Audiophiles

Listening to music

Aureal had it, Hercules has it, Turtle Beach has it, but Creative doesn't have it. We're referring to equalizer settings, specifically multi-band equalizers. The Audigy only has the typical bass and treble settings and lacks a hardware 10-band equalizer found on other cards. While this may not be a significant drawback, it does leave us wanting a more sophisticated feature to tune our music.

Sound field effects with EAX

Clean up any pops in Audio

We decided to test Creative's audiophile claims by playing through some of our favorite tracks. We loaded up an MP3 encoded at 220kbps because at that rate and the right audio equipment, very small audio imperfections can be heard. Testing the Audigy against a Live! and a GTXP, we were able to pick up minute sounds on the Audigy that weren't audible on the other two. To test the s/n, we turned up the volume on our speakers and compared the white noise between all three cards. Again, the Audigy exhibited less noise than the other two, with the GTXP following close behind.

Noise Clean-up

Besides being able to output high quality audio, the Audigy is also capable of cleaning up distorted and noise-filled sounds in your music. A feature called Audio Clean-up filters through the spikes and pops in audio streams. In Creative's Audigy Experience demo, a distorted piano tune was played and slider is given to adjust the amount of filtering that is applied. Using the maximum setting, the results were extremely impressive. However, we were disappointed to find out that, upon close inspection, the piano file was actually in mint condition, and a separate noise file was simply applied on top of that! All the slider did was adjust the volume of the noise. How a reputable, high-profile manufacturer expects to get away with that is beyond us.

Cleaning up the dirt

We tried the real feature with an MP3 that contained minor pops and hiss and the results were good, but far from what the demo exhibited. As expected, a small amount of intentional sounds get dropped along with the noise, but the overall effect is useful. Just don't expect results in the same league as the rigged demo.

Dare to Dream

Creative is also hyping its DREAM technology. Similar to what Philips did in its Acoustic Edge, the Audigy can take any stereo or mono sound source and break it apart into 5.1 channels. The effect isn't as smooth as it is on the Acoustic Edge, but it works fairly well, although much better with stereo streams than mono. Also on the feature list is something Creative calls Time Scaling. This feature allows adjustment of audio playback speed without changing the pitch of the audio. Normally, speeding up or slowing down an audio clip would change the pitch accordingly, either higher or lower respectively. The shift would also cause changing of keys in the music and inaccurately skew vocals. We found that Time Scaling worked fairly well and did perform as advertise. A feature like this would help someone who is interesting in learning the notes of instrumental pieces or matching beats.

Digital I/O and Recording

The S/PDIF output on the Audigy is rated at 48kHz and not 96kHz as we've described before. Digital recording output can be done via the digital S/PDIF copper output or by using the TOSLink optical out (includes TOSLink to mini cable) connectors available on both the external and internal AudigyDrive. Having both types of connectors are useful for those who have MD (MiniDisc) recorders. Creative even includes a MiniDisc utility that lets users control silence duration as well as digital output volume.

Recording audio comes easy with the Audigy as it can record from multiple sources simultaneously. For instance, the Audigy can be set to record from the CD_IN, the Optical In and the Line In all at the same time. This is courtesy of the Audigy's true multi-channel architecture.