Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 sound card

The Audigy 2 is a MAJOR...

Strengths: Great sound quality. Plenty of control. Very simple install. (XP Pro)

Weakness: downloaded software updates sometimes "break" the Audigy software

The Audigy 2 is a MAJOR improvement over the Audigy. This card sounds great and practically installs itself. I've installed 3 in computers I've built over the past 9-12 months (All WIndows XP Pro) and they have worked spectacularly. I haven't had any problems with freezes related tothe sound card during any games or other applications. But then again I always had the latest drivers and patches...
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The Audigy 2 is a MAJOR improvement over the Audigy. This card sounds great and practically installs itself. I've installed 3 in computers I've built over the past 9-12 months (All WIndows XP Pro) and they have worked spectacularly. I haven't had any problems with freezes related tothe sound card during any games or other applications. But then again I always had the latest drivers and patches for my software. The only bug I noticed was when I downloaded the updated software from the Creative Labs site once. After installing the updates the Audigy 2 task items crashed the computer. This only happened once and it's possible that it was user (or Windoze) error. All-in-all this card is a must have; especially if you have a nice speaker system and want to utilize it.

By alcdotcom - Jul 21, 2003

I admit that the software update...

Strengths: Works as advertised. Great Sound. Bought a couple of DVD-Audio discs and had my mind blown! Of course having the MegaWorks THX speakers helps.

Weakness: Diagnostics have never worked even with numerous software updates. Fortunately, I've never needed the diagnostics (knock on wood!)

I admit that the software update process is a tough one if you attempt to download and install all the various drivers manually. However, once I found out about their automatic update service here:

www.americas.creative....

...I've had no problems whatsoever.

By Octol - Jul 20, 2003

To the person who gave it a 1 star...

Strengths: Easy Setup, Excellent Sound

Weakness: None

To the person who gave it a 1 star just because he doesn't know how to install a sound card. Give me a break....I install the Audigy 2 sound card in 5 minutes. Work fine and trouble free. Great sound card and I recommend this sound card to everyone who doesn't want to spend the money for the Audigy 2 Platinum EX.

By AnthonyL88 - Apr 8, 2003

I've had this card for 3 months...

Strengths: SQ is good. Haven't had install problems like other.

Weakness: Setup program is terrible. Not enough options.

I've had this card for 3 months with no complaints. For under $100, you can have great sound quality - assuming you can get it installed. I could get it installed on my fresh copy of XP Enterprise, but I wouldn't doubt others have had problems. The install program is terrible and does not have enough options. Overall, this is a solid 5.1 card.

By toddnappi - Dec 5, 2003

First time I installed the drivers...

Strengths: No blue screens of death, able to boot almost every time dispite other troubles. Only took 13 days to find out it wont work with the only flavor of Windows that is gaming friendly.

Weakness: crashed every other game, the ones that didn't crash had the worst skipping sound/dropped sound. Driver installation "succeded" 1 out of 3 times (the worst system hang I've ever had).

First time I installed the drivers they installed, I rebooted, and the new creative sound/logo was chopped and skippy. I tried playing every game I had installed, and a few of them crashed back to the desktop, the rest had choppy/skippy sound and the intros were visually skippy, with skippy sound. I reinstalled the drivers multiple times, downloaded the "updated" driver, used their online...
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First time I installed the drivers they installed, I rebooted, and the new creative sound/logo was chopped and skippy. I tried playing every game I had installed, and a few of them crashed back to the desktop, the rest had choppy/skippy sound and the intros were visually skippy, with skippy sound. I reinstalled the drivers multiple times, downloaded the "updated" driver, used their online support.

3 out of 4 times I installed the drivers it froze at 95%, and I had to manually install, after the reboot, .dll files from cd/Driver location.

Support suggested changing the pci slot, getting the card on its own IRQ, taking out every card but video/SBA2, and changing the IRQ bios setting (they also told me to change 2 non-exsistant settings).

I did all of these, and over the course of 3 support feedbacks and 10 days I tried every combonation of these suggestions. Non of these did anything at all.

The online support was prompt, they mentioned my choice of OS was a good one for gaming, and asked good questions and gave suggestions that would seem to help. The only thing I didn't like about the experience was that they didn't help do anything but eliminate every possibility except bad hardware design/drivers.

I am running a Via KT333 chipset with raid, usb 2.0, tried 3 diffrent 4in1 drivers. My OS is Win98SE.

As requested by support I tried the card in my server, Win2k 500mhz PIII with an old 440bx chipset, right above the ISA slot, and it worked fi

By KT333 - Jul 15, 2003