Anyone who have tested the Audigy 2 ZS Noteboo(soundcard)?

[håkan bråkan]

It seems to be quite a nice soundcard, here are some specs;

# High Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) exceeding 104 dB using high linearity, low distortion 24-bit converters with resolutions of up to 192 kHz
# Playback: 24-bit Digital-to-Analog conversion of digital sources at 96 kHz to analog 7.1 speaker output, 192kHz for Stereo DVD-A
# Recording: 24-bit Analog-to-Digital conversion of stereo analog inputs at 96 kHz sample rate
# Supports Sony/Philips Digital Interface (SPDIF) format of up to 24-bit/96 kHz quality at selectable sampling rate of 44.1, 48 or 96 kHz

It also supports ASIO 2.0, and has 4 line outputs. It seems to be a good alternative to echo indigo as it costs the half of it. [/quote]

[Vercengetorex]

Please dont torture yourself with a soundblaster. even if you were to use the ASIO4ALL drivers and get decent latency, you would still suffer from severe jitter, and thusly, very poor sound quality.

The difference in cost is not worth the price your sound quality would pay.

[AdamJay]

yea if yer looking for cheap but quality.. the lowest i'd go is the M-Audio Sonica Theatre USB.
$99 8 outs (4 stereo), spdif out, and 2 analog ins.
usb bus powered, low latency, no jitter. and 24/96 capabilities.

[håkan bråkan]

At home I always plug optical to an external dac from my computer (is it possible to make it cleaner than that?), and I need some extraxhannels when I'am Dj'ing. Thus it's a pcmcia card so it has transferrates far better than USB.

[AdamJay]

pcmcia does 400mbits per second. usb2 does 480mbits per second. now while it is true that the burst on usb2 is 480mbits per second, usb2 still has plenty of bandwidth to send 4 channels across at 24/96.

yes the sound blaster is pcmcia, the problem is the company has not the best track record in the pro and hobbyist markets. they seem to be aiming more at gamers these days.

yes it says pcmcia, but the words Creative Sound Blaster come before "pcmcia". and thats enough to turn most users off.
just remember we're comparing cheap apples to cheap oranges.

go for it try it out, if it rocks, let us know. i'm happy with the Sonica though, but if the ZS has lower than 5ms ASIO output latency i will be happy to trade in for it.

[Vercengetorex]

The PCMCIA / USB2 argument is irrelavent. The issue at hand is Creative Labs manufacturing, quality control, and component reliability, all of which are very questionable. In the long run I think you will be happier with the reliability of a higher quality interface, and your productions / performances will likely benifit from the superior sound quality.

[LeoMANXVII]

They break really easily. I went to support to get the broken one replaced, but they did not want to cover their poor manufacturing qualities. So I got a second one.

I like it a lot because it connects well with my logitech 5.1 z5500 system.. But the asio use in ableton is plain shitty. To get good decent playback I need to have it running 20ms or even 40ms sometime. My laptop is brand new not even 6 months old.. nothing gay downlnoaded or viruses, amd turion 2.0ghz, 1gig ram, sp2, ... So I need something new with less delay and less glitchy playback response.

[jez3122]

i have a soundblaster 2 ZS platinum pro and you cant DJ with it, the problem is you can't indepenently assign an out to a second headphone port for cueing.
i've had mine for about 2 years so they may have addressed this in newer models, but make sure b4 you buy

[robbmasters]

Useful thread. I've been looking at one of these. Think I'll stop.