Audigy 4

[Tbirdkid]

I havent ever had a decent sound card, or speakers. I finally moved up in the world and got some Logitech 530s, and a Audigy 4. This setup is awesome. I can only imagine what it would sound like using digital.

It also had the media center software, and its good too. I just have some changes to make with my files, but its just plain awesome.

Tbirdkid

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

If you have a nice soundcard, digital would probably be worse if you're talking about a conrol pod on z-5500s or something.

 

[alcoholbob]

I think the combination of spending $50 on speakers and $250 on a soundcard provides far less utility than $250 on speakers and $50 sound card.

An analogy would be a 1GHz PC with nVidia 7800 vs a 3GHz PC with Radeon 9800 Pro.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: Astrallite
I think the combination of spending $50 on speakers and $250 on a soundcard provides far less utility than $250 on speakers and $50 sound card.

An analogy would be a 1GHz PC with nVidia 7800 vs a 3GHz PC with Radeon 9800 Pro.

It's too late for that kind of statement.

 

[Eureka]

Well, he can always upgrade the speakers later, right?

Freakin rich people -.-;;

Norm

 

[Tbirdkid]

um, i didnt buy the pro.

 

[orangat]

The A4 non-pro is $80 retail box at BB

 

[shortylickens]

I suppose if you always used onboard sound or cheap sound cards, an Audigy 4 may seem pretty good.

My question to all of you is: If I were to upgrade my Audigy Platinum to any of the Audigy 4 cards, would I notice a major difference?
Or should I just hold out until I feel like spending money on the high-end XFi?

 

[dunkster]

I also have the Audigy 4 ($80 at BestBuy) and Logitech X530 speakers.

I think it's an excellent bang-for-bucks value combination.

The only problem I found was that the rear speakers lacked presence for surround performance, but that was easily cured by reducing volume settings for the front speakers to 75% with the Surround Mixer utility.

Good sound performance for music, good positional sense in games, and no driver problems.

I don't use the remote and installed only the driver and card/speaker setup utilities.

 

[Tbirdkid]

i did go from the onboard sound to a decent sound card, plus, i never owned decent speakers... great value combo for the money i thought.

 

[orangat]

Originally posted by: shortylickens
I suppose if you always used onboard sound or cheap sound cards, an Audigy 4 may seem pretty good.

My question to all of you is: If I were to upgrade my Audigy Platinum to any of the Audigy 4 cards, would I notice a major difference?
Or should I just hold out until I feel like spending money on the high-end XFi?

I doubt it especially on MM speakers. Don't get sucked into the hype.

 

[likwidkool]

Hey there. I just bought an Audigy2 value and I am blown away as to the difference fromt he onboard of the DFI SLI-DR. I hear sounds in games I never heard before!

So when I bought this card I didn't think it was going to be that big of a deal. I did it mainly for the extra fps in games. Now I want more. I have been looking at a X-Fi xtreme music but didn't really want to spend that much. I figured better headphones would make more of a difference so I bought some Altec Lansing AHS 602i phones.

I was looking at the Audigy 4 at Best Buy, or the Audigy 2 ZS on newegg. Are either of these going to be any better than the vlue card I have now?

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

If you're doing headphones, the X-Fi seems like the way to go. The A2zs and A4 aren't really going to offer much that your A2 value can't do now.

 

[yhelothar]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
If you're doing headphones, the X-Fi seems like the way to go. The A2zs and A4 aren't really going to offer much that your A2 value can't do now.

Does X-Fi still does the automatic 48KHz upsampling like the Audigy2/4?
That's what kept A2/4 from being considered as a good music card.

I'll stick with a Chaintech AV-710 for music for $20, kthnx

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: virtualgames0

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
If you're doing headphones, the X-Fi seems like the way to go. The A2zs and A4 aren't really going to offer much that your A2 value can't do now.

Does X-Fi still does the automatic 48KHz upsampling like the Audigy2/4?
That's what kept A2/4 from being considered as a good music card.

I'll stick with a Chaintech AV-710 for music for $20, kthnx

It does some resampling of 44.1KHz material still, but it's so good at it now that it's not noticable at all from what I've read. So, gaming and music are both top notch from the X-Fi if you let it do it's thing without the crystalizer etc.

 

[Mem]

Nothing wrong with Audigy 2 or 4,personally I would use them and wait for the next range from Creative,won't take long for X-Fi 2 range to be released,just a matter on when Creative think its time for a new range to hit the market.

Still a lot of life left in the Audigy models that is for sure.

I'm on Audigy 4 at moment and have no intention of gettinga new Creative card until next range of new models.

 

[Ghouler]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello

It does some resampling of 44.1KHz material still, but it's so good at it now that it's not noticable at all from what I've read. So, gaming and music are both top notch from the X-Fi if you let it do it's thing without the crystalizer etc.

I can't perceive any audible difference so I guess the resampling is done way better then with Audigy. But you actually can bypass sample rate conversion and have card sample at the source sampling rate if you manually select the clock speed in the creation mode. Not that it is necessary. But it is possible.

 

[alcoholbob]

Doesn't "Creation" mode only pertain to recoding music (at a certain bitrate), as opposed to (bitperfect) playback?