Audigy 2 NX USB Nightmare

gwlund · 11-09-2003, 12:16 PM

I just bought an Audigy 2 NX USB sound card and was pretty dismayed with it's use in my car. I returned it and got an Extigy instead which works much better. Here's the issue with the Audigy

- This little unit draws 1A when it's turned on. When you turn it off it draws 800mA! Not so good if you want to use an unswitched power source in your car.

- The 5v power requirement needs a regulator circuit. I tried both an OEM regulator and one I built myself with tons of bypass caps but I could not get the obnoxious whine and noise from being amplified on the audio outs.

The Extigy with it's 12v power and more stable design make it the choice for me. Plus it's 1/2 the price.

MeanGT · 11-09-2003, 01:02 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by gwlund

I just bought an Audigy 2 NX USB sound card and was pretty dismayed with it's use in my car. I returned it and got an Extigy instead which works much better. Here's the issue with the Audigy

- This little unit draws 1A when it's turned on. When you turn it off it draws 800mA! Not so good if you want to use an unswitched power source in your car.

- The 5v power requirement needs a regulator circuit. I tried both an OEM regulator and one I built myself with tons of bypass caps but I could not get the obnoxious whine and noise from being amplified on the audio outs.

The Extigy with it's 12v power and more stable design make it the choice for me. Plus it's 1/2 the price.

I would love to hear some more of your opinions on the extigy, I am probably going to be buying one shortly, but would really like some input before I can justify spending so much on a sound card

Thanks

z28control · 11-09-2003, 06:57 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by MeanGT

I would love to hear some more of your opinions on the extigy, I am probably going to be buying one shortly, but would really like some input before I can justify spending so much on a sound card

Thanks

I had the Extigy in my car. I am using a laptop with a AMD K6-2 500 mhz and 100 mhz FSB. When I would start playing music it caused my cpu usage to climb from 5 - 10% (Idle) to 85 - 90%. I'm not sure what was causing this but I could not sacrifice that much cpu. This is probably not a problem with a faster machine, but maybe something to consider.

gwlund · 11-09-2003, 10:35 PM

I've only had my Extigy for 2 days and so far it works great. I checked my CPU utilization during playback and I'm under 30% (Dell Inspiron 8000 1 GHz P3). There is an audio processing executable called EAX.exe which runs in the background and allows you to add audio effects and noise filtering on the fly. I haven't used it much yet.

sxpert · 11-10-2003, 04:27 PM

got myself a "sound blaster mp3+ usb" and it works wonderfully under linux, on the condition that your chipset does OHCI, as UHCI has issues

gwlund · 11-10-2003, 11:34 PM

Yeah, I bought the MP3+ too and found out that my USB port doesn't supply enough power to turn it on. Creative says it needs 5v/500 mA which is the max that most USB ports provide. I decided that if I had to get a powered USB hub I might as well upgrade to the Extigy since it was only $20 more.

EBJUSTIN · 11-12-2003, 09:57 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by gwlund

Yeah, I bought the MP3+ too and found out that my USB port doesn't supply enough power to turn it on. Creative says it needs 5v/500 mA which is the max that most USB ports provide. I decided that if I had to get a powered USB hub I might as well upgrade to the Extigy since it was only $20 more.

I just purchases the Soundblaster MP3+ USB because it has SPDIF optical in however the optical input can only be used for recording and not for playback. That happens to be a major drawback for me...but other than that the sound quality is very good (no hiss/whine)