Upgrading from Sb live!5.1 to Audigy 2 worth the 80 bucks?

[OOBradm]

Right now I have a SB live 5.1. I work at BestBuy, and right now along with my employee discount we also have a 30 dollar Mail in Rebate. That would bring the price of an Audigy 2 (not platinum) to a little under 80 bucks. Think its worth the cash?

 

[pukemon]

If you have $80 of disposable income, sure why not. Otherwise, no not really. Unless you have a really really nice set of speakers, you probably won't notice too much of a difference. So-called "audiophiles" here will say otherwise, but real audiophiles wouldn't touch creative products with a 50 foot pole...

Basically if you're happy with the Live5.1, keep it, it'll be good enough for most games for some time, and it's still better than the onboard sound (other than the nvidia MCP-T) on most motherboards.

 

[gplracer]

I would not buy it only because you can by an nforce2 board such as the 8RDA+ with sound that is almost as good and better than the audigy I for about $85. To me the audigy is just too over priced. And yes I have an audigy and a soundblaster live. My 6 year old uses the soundblaster live.

 

[Brian48]

I would agree if it was the Audigy1 that he was considering, but this is the Audigy2, of which I personally consider to be a totally different animal.

To the original question: is it worth it to go from a SBLive to an A2? Hell yes. From a nForce2 to an A2? Maybe. For me, I found the A2 slightly better for music/DVD's over the nForce2 and definitely better for gaming, especially for titles using EAX 3.0.

 

[eviltoon]

I thought the difference between the SB live and the Audigy 2 was very big and well worth the money. And that was with a fairly low quality 5.1 sound system. I recently got the Creative Megaworks 5.1 speakers and WOW! I am in audio heaven.

 

[Bonesdad]

what mobo do you have??? I agree, the NF2 sound is better than the SBLive and not that much worse than the Audigy2. For $85, the deal is good, esp if you are upgrading from an older board...IMO

 

[OOBradm]

Hey guys, I went out to Bestbuy and got it.... WOW! what a difference!

I just played moh:aa, which doesnt even support EAX, and I can tell a massive difference in the audio quality. I have mid range 5.1 creative speakers, and a nice pair of headphones (which I use more often). I actually almost picked up the Audigy 2 platinum, just for the cool faceplace 🙂 but it was over $100 more and didnt think it was worth it.

Bonesdad i have a mobo with an nForce chipset, but im planning on doing a full system upgrade when the athlon 64 comes out, anyone know the approximate release date of that? I thought it was in August? well, ty for all of your help,

OObradm

 

[Ronin]

More like Q4 of this year is when you'll probably expect it.