I figured a couple people might be up in arms about what I said. after all, audigy cards do have a pretty good reputation, especially around these parts. I didn't have time to post more earlier -- taking care of Dad -- but sit down young'n, I'll teach ya the ways.
its pretty simple actually and has nothing to do with the SNR specs like the other guy mentioned (although thats also a small factor). but while we're on that subject note that creative is known for falsely advertising higher specs than their cards really get (particularly audigy cards). so while the box may say 90db -- which is bad to begin with -- or 108 db -- you may not get nearly that much. I don't want to get into this, cause its not the important thing, specs are only a small part of the big picture, but if you want more information on that go to
www.audiocardsettlement.com, or
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22019.
the problem is obvious if you know a little about how the data on your CD gets turned into a speaker signal. In our case, the amplifiers and processors (if any) are not the focus, but rather, how can we get the cleanest signal up to that point? In other words, how much of the
sound is distorted before it even goes out of the computer to the
amplifier or processor?
now, I realize that most of the people here aren't audiophiles. they just want a reasonable level of sound quality from the computer. and thats perfectly ok, we all have our tastes, preferences, and priorities. if you can't tell the difference between a 128kbps mp3 and the actual CD or the same thing at 320kbps, then this advice is not for you. you'll be perfectly o.k. with an audigy 2 -- it doesn't really matter. you may be happy with your car's factory sound. it would be like me installing a nice sound system in my father's car, when he only listens to AM
Radio. its just not worth it. save your sound card money and buy another one of those "awesome sounding" wal-mart $19.99 stereo systems you love and an inverter and put it in your car. but anyway the guy was asking about sound quality and an audigy 2, going through an amp to focal speakers... so here we go.
the problem:
99.9% of
music has a sample rate of 44.1kHz.
audigy 2 cards resample that to 48kHz -- using a VERY poor algorithm.
in other words, the audigy 2 cards butcher your music data automatically, at a
hardware level, causing noise artifacts and distortion. while this may not sound like anything major, it absolutely destroys sound quality. the hardware is physically incapable of handling clock rates that are not multiples of 48khz.
be careful with the settings. setting the audigy 2 to 44.1khz actually forces the card to upsample to 48khz, and then resample down to 44.1khz. so it gets even worse.
the best thing you can do is use
software to resample to 48khz-- at least the algorithms are better. but you're still forcing lots of artifacts and distortion into the music. with a really good external processor you could compensate for a lot of the problems, but why? its even cheaper just to buy a $25 chaintech.
add to that fairly bad DAC's (which is one of the most important things for sound). the $25 chaintech has better DAC's than an audigy 2 also. if you're using optical spdif output (to a processor) the dac's don't matter, but it still resamples.
In addition, Audigy cards clip and distort badly if you set the channel or main volume above 50% (when using full amplitude signals). This is clearly audible to the human ear.
audigy 2 does have its advantages -- mainly, its great for gaming. in fact I use one on my gaming pc. but I woudln't listen to music on it.
Originally Posted by stapan
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