Anyone have the PCMCIA Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS yet?

[Hikari]

You can either send your output to a receiver or have the Audigy do the decoding. For a Z680, just send the data out spdif and let the speakers do the decoding. This is what I do anyway (I have the Z680s). If you have a cheaper speaker set, you'd want the Audigy to do it perhaps.

 

[cpals]

Just asking for an update and wondering how it is going for ya. I'm thinking about buying this for myself.

 

[Hikari]

Still working great here. And, a driver update came out yesterday apparently, so I'll get that. It fixed some popping sounds people were having with analog supposedly (digital here, never noticed any).

Originally posted by: cpals
Just asking for an update and wondering how it is going for ya. I'm thinking about buying this for myself.

 

[geoffct]

I really must suggest that if you are only looking to connect to your receiver, you get a cheap optical converter such as the Onkyo UD-5 (opt out only), I paid ~$5 a piece for them and they work excellently. Just plug into a usb port and you are done.

KEEP IN MIND digital output uses the DACs in the amp, therefore the quality of the soundcard can be neglected.

If you are looking for something that does analog aswell, then there are a multitude of options, but all of these cost more as they need good DAC/ADC chips.

I might suggest the M-Audio Sonica (8channel) or the M-Audio Transit (2channel), I have only used the Sonica, but from this I will assume the sound quality of both are excellent. Both have digital out and therfore can do AC3/DTS/PCM. (Yes a 2channel card can output digital surround) Turtle Beach has a stamp sized optical and analog out.

 

[IlllI]

hey Hikari, whats the cpu hit with the card? i remember reading about the external audigy usb sound cards and saw that they were usng like 20% or the cpu resources. i doubt it would be that high with PCMCIA but i thought i would ask anyway

 

[Hikari]

How do I check the CPU usage?

Every thread I've written on this card always has a ton of people basically trying to find a reason for people not to buy it. lol. Anyway, as I've said I also play games, so I had more reason than just wanting to do AC3 passthrough.