[Puddleglum]

I have been twidling my thumbs and saving my paychecks to get some better equipment, but in the meantime I've been listening with my original audigy and SR80's. Earlier today however, I decided to pull out my old Aureal SQ2500 and see how it compares to the newer audigy. In the back of my head I was dreading that I would spend $500 bucks and notice little or no difference in sound, so I was hoping to "practice" with my ears now while my wallet's still cold. While not a kick in the head type experience, I think the aureal still holds up better than my audigy. First thing I noticed was that the Aureal it wasn't as bright, I had always found the Audigy fatiguing to listen to and had thought it was completely the SR80's fault. There is definitely less grain in the blacks during the tracks I listened too with the Aureal. The downside was that the Audigy sounded sounded slightly more detailed all around, and had deeper, but sloppier bass. I think I'll keep the SQ2500 because most of my games either use A3D 2.0/3.0, or doesn't use EAX HD anyways. Overall, I think this makes me want to upgrade my source and other components without any reservations.

 

[Piccolo Daimaou]

I've never heard the original Audigy, but I think my Audigy 2 ZS sounds fine, but granted, I was listening with an unamped pair of HD580s. To some degree, I actually preferred my Audigy 2 to the Chaintech when listening to the cans, mainly because the Audigy 2 could drive the 580s to higher volumes. In all honesty, I don't really notice that much of a difference between my Audigy 2 and my Chaintech. The only reason I can perceive any kind of difference is more than likely due to the fact that I've been conditioned (thanks Head-Fi) to believe that the Chaintech is better, but to my ears, I can't really tell the difference. But since I listen to mostly my speakers now, it really doesn't make much difference.

OK, so I drifted off the subject a little bit there, but yeah, the original Audigy sucks hard.

 

[Puddleglum]

I can see what you mean, an unamped HD580 on a chaintech probably doesn't compare. I've also heard that the audio quality on the Audigy2's are somewhat better. I hope to have an amp and some better cans to do a direct comparison between the SQ2500, Audigy, and Audigy2 sometime in the future.

 

[llmobll]

I've owned the Audigy 2 and chaintech both and let me just say on an UN-amped set of 580's the audigy does drive them better. However the chaintech does prodive a better sound.(in many ways) The signal is just clearer and paired with foobar and its 96Khz resampling provides some of the clearest music around.

The audigy 2 does a great job but in a A|B Test the chaintech in noticably better. I thought the A2 was better but it was because I hadn't configured foobar in the best way EQ mostly.

 

[commando]

You need an amp for the chaintech, even for cans as easy to drive as A900s. 580s are hard to drive and need a good amp.