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Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Internal Sound Card
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List Price: $164.62
Our Price: $119.95
Your Save: $ 44.67 ( 27% )
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Manufacturer: Creative Labs
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Electronics
Brand: Creative Labs
EAN: 0054651060678
Feature: Superior quality 24-bit/192kHz audio, ultra-realistic game effects, and studio quality music settings
Is Memorabilia: 0
Label: Creative Labs
Manufacturer: Creative Labs
Model: SB0350
Publisher: Creative Labs
Studio: Creative Labs
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Features
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Superior quality 24-bit/192kHz audio, ultra-realistic game effects, and studio quality music settings
Exclusive Creative THX Setup Console provides accurate audio calibration for a precise speaker listening environment
The only available PC platform for Advanced Resolution 24-bit/96kHz 5.1 surround and 24-bit/192kHz stereo DVD-Audio playback
Multi-Environment audio -- up to four simultaneous environments processed in real time, with Bass Boost, Multi-Band Graphic Equalizer, Audio Clean-Up and Karaoke
Complete Cinematic Surround Sound with DTS-ES and Dolby Digital EX Movies
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Editorial Reviews:
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The Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS with THX certification is the perfect choice for high-impact surround sound up to 7.1. Its 24-bit ADVANCED HD engine delivers stunning 7.1 surround audio in games and movies and supports Dolby Digital EX and DTS-ES. There's also the exclusive THX Console for precise speaker calibration. Music lovers will appreciate its compatibility with DVD-Audio at 24-bit/192kHz in stereo and 24-bit/96kHz in 5.1, with 108dB SNR on all channels, Windows Media 9 compliance and CMSS 3D, which up-mixes stereo audio to 7.1. The Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS comes with Creative MediaSource 2 for digital audio playback, library creation and management. Musicians will also benefit from its true 24-bit/96kHz recording and low-latency ASIO 2.0 support.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Card - Poor Support
Comment: Production of this card has been discontinued with no upgrade available.
The Creative Audigy 2ZS and Platinum 2ZS cards provide a host of features including full support for a variety of speaker configurations trough 7.2, a joystick/MIDI interface, Optical SPD/IF, and an IEEE 1394 Firewire Port.
The Creative Software for the Audigy 2ZS is powerful, extensive, and easy to use. An ideal card for gamers, Home Entertainment, and Home Studio.
Unfortunately, none of the newly-released Creative Products are backward-
compatible with the 2 and 2ZS. Gone is the Firewire interface, the game/MIDI port, the SPD/IF. So you cannot upgrade and existing system based on this card with any Creative products.
But the worst 'feature' is Creative's clueless Support Team. If you have a problem with this card (e.g. adding a new device causing a contention problem on the bus or whatever), the procedures for completely removing the card, it's drivers, and software hooks in the Registry are draconian to the point of multiple boots into "Safe Mode", a Creative Tool which is supposed to remove all Creative reverences, followed by such nonsensical directives like completely blowing away the C:\TEMP and C:\WINDOWS\TEMP directories and then emptying the Recycle bin!
I had a card which seemingly failed (would no longer record and which failed the Creative Diagnostics) - it played perfectly but wouldn't record. I was three weeks out of warranty and nobody at Creative would help me diagnose the problem. I purchased a new replacement card and installed it only to find it had the same problems - so I took the original card to another machine and it installed perfectly without errors.
I wasted two weeks with Creative Support and their crazy diagnostic/fix procedures. When nothing else would work, I downloaded some obscure drivers from their site (which wasn't referenced by Support or in the FAQs) and finally it worked just fine.
The biggest complaint here is the methodology used when installing this card for the first time. It simply cannot be completely uninstalled using their own software and the Windows Control Panel. Vestiges remain everywhere apparently even after using their special cleaning tool. There is no excuse for this. I now believe that somehow, running in the background perhaps, Creative automatically 'upgraded' my drivers which broke the system.
I am not surprised that Creative no longer produces this fine product - they created a Support nightmare for themselves (e.g. an Audigy 2 is identical to a 2ZS except all the pins for the additional features are missing with the pads soldered off). They probably had several incompatible versions of the exact same card all requiring different drivers, etc. to work with their software.
I was forced to fix these problems myself because I had become so locked into the features on the original card I had no choice. Fortunately, the replacement card was available trough a third party with an extended warranty.
I will avoid Creative Products completely in the future no matter how good their specs and reviews - they apparently violate the most basic rules (at least for Windows/XP) in that their product cannot be completely uninstalled via the Control Panel and leaves countless junk in the Registry - then when something goes wrong they waste days trying to support you (the Support Team is very responsive but overwhelmed).
Too bad.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Piece of JUNK
Comment: the optical output only does 2.1 sound. If you want 5.1 to 7.1 sound then you have to use analog plugs on the back. Don't waste your money.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great sound card
Comment: This is one of the best sound cards you can get for this price.
Using it will give you around a 10FPS boost when gaming as it has a very low cpu load (if you have a onboard sound card, the sound processing load is sent to the cpu but with this card, all processing is handled within the card)
It is great for working with audio editors and studio apps like FL studio as it has great asio support and can handle hundreds of sound streams at 1 time with out skipping and with out putting a heavy load on the cpu.
This card does wonders for music. using the eax console, you can make all music really sound 20-30 times better, the advance eq has a feature that will increase the detail of all audio making all music sound much better.
PS some people on many different forums have been able to use creative x-fi drivers for this card and enable x-fi sound features. (i don't recommend doing this unless your very skilled with regedit as theres a high risk of something going wrong and you will need to spend hours in the regedit tool in windows)
Customer Rating:
Summary: Beware
Comment: "Bait and switch... The amazon link showed a full retail box with included software. When the actual seller responded they indicated a "bulk" item. So what I got was not a retail box but a "baggie" with the card and a driver CD. I would consider another vendor..."
Customer Rating:
Summary: significantly improving the sound quality
Comment: I bought refurbished Audigy 2 (older version of Audigy 2 zs) from creative's ebay store. It significantly improves the sound quality of my Logitech z 2300. I really love Audigy 2!!
I found my refurbished Audigy 2 is very easy to install. I was really worrying about setting up BIOS as some one mentioned here before I bought that card. When I installed it, I just disabled the onboard audio through volume control. I found this is enough!
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