Creative Technology Sound Blaster® Audigy® 2 ZS Notebook

Pros: Clear, bright sound. DVD decoding and a slew of other features.
Cons: Occasionally buggy drivers. Dongle might be a problem if you are rough.

For the three years that I've owned my Thinkpad, I was desperate to improve the horrible sound quality of my laptop's built in sound-card. When Creative finally released a PCMCIA sound card, I was sold before I read a single review. Thankfully, the card ...

Pros: Inexpensive, amazing sound quality. 7.1 channel decoding. Portable. THX certified. Fantastic software bundle.
Cons: Drivers install AOL, yuck.

Most laptops have lousy built-in sound cards. For the longest time, I was stuck with only basic stereo from a headphone jack, my sound often ruined by static from a poor ground. Creative came to the rescue with an ingenious product, the Audigy 2 ZS ...

Pros: The most versatile and talented multi-use mobile sound card available - unparalleled sound quality.
Cons: I'll have to rerecord all the tracks on my Creative Zen Touch MP3 player...rats!

Since buying this card, my audio experience has improved as follows: 1: My M-Audio 49e keyboard is now fully functional, all keys work well, and sound quality is a quantum leap ahead - no comparison to the built in sound of my Acer laptop; 2: With ...

Pros: Amazing sound!!! Powerful software with many interesting and useful features!
Cons: Sound card looks "fragile", it creates an impression to be easily broken

I have never had experience with advanced sound PC hardware and was a bit skeptical about performance of sound cards such as Creative sound blaster. At the same time every time listening something from my broad music collection was always disappointing ...

Pros: Inexpensive- With rebates, I only paid $69 + tax at CompUSA.
Cons: Unusable, poor mfr. support, software isn't the most stable either.

Well, not just mine but many others too. You see it turns out anyone that has a notebook that uses the ENE cardbuss controller will have some issues, and that's a lot of people!
Before you buy it - check your device manager to see what's on your PC. The problems vary somewhat but crackling and popping to some degree is pretty common. You may be able get rid of it by trying various workarounds including operating it in "standard mode" but you'll lose some features and audio performance. A lot of smart people have spent a lot of time trying to get this card to work on their PCs with the ENE controllers and there's still no definite/universal fix. At this time there's 19 pages on the subject on the Creative forum. Creative for their part isn't supporting the problem by coming up with a fix, they've had lots of time now. Bottom line - if you have the ENE controller and still decide to purchase be prepared to return it and waste some valuable time like me.

Pros: Well designed.
Cons: Driver doesn't always work.

No driver available that always work. Save yourself a huge headache and buy something other than Creative Sound Blaster Sound Cards. You'll thank me later for the advise.

Pros: Better sound...better gameplay...now have a gameport...
Cons: none so far...

I have been using the onboard sound on an ASUS K8V-X mother board...I bought a refurbished card thru Creative (Ebay).

Installation of the card and gameport went OK...software installation went well.

Results:

I mostly play UT2004 offline...liking the full VR type games. The onboard sound was pretty good...I will have to say...but I'm seeing major improvements with this new sound card.

I also use Creative 5.1 T5400 speakers.

* No I am not affiliated with Creative...just went with the speakers due to reviews and the price...same with the card. Reviews were on gaming sites.

Sound - much clearer and more detailed...and once the sound levels were dialed in...I'd say around a 20-30% improvement...really makes the game.

Game performance - with some processing load taken from the main processor...the games performance has increased by at least the same amount...20-30%.

I was able to increase resolution...and the games AI now has more resources...improving gameplay by quite a bit.

Did have an episode of a higher pitched noise in one rear speaker...but after getting the sound levels adjusted...I haven't heard it since.

Since this card is refurbished...I only have 30 days to see if it works as expected...so far...so good.