Audigy2 Pros

Premium Quality Fidelity

While you might find prosumer audio cards from companies such as Terratec offering higher quality audio, the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 offers excellent performance that exceeded our measuring equipment. Subjectively, the Audigy 2 offers the most pleasant sound we have ever heard from a gaming sound card reviewed at FiringSquad. This is due in no small part to the quality 24-bit/192-kHz DACs being used.

If music is your thing, then the Audigy 2 has its own coup de grace. The Audigy 2 Platinum is the only $150 sound card with 24-bit/96-kHz digital output. Even though high-resolution audio sources are not available on the PC in even a modest quantity, you will still hear a small benefit when using high precision 24-bit MP3 decoders such as the MAD Winamp decoder. Thus, if you’ve got a high-end receiver you can take full advantage of the receiver’s DACs – so long as you’re not playing games.

DVD-Audio Support

While the nForce features real-time Dolby Digital encoding, important for 3D positional audio with your home receiver, the Audigy 2 features DVD-Audio support. We’re not currently aware of any other card shipping with a DVD-Audio player.

High resolution multi-channel audio is one of the things that could have been great for both consumers and the industry. Unfortunately, we are left with two competing technologies, SACD and DVD Audio, each with its share of problems. To start, neither format supports has a standardized digital output due to concerns about piracy…

Pioneered by Sony and Philips, Super Audio CD is the format of choice for audiophiles. With jazz and classical music benefiting most from the added resolution and quality, SACD has quickly become the format of choice for audiophiles. The 1-bit DSD encoding (think serial ATA vs regular IDE) allows for some truly pleasant audio reproduction. Since the 1-bit format itself makes it difficult to digitally rip the audio, Sony has not put any watermarking technology into the audio.

DVD-Audio is perhaps a better high-resolution format for the masses. The 24-bit/96-kHz and 24-bit/192KHz audio is essentially equivalent in quality to SACD (especially at the consumer level). Rather than focusing on audio like SACD, DVD-Audio is designed as a multimedia feast. The high resolution audio is paired with DVD-Video and so many of the DVD-Audio discs available are essentially ultra-high quality music videos. Unsurprisingly, DVD-Audio tends to have more modern and popular music than SACD. (Though of course, you can get J-Lo on SACD and still find classical on DVD-A).

One key problem with DVD-A, however, is that audible watermarking technologies are a component of this format. There are some discs such as those designed for audiophiles that do not have this “feature,” but as far as we know, all of the popular and contemporary music on DVD-Audio contains watermarking audible on high-end systems to the trained ear.

Good connectivity

Although the Audigy 2 Internal Drive is prone to audible interference, we like the infrared and firewire ports it brings to the front.

Low CPU utilization

The numbers speak for themselves.