[Infoolio]

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...118-101&depa=1

How's this compare to the Chaintech 710?

 

[lan]

the spec read DAC/ADC: 20-bit/18-bit so the Chaintech is better as it's 24bit.

 

[Infoolio]

I want to bring this back to life for a moment....

Will this card (for the price) beat out the COMBINATION of the Audigy 2 for games and the Chaintech 710 for music?

What I want to know is, is it a happy medium between the gaming greatness of the Audigy and the musical masterpieces of the AV-710?

 

[lcachola]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Infoolio I want to bring this back to life for a moment.... Will this card (for the price) beat out the COMBINATION of the Audigy 2 for games and the Chaintech 710 for music? What I want to know is, is it a happy medium between the gaming greatness of the Audigy and the musical masterpieces of the AV-710?

Why don't you buy 'em and try 'em and give us a review?

 

[Eagle_Driver]

It is better than a Sound Blaster card, but not as good as the AV710, for music. And for gaming, it is about the same as the AV710 - and neither of these cards is as good as the latest Audigys. In other words, the Santa Cruz is a bit outdated. Moreover, since it is no more than AC97-compliant, it doesn't support playback of audio sampled any higher than 48kHz no matter what, and it resamples all digital audio to 48kHz at driver level (since its hardware is natively hard-locked at 48kHz, and it lacks onboard hardware-based resampling codecs).

 

[Infoolio]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eagle_Driver It is better than a Sound Blaster card, but not as good as the AV710, for music. And for gaming, it is about the same as the AV710 - and neither of these cards is as good as the latest Audigys. In other words, the Santa Cruz is a bit outdated. Moreover, since it is no more than AC97-compliant, it doesn't support playback of audio sampled any higher than 48kHz no matter what, and it resamples all digital audio to 48kHz at driver level (since its hardware is natively hard-locked at 48kHz, and it lacks onboard hardware-based resampling codecs).

Thanks for the reply.

Another question I have is - does the BEST BEST BEST Audigy 2 (the ZS Platinum Pro) still do upsampling to 48 khz? Or can it just handle 44.1 without screwing around with the sound?

Reason I ask is
http://www.soundblaster.com/products..._pro/specs.asp

Shows that it supports 44.1 and 48 rates...

 

[Eagle_Driver]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Infoolio Thanks for the reply. Another question I have is - does the BEST BEST BEST Audigy 2 (the ZS Platinum Pro) still do upsampling to 48 khz? Or can it just handle 44.1 without screwing around with the sound? Reason I ask is http://www.soundblaster.com/products..._pro/specs.asp Shows that it supports 44.1 and 48 rates...

What Creative's Web site doesn't tell you that every one of the Sound Blaster cards (yes, that includes the Audigy2 ZS Platinum Pro) resample 44.1kHz audio to 48kHz in hardware (which cannot be bypassed at all whatsoever). And that hardware-based resampling uses a horrible alogarithm in doing so. And they can't even do bit-perfect 48kHz output using Creative's own drivers!

 

[Infoolio]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eagle_Driver What Creative's Web site doesn't tell you that every one of the Sound Blaster cards (yes, that includes the Audigy2 ZS Platinum Pro) resample 44.1kHz audio to 48kHz in hardware (which cannot be bypassed at all whatsoever). And that hardware-based resampling uses a horrible alogarithm in doing so. And they can't even do bit-perfect 48kHz output using Creative's own drivers!

Does this only apply to music that is encoded at 44.1 khz? e.g. cds?

 

[Eagle_Driver]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Infoolio Does this only apply to music that is encoded at 44.1 khz? e.g. cds?

Not just 44.1kHz. The Audigy2 ZS Platinum Pro's DSP - and the DSP of all other Audigy2 ZS series cards - know only 48kHz, 96kHz and 192kHz sampling rates. That means that all sampling rates below 48kHz get resampled to 48kHz - and with the Creative-alogarithm-based butchering. Likewise, 64kHz and 88.2kHz audio files are resampled to 96kHz. And 176.4kHz audio gets resampled to 192kHz.

 

[Infoolio]

Friend of mine told me upsampling just appends blank information to the stream - is this really what's happening or is it changing everything to make it 48 khz?

I'm guessing there is no chance of flashing the card to work @ 44.1 khz either

 

[Mr.Radar]

To understand resampling you must first understand the basics of digital audio. Here is a great paper on digital audio (you only need to read the first two sections to understand resampling). Basically, resampling takes a digital audio signal and tries to interpolate what the same signal would be if it was recorded at a different sample rate. Unless it is done well the audio will become severely distorted, and the Audigy does it very poorly.

There is no way to get the Audigy to operate at 44.1 KHz.

 

[Infoolio]

Here's a big question then, and thanks for the link to that paper it is very interesting and explanatory:

Am I mostly at a loss for CD music in using an Audigy 2? I have like no CDs whatsoever (maybe 4 or 5 if you can believe that). Most of the music I listen to is on MP3 (probably a dozen albums, not much) of variable quality (I try to get 320 kbps wherever possible).