PC Peripherals Audigy 2 & soundcards discussion !

A

Amol

Adept
Not to break your bubble anish, but Audigy 2 platinum pro is a waste of money. Buy a plain audigy 2. Anything above that and it's not worth spending anything on audigy cards.
Audigy cards are not audiophile grade cards, and the recording facility on the audigy platinum series does not justify the price.

Just my 2 cents i.e. after all my experience with sound stuff..
 
Yeah... if you want to record, audigy 2 and the likes are a waste. its best to buy an EMU 0404 if u are a cheapskate like me :D or an 1820M if u wanna spend lots. There are tonnes of other options too... like the Juli@, Audiotrak maya, M-Audio 9900, Onkyo etc. In fact even for gaming, right now I'd go for an X-Mystique rather than audigy2.

Edit: Too bad I was a moron to have bought an Audigy LS earlier :(. I feel its better in pure audio quality than the plain jane audigy1 and audigy2 though... (not better than ZS) cos it has a much better DAC than those and doesnt suffer from the 48kHz resampling issue.
 
Chaos said:
Edit: Too bad I was a moron to have bought an Audigy LS earlier :(. I feel its better in pure audio quality than the plain jane audigy1 and audigy2 though... (not better than ZS) cos it has a much better DAC than those and doesnt suffer from the 48kHz resampling issue.
Click to expand...

All audigy core processors resample. As far as perceptible quality goes, it doesnt make a difference to my ears, neither do they make any difference in the benchmarks. I still havent been able to understand why hardcore audiophiles harping on the resampling issue, pick up audio CD players with 24/96 upsampling. What audigy cards have always suffered from is the bad PCB design.
A resampling audigy card can made to be good sounding..e.g. - Sblive 24 bit, which i am using currently.
Strange but true, the live 24 bit has a superb PCB design, akin to an audiophile grade soundcard.
 
amol0010 said:
All audigy core processors resample. As far as perceptible quality goes, it doesnt make a difference to my ears, neither do they make any difference in the benchmarks. I still havent been able to understand why hardcore audiophiles harping on the resampling issue, pick up audio CD players with 24/96 upsampling. What audigy cards have always suffered from is the bad PCB design.
A resampling audigy card can made to be good sounding..e.g. - Sblive 24 bit, which i am using currently.
Strange but true, the live 24 bit has a superb PCB design, akin to an audiophile grade soundcard.
Click to expand...

Hm... are you sure that the Live 24bit has the resampling issue? Cos the Live 24bit and the audigyls use the same DSP and its definitely not EMU10k2. If you look up the driver as well, its called p17.sys instead of the standard ctaudio2k.sys. AFAIK, it doesnt have the resampling problem. Also the live24bit and audigyls are the same card other than the DAC(ls uses Wolfson 8776 which is a 5.1, 113dB SNR dac whereas the live24bit uses a 7.1, 108dB SNR cs4382-kq), PCB and output ports :). The live24bit uses a half height pcb whereas the audigyls and audigy2 value share the same pcb. Both lack EAX4 and hardware acceleration as well. I've not been able to discern the difference in quality between using resampling with foobar compared to normal. However this difference is very very audible on an audigy2 zs if you listen on a zs with decent cans. in fact in pure music, i can't distinguish between the ls/live24bit and the audigy2 zs with resampling in foobar at all :S. The resampling problem cannot be eradicated on a plain audigy/audigy2 since it doesnt have the DSP bypass mode that the zs has. These sound horrendous in comparison. I have used all of them with the same hd497 cans.

Edit: Hell this shud be in a different thread altogether :p. but couldnt stop commenting :)
 
Yes, the Audigy resamples..
If you go to the control panel in the live's control panel you will see only the option of sample rates of 48/96. Which means that the core is capable of processing only in multiples of 48 without resampling. 44.1 on the audigy core is actually resampled for it..

The DAC used on the live has technical specs of 114 db.
Read the tech sheet of this DAC here http://www.cirrus.com/en/pubs/proDatasheet/CS4382_PP3.pdf
regarding the PCB size , i am not talking about the PCB size, but the PCB design, there are minimum number of components used on the live's PCB set, with no Electrolytic caps in the signal path, no extra connectors to add to the EMI/RMI.

Finally the percieved audio quality, from my experience using a M audio Revolution 7.1 for more than a year, the transparency level on the Live is on par with it, and the tonal/vocal balance, much smoother and laid back. That might be due to the difference in the opamps used, because i modded the Revo with AD8620 ones. Anyways, i can safely say that i like this card's music playback better than the Revo.

Finally, considering the ADC on the live 24 bit rated @ 102 db from the official ADC specs from the company,
http://www.wolfsonmicro.com/products/digital_audio/adcs/WM8775/

It is really surprising to know that the ADC meausres up to the full level of it's specs on the tests, which is a sure sign indicator of fantastic PCB design.
Here is a loop back test on the live 24 bit, if you are still an unbeliever. Check out the fantastic freq response from 20hz -20 khz.
http://www.geocities.com/amol2003/sblive2496.htm
 
Holy crap! That frequency response is outstanding! Did you try a loop from the Live's output to M-Audio revo's input and vice versa? The ADC on my card is a Sigmatel 9750 which is AC97 quality crap :(. So its of no use trying a loopback test. Maybe i shud dump this audigy and get a live instead ;).

Edit: Do post the rightmark results at 16/44 and 16/48 as well ;)
 
amol0010 , that resposnse is quite something.. was looking arn for a sound card myself , will settle for the live ;)
 
yes.... this really is a high level discussion going on.... I hardly understood anything.... just that the Live 24 bit is a very good card :bleh:
 
amol0010 said:
Not to break your bubble anish, but Audigy 2 platinum pro is a waste of money.
Click to expand...
Haha, you speaking about zhopudey's post Amol ?

Well I just said that to tease him :p, not really looking to buy a soundcard now, I am pretty happy with the onboard sound :D
 
hehe i think i should rename this thread to sb live 24 bit tried tested and approved
 
Chaos said:
LOL yeah... btw amol one thing remains... 16bit, 44.1kHz. The one thats supposedly bad for live/audigy cards ;)
Click to expand...

yup, it's bad @ 44.1 mulitplies, having a native sample rate of 48. No point in posting those results, since it's not a true indicator.
 
It'd still be an indicator of how bad the internal resampling algorithm is. I guess creative has learnt its lesson and is dedicating more dsp power for resampling in the X-Fi. I hope that its better than the audigy2/live.
 
Ok,i also tested my audigy 2zs with rightmark audio analyser.
Here are few attachments,dunno a damn what it means,but are they good or bad?
The spectrum below is of frequency response
 
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