Worthy improvements, but true CD audio quality as the press spews? HAH!
Written: Jan 17 '02 (Updated Nov 14 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Big step up in PC sound quality from past mass-market products.
Cons: Burned audio CDs still bland; invasive Creative software, crash-prone install, silly remote.
The Bottom Line: The next generation in mass-market soundcards; on the PC, more musical and FAR better on the ears than previous efforts. But off-the-PC results still need work.
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| monoblocks's Full Review: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum eX |
Despite prior dire warnings about how the Audigy boards have been problematic on Dell computers, I bought and installed the eX on my Dell Dimension XPS B1000r (1 GHz Pentium III w/ 256MB RDRAM) running along on Windows Me, and which about 14 or 15 months ago was Dell's hotshot machine. The speakers currently used on this computer is a set of Sonigistix's Monsoon MM-1000 2.1 flat panels. The Audigy Platinum eX requires two PCI slots to be available, preferrably side-by-side, which with a little card and slot swapping I found I had.
The Hardware Installation:
The actual hardware install was fairly simple. The eX consists of four main components: the Audigy main soundcard, an extension card (which contains the ports for the remote interface box to connect to), the aforementioned external remote interface box (aka the Audigy Drive*; the regular Platinum uses an internal interface, which my computer didn't have room for), and a wireless remote control. The external box is the key component for accessory accessibility to your computer. This is the part where the user will plug any and all devices; headphones, mics, MIDI keyboards, turntables, guitars...whatever. All sorts of jacks are in this thing, including the vaunted FireWire port. It also offers the advantage of not having to be located immediately adjacent to the computer; the connection cable allows for placement several feet away (I don't know the actual length; mine sits on top of the Dell and I've tied up the excess cabling, and neither owner's manual nor quick guide states the actual length on quick browse). The mic and headphone jacks have separate level controls on the box as well. It's probably the most important piece of the entire assembly, since it's the part the user will actually interact with the most.
The steps taken for the install are as follows:
1. Uninstalled the SoundBlaster software for the SBLive! board already in the computer.
2. Shut down power, open up the side panel, and remove the old SBLive! card, but leaving any attached cabling intact.
3. Aside problem: I found I had to relocate my factory-installed network card in order to place both the Audigy main card and the extension card in slots next to one another. This configuration seems to work best given the cables that run from one another and the limited clearance space I had to work with in. There are two cables that connect between the two Creative cards: a SB1394 cable for receiving signal from the FireWire port that's on the remote box, and a split ribbon cable that connects at two points on the main soundcard and one on the extension. Having the two cards in adjacent slots was far easier to position the cabling cleanly, the ribbon line in particular. Moreover, there were existing audio cables running from my DVD and CD-RW drives, and my voice modem that needed to be plugged into the main card; when I took the SBLive! card out, I left these in place until the new soundcards were installed and seated, then simply disconnected each one at a time and transferred them to the corresponding connection points on the new main card. The extension card also has a connection cable for power requirements; Creative supplies a splitter power cable for this purpose. Dell actually makes connecting accessory power easy by providing several unused power connectors in the computer. Once this cable was hooked up to the extension card, the work inside the computer was done, barring any misconnections that might have happened along the way (fortunately I made none). Pop the cover panel back on and do the final connections...
4. ...which the first of these is to connect the speakers to the back of the Audigy card, similar to the procedure for any previous sound card. The Monsoons are analog speakers, so in my case all I had to do was connect its stereo mini-plug on the end of the speaker's cabling into the correct 2-channel output jack. The second connection to make is attaching the extension cable from the external remote box to the ports of the external card exposed on the outside of the computer, consisting of a heavy 44-pin connector (which resembles a serial printer cable) with a IEEE1394 FireWire cable piggy-backed to the larger one. There's also a standard gameport connector tied into this harness. Since the 44-pin cable can only be connected in one manner (where the gameport connector is next to the extension card), completing this process was rather painless. It should be noted that there was some minor prep work needed to be done to the remote box, which involved putting some supplied stick-on rubber feet to the bottom of its housing. As it turns out they were needed to keep the box from sliding around in it's chosen resting spot on the top of Dell, especially when positioning up the computer and tying off all the extra cabling, or when having to move the computer around at a later time. Tie-off any extra length of cable, and the hardware install was done in about 60 minutes, though a good chunk of that time was spent cleaning out the dust (hack, cough) collected inside the computer since the last time I opened it up, a highly recommended if somewhat dirty task.
The Software Installation:
It turns out that there's three parts to this: the REQUIRED Audigy software and drivers that are needed to make the soundcard work, the EXTRA Audigy/Creative software provided as an alternative to such programs as Winamp, RealPlayer, EasyCD or MusicMatch, and the bundled third-party programs. Some of the latter are on their own separate CDs; others are part of the main Audigy installation disk.
This is where the real installation problems begin.
In my initial attempt to get the eX working, I installed the drivers and the various Audigy control software first, selectively filtering out via the Creative setup program what looked to be unneeded programs (such as the third-party internet radio software). Once I chose what I wanted and initiated the installation, the actual install turned out to be a slow, crash-and-problem-filled process. The computer locked up twice during the first installation runs. On the third try, I finally getting through a completed installation (or so I thought) without lock-up. But with the machine rebooted, I found that much of the software refused to run. Furthermore, Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel AND my machine's registry informed me that none of the Audigy programs were correctly installed when I doubled-checked.
The SoundFonts package refused to work at all. The Creative Taskbar wouldn't run, nor for that matter would much of anything else with the rest of the Creative applications. However, I was getting system and Windows sounds, and audio CDs would play through the speakers, so it seemed clear that at least the drivers go on correctly. But the eX card did not see the remote box, so devices connected through it were useless (such as microphones and headphones). Because nothing showed up in the registry and I didn't come across an uninstall utility from Creative, I couldn't uninstall any of this. Left with little choice and patience, I reinstalled right over everything that was tried before.
After reinstalling successfully on the fourth try (no lock-ups this time around as well), some programs began to work and were now listed in the Windows registry. But still the Taskbar and SoundFonts failed to work, and the main card continued to refuse to acknowledge that the remote box existed, so still no accessory devices could work with the Dell. Assuming that there might be a patch on the SoundBlaster site, I then realized that when I moved my network card I fouled up my TCP/IP definitions, so I lost my cable modem interface and my access to the internet.
First trying to fix this myself and then having no success, it took a call to my cable ISP, being put on hold for 20 minutes, and about an hour's worth of diagnosis and rebooting to determine the extent of the problem and do the fix for that (I had been on the right track on my own but was informed I didn't carry it far enough by deleting ALL the leftover TCP/IP definitions off the machine). Once the fix was in place, I finally went out to soundblaster.com and checked for software updates. Doning a search and chasing down one series of links on their site, I was told that no such updates were available. Ok, so now what?
After going back into the Dell's chassis and futzing with the hardware and checking connections, I reinstalled the Audigy software once again, this time installing ALL software on the Audigy disk (and using up another couple of hours). No lock-up again, but still no success in getting everything operating. With nothing else on the computer left unchecked, I decided to go back to the SoundBlaster site again and poke around further. Finding another link path to chase down, I discovered there indeed WAS an updated driver pack (dated 11/29/01, at the time of download)! Once downloaded, I had to install these twice to finally get them to take--the first try had died somewhere in the process, where the Dell reached a point where it just sat there for about 45 minutes not doing a bloody thing. But finally after the second long, drawn-out attempt, some resemblance of success at last. The Audigy Platinum eX was finally up and running. After ONLY 10(!) hours--or was it 12?--from the starting point (ok, so a few breaks were tossed in), I finally had a reasonably working Audigy card. I tend to scream about how I hate computers every so often; this was certainly one of those times.
The remote box is now recognized and works with all the ports I tested: so far I've plugged into it microphones, a home stereo CD player (via the analog RCA jacks), headphones, a MIDI keyboard...all were recognized by the Audigy and/or the Dell (well, in most cases). I've yet to hook-up an optical cable; I have several audio devices that have digital optical port outs, but haven't had the will to drag any one of them out of their dusty nooks just to test the Audigy's optical capabilites. As for the provided SPDIF jacks, up to now I've never had to use them this type of connection so I don't have the cabling (but the CD player I hooked up via the RCA jacks does have a coax output; at some point I'll give it a try, but it's not high on the To Do list). And as for the FireWire port; I currently don't have a device that utilizes the protocol; when one shows up I'll have to test that then as well.
The one problem I've encountered so far is that WinMe has trouble identifying the existence of a microphone, and won't do so until a Creative voice recorder program is run (it doesn't have any problem finding the mic port) and shows Windows the way first. (the Creative software creates a new Line-In2/Mic2 input and uses that instead of the regular Windows Microphone setup. According to another eX user I've been corresponding to, his eX/Me set has no problems understanding this.). Then most 3rd-party apps like Intel's video conferencing package will also have access to the mic. All I've tested so far have worked, except Microsoft's NetMeeting, which will not find the mic no matter what I do, and in fact will convince Windows that no mic exists at all every time I or anyone else tries to run NetMeeting (thus disabling all other 3rd-party apps as well until the Creative voice recorder routine is re-run again).
As for the extra software...
I've gone back and uninstalled several of the bundled apps (like the netradio program I tried not to install at all in the initial go-arounds), which I know won't be used and just succeeds in cluttering up the desktop even more than it is already. Whenever possible, I've turned off the Creative programs that run in the background and aren't needed for everyday use of the Audigy (like the Nomad MP3 transfer interface). After playing around with the Creative PlayCenter 3 package, though so far I'm not impressed with its somewhat older-generation design and feel when it comes to the file handling of MP3s and the like. As for the rest of the software bundled with the Audigy; the only thing I can say is too much of it is shareware, and not interesting or useful enough for me to whip out the charge card to upgrade to the full version. Creative did little to make it seem like there was any 'value' in the software titles included with the card. Big Whoop, giving trial software on a CD that could be probably be downloaded from the publisher's website for free already.
The Audigy Platinum eX in use:
Two-channel audio performance on the PC has so far been excellent, but that's an opinion that's tempered because the eX is judged against past PC audio rather than against a dedicated, good-quality stereo hi-fi system. Music CDs, MP3s and DVDs have never sounded as good as they do now on the Dell. I thought the Monsoons flat panels were a good-sounding speaker system before with only the SBLive! card, but the Audigy really makes them sing. Imaging is far better, details in the music are more apparent and the musical info is certainly more vibrant. Game soundtracks and sound effects are perhaps a bit more convincing and fuller than before, though in all honesty it's never been something I paid close attention to when fending off that nasty acid-spitting alien.
I've ripped a reasonable number of MP3s to date, using the full version of MusicMatch Jukebox 6 at a bitrate of 192k. Comparing them side-by-side to ones done with the SBLive! at the same bitrate and using both MMJB6 and Winamp for listening, I'd say that the Audigy copies are tad smoother, with more subtle detail and perhaps a bit more depth in the imaging. However, the frequency of background clicks and pops is still about the same (must be tied to other computer issues; what they are I don't know). For the most part, however, the quality of ripped MP3s wasn't a big problem I had with the SBLive! soundboard (MP3s don't sound as good as original audio CDs, period, no matter what bitrate is used; they're just a heckvalot more convenient). The big issue was the lack of sound quality with music CD-Rs playable in any CD player. And though the results through the Audigy are better than before, it's clear in my mind that PC soundcards still have got a long way to go before the currently overused phrase 'near-CD quality' has any sort of appropriate meaning.
I've also burned a number of audio CD-Rs with the card; this was one area where the SBLive! was simply bad, always resulting in discs with a VERY plywood-flat, two-dimensional soundstage that to a critical listener is, well, plain unlistenable. One disc I made was a mix of various '70s R&B tunes, with the emphasis of comparison focusing on the song, 'That's The Way Of The World', by Earth, Wind & Fire (I had made an earlier audio disc with the SBLive! using that same song, recorded from the same source CD (EW&F's 'The Eternal Dance' box set, disc 1). In both cases I used Roxio's EasyCD to create the copies. The recording and mastering of the song on the original CD is clear and reasonably detailed for an analog recording made in the mid 1970s, and since I know the tune fairly well, it seemed like a good choice for comparison.
In short, the Audigy copy turned out better, with greater depth and imaging than before. Detailing was also superior to than with the SBLive!. However, it still wasn't close to the vaunted "CD quality" level that many of the card's early press reviewers freely touted. The music soundstage is still flattened, with a brittle characteristic to it that is not found anywhere with the original audio disc. It's tougher to get a directional sense of where the instruments are located when listening to the copy disc (yes, I know they're placed in the mastering process rather than by mics recording them as in an acoustic setting, but the producer still had an idea on how the instruments would be balanced and layered, and this characteristic of the music is still too muted with the Audigy disc).
In comparison to the SBLive! baseline copy, sonic details are more apparent with the Audigy-created CD-R, and there is considerably more depth in the imaging of the music I burned. Listening to the eX disc on the Dell, I found the sound quite pleasant. The Audigy eX copy is an impressive improvement in this context, especially in light of the poor results I've consistently had in the past from earlier PC-made audio CDs.
Trying the copy in regular audio CD players, however, is the Audigy's downfall. In the car using a Nakamichi CD45z deck running through Nak and xtant amps, and a/d/s and Boston Acoustic speakers and subs, it was readily apparent that the imaging wasn't all there. Mid-bass is still somewhat as murky as it was before, and there was some roll-off on the low end (the subs fired less than with the original CD, not that there was much low-bass info to begin with). Subtle detailing in the high ranges are definitely missed. Playing the disc to my old Sony D-10 portable through headphones, and on my Denon DCD-1650AR through portions of my hi-fi gear only confirmed the quality loss from the original. The bland detailing, coupled with the flattened depth is readily apparent when listening away from the PC; the fact that the instruments and voices don't just jump out at you, or the tones don't reverberate as they should in trying to mimic the studio the music was recorded in (like they do when listening to the original CD) bluntly says how far soundcard makers still need to go. It nonetheless still a noticeable improvement over the copy made using the SBLive!, and in general is a better listening experience than before (which, to the cynics, will say that it only goes to show just how BAD it used to be).
(Subsequent results comparing old/new copies of Van Halen's song, "Right Now", and Brandford Marsalis' album, "Royal Garden Blues", as well as a couple of other songs also yielded similar responses with my somewhat painfully critical ear).
One area I can't review is the Audigy eX's surround sound capabilities. I've been slow to join this "revolution" on the PC; it's tough to locate six speakers (including the subwoofer) around our Dell without the nightmare of trying to route and hide the speaker cabling, or finding usable real estate to place the speakers around everything else around the PC and STILL have them function as they should. Moreover, with the amount of listening pleasure I've already had with the Monsoon MM-1000s--not to mentioned what I originally paid for them--I'm not at all sure they're something I'd want to junk or stop using.
Additionally, I haven't hooked up the Dell up to my stereo system or to our home theater setup in order to see how it sounds through some REAL speakers and electronics, though this is another area where the effort to get the computer next to the stereo gear (or buy long enough cables) is hardly worth the effort--with my luck I'd probably set the CRT down too close to those monster magnets in the old a/d/s floors and then find myself out shopping for a new monitor, or do similarly something stupid that I'll regret later on (I won't even contemplate running the Dell/Audigy through the Levinsons and the Martin-Logans on the A/V system; now that would be REALLY slumming it). Plus, it wasn't my goal to use my computer as some glorified jukebox for use with my audio equipment, especially with source copies that are inferior in quality to the originals to boot.
I've also tried the wireless remote, which first requires me to activate the Creative RemoteCenter software (yet ANOTHER(!) piece of software running in the Windows background) in order to allow the Audigy and the Dell to recognize the infared signals. It's only my opinion, but I have to say it's a near-useless device. It works, but it's one of those things that just doesn't fit around a computer. I can control both my CD drives, and can run the Creative Playcenter software to run MP3s, but what's the point in fumbling around looking for the blasted remote, when the mouse is right there, hardwired to the computer and not going away and hiding anyways...besides, I'm not one to use the computer from an easy chair.
The Verdict:
The SoundBlaster Audigy Platinum eX is a notable step up in sound quality and in function from earlier SoundBlaster efforts, and of efforts from their mass-market competitors. Though it adds more cables to the mix, the flexibly-located remote port box makes hooking devices up far easier than having to fumble at the back of computer as is the case with other soundcards. It's now a true 24-bit/96Mhz card (albeit on the recording side only, from what I've read elsewhere**), and the improvement is apparent. At least it is for a PC. A true audiophile-quality device has still yet to have been achieved. In consideration with what I had hoped for from this card (turning the Dell into a GOOD QUALITY CD recorder), I'm fairly certain it wasn't worth the money and effort to install given the relatively meager (in my mind) increment of improvement in audio fidelity of audio CD-Rs. But to its credit, the Audigy does improve the sound quality of the computer itself, adds significant flexibility with hooking devices to the computer, and it does make using the PC as an audio device more enjoyable overall.
In this regard, the Audigy Platinum eX is a worthy purchase, though perhaps the Gamer version is a better value if hooking up a turntable or Fender Strat is low on the priority list. But as soon as my first FireWire device shows up, and I get serious about recording my own keyboard (the musical type) tinkering, I think even that opinion on overall value will tilt in the eX's direction.
Despite my reservations, it's a Definite Recommend, as long as you don't expect simply superb audio performance, or any results even in the neighborhood of being so lofty. And to those raving members of the soundcard-reviewing press: clean the earwax out first, or stop listening to Limp Bizkit through headphones on your Archos with the volume set at "11". Then you might be able to tell the obvious difference between merely ok and something really resembling audio quality.
(* I was corrected by someone for referring to the Audigy Drive portion as a 'box'. Why a case that contains connection jacks and virtually no mechanically moving parts--aside from the level controls--deserves to be called a 'drive' is flabbergasting to me, but perhaps my definition of the definition of what drive means in both computer/electronics and general language is entirely different that that of the marketing department over at Creative Labs.)
(** The text in my review states that the 24-bit/96kHz performance is on the recording side, which at the time of writing the review is what I had read on the internet on several trustworthy websites. Lately, with the release of the new Audigy 2 line of cards, it seems there's been a conflict of information is this regard. Reviews on various sites, including CNET's Australia site, indicate that this level of performance with the original Audigys was output only, and that digital recording was only 24-bit/48kHz, and only 16-bit/48kHz if recording from analog. Small wonder that the eX's performance wasn't all that it was originally made out to be.)
(CLOSING UPDATE 11/14/02: Nearly eleven months has past since I first reported on this soundcard. A number of key things has happened along the way which compels me to tidy this review up. The first of which is that I finally got this card to operate correctly in Windows Me on this Dell. While its overall audio performance didn't improve as a result, the system at least operated as it should without BSODs and maddening glitches. As a result of clean reinstalling the operating system, the Audigy Platinum eX worked virtually without error.
The second thing that's happened is that because of issues unrelated to the soundcard, I'm now running Windows XP on this computer. It was well documented that XP and the Audigy occasionally did not get along, where the 'puter would create undesired and unloved screeching (or some such insufferable noise) from the system speakers. Dells seem particularly susceptible to this malady, at least from the heated postings on Dell's own help message boards. There was a strange workaround with using a specific 3Com NIC that appeared to mitigate the problem, but that was another $40 or $50 of hardware that seemed to me to be something more than a bit of overkill and wastefulness. This problem was one key reason why I didn't make the jump to XP sooner.
Later on in 2002, Creative released updated patches and drivers that fixed the "screaming PC speakers" issue. The August issue of those drivers have worked flawlessly on this machine and in XP; the XP/Audigy experience, at least on the PC, has been excellent as a result. I've decided to leave my postings concerning some of the problems I encountered after the original writing of this epinions review in Comments, just so there a bit of evidence that all did not go well with the installation of this soundcard.
*sigh* With every hardware upgrade that this machine has gone through, it seems a clean reinstallation of Windows always necessarily follows. Such is life with Microsoft...)
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 213
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Epinions.com ID:
monoblocks
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Location: PacNW
Reviews written: 36
Trusted by: 3 members
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