Creative's Audigy Line Brings Pro Sound To PCs

Creative is launching this week a new line of sound cards aimed at bringing professional quality sound to your desktop.

The new family of SoundBlaster sound cards takes its name from the recently-announced Audigy processor, a new audio chip boasting four times the processing power of its predecessors. It mirrors Creative's Live 5.1 line, providing basic boards that are built around a gaming or MP3 bundle, as well as more expensive packages that boost the number of sound connections available.

The fun begins with the Sound Blaster Audigy X-Gamer and MP3+ cards, each priced at $100. Both include the same Audigy-based board with digital and analog outputs supporting six audio channels for full Dolby Digital 5.1 3D sound.

The X-Gamer ships with a gaming-focused software bundle including full versions of Interplay's Giants: Citizen Kabuto, and Deus Ex Game of the Year edition. The MP3+ bundle includes MixMeister Technologies' MixMeister and Beatnik's Mixman Studio Remixer among other audio-focused titles.

All the cards ship with an IEEE 1394 port called SB1394, which Creative is highlighting as a connection for external devices such as DV camcorders. It also serves as a peer-to-peer networking solution for gaming and file sharing among as many as 63 connected PCs.

Moving up the line, a $200 Audigy Platinum package includes the Audigy Drive breakout box. It installs in an open 5.25-inch drive bay and adds optical and coaxial digital I/O connectors, an infrared remote, and MIDI in/out connectors. It's the same concept as the company's older Live Drive product, but with an additional SB1394 connector included. On the software side, the card bundles Platinum Steinberg's Audio Suite and Ulead's VideoStudio 4.0 SE Basic in addition to the titles included with the X-Gamer and MP3+.

A new high-end option, the $250 Platinum EX, ships with an external version of the Audigy Drive. This is a particularly useful option if your system is devoid of drive bays. The Platinum EX drops the games from its software bundle, but adds two music creation programs, Sonic Foundry's ACID DJ 2.0, and Image Line's FruityLoops.

Power Boosts Fidelity

All of the new boards are built around Creative's recently announced Audigy chip, which has around four times the power of the EMU10K1 processor used on the SoundBlaster Live series. This enables the chip to calculate more 3D sound effects simultaneously, which translates to more accurate 3D sound in games and other applications.

Audigy drives a set of sound effects and enhancements called EAX Advanced HD, which includes 3D effects that can pan and morph among multiple sound environments. EAX Advanced HD also includes filters for processing digital music such as time scaling, which can speed or slow a song while retaining accurate pitch. Another filter, Audio Clean-Up, removes the pops and hisses found in recordings from LPs in real time.

Creative also improved the overall quality of the Audigy line, incorporating high-quality 24 bit/96 kHz digital-to-analog converters (DACs) capable of decoding DVD audio. Home recording buffs will appreciate the 32-bit digital mixing capability and impressive 100-decibel signal-to-noise ratio.