with the newer, low market level CL cards. All the new drivers have significant bugs and "showstopper" flaws, and completely prevent the card from being used properly (i.e. nowhere near it's actual technical specifications). Then there's a whole other discussion about CL supporting more than one card in any computer system. Old drivers worked beautifully with multiple cards, but new drivers just lock out inputs and confuse mixer settings and just don't work, full stop.

So if you want one of the clearest, most flexible, highest sample rate cards ever on the PC market up to this year, get one of these if you can (I've bought 3 spare cards in case any of my current ones die, as CL no longer support the product at all). Just don't expect the latest "mass market", "cloth-eared consumer" Creative labs drivers to work properly, and don't expect CL to help you with any technical problems. Ever.

To be honest, my next card will be anything BUT a Creative Labs product. But for me, the Audigy 2ZS is the BMW of the older audio card market. Have a drive, if you can. You just probably wouldn't want to own one.

Frustrating
Alright...when I can actually get this darn thing to work right it is an EXCELLENT sound card..But over the past few years I've had this thing I have had to reinstall the drives numerous times....I mean...much more than I should have to...This program will only function right for me for about a few months before I have to reinstall it again. I have updated my drivers and I'm sure nothing is wrong with my hard drive, still get the same problem...suddenly something stops working right, this time it was the fact that I can only choose 4.1 speakers..not even headphones or anything else...I dont even have 4.1 speakers....I have 6.1...Last time I couldn't change the EAX settings from default, so everything sounded horrible, the time before that I couldn't even open the EAX console period, mostly it's just problems with their EAX software. Which if you dont use everything sounds much worse by the way. If you can look past that problem though....great sound card...creative just needs to learn how to program decent software, cause the drivers for this sound card are absolutely horrid.