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(More customer reviews)I was very pleased with the Audigy 2 ZS Platinum card I got for my desktop PC, so I was excited when I learned Creative was producing a PCMCIA version for notebooks. This is a great sounding card with some nice features- but there are some other things you should probably be aware of before you buy one for yourself.
First off, here are the good things about the card:
- Reliable, good sounding card with nice optional effects (EQ, reverb, etc.)
- The headphone jack has a cool red light inside it, making it easy to locate the jack without having to squint around looking for the right one.
- Optical and analog in/out, and a special cable for connecting to 5.1 and 7.1 speaker setups.
- When no sound is playing, this card is silent. I mean so silent that two times I actually thought there was something wrong until a sound actually played. It's very impressive, but takes some getting used to if you're accustomed to always hearing some hiss or hum in your headphones when you're plugged into a computer.
But here are the things that may not be obvious until you actually own one:
- When the card is plugged in, you cannot use your notebook's built-in speakers; you MUST use headphones or external computer speakers, and only the audio connections on the card itself will work. If you normally use your notebook with headphones or external speakers, this won't be an issue for you, but if you're used to playing games on the notebook's built-in speakers, your behavior will have to change.
- The card comes with no printed documentation whatsoever, other than a little insert saying that you can't use your built-in speakers. To install the card, just plug it in, then insert the driver CD when the Add New Hardware wizard asks you to. After the drivers are installed, you can run the software installation off the CD. (There is an electronic user's guide with installation instructions, but you can't install that until after the card and drivers are already installed!)
- Note that you do not have to disable your built-in audio or uninstall any drivers. In fact, you shouldn't because you'll have to use your old integrated audio if you ever need to use the computer speakers. When you plug in the Audigy card it automatically becomes your notebook's default sound device, and when you remove the card the integrated audio works again. It's pretty seamless and reliable. You probably shouldn't do it while a game's running though.
- I have learned that the card does not plug in to some notebooks correctly. (The thick end of the card that has audio connectors prevents you from pushing the card in all the way.) Check out the forums on www.soundblaster.com for more info- I think Creative is mailing adapters to people who experience this problem. (I have a ThinkPad T42p by the way, and I didn't have any trouble.)
- If you're thinking of getting this card as a way to improve gaming performance, don't. Yes, technically, by offloading sound generation tasks from integrated audio to the Audigy card your computer frees some of its own resources for other things, but unfortunately this does not translate into any noticeable difference in gameplay. (In fact, if you're not prudent in your selection of which of the bundled programs to install, you may end up HURTING both performance and reliability instead of helping it.) The real power of the Audigy is its ability to transform audio with digital effects and to deliver high bitrate multi-channel sound. About the only ways to really improve performance on most notebooks are to upgrade RAM, get a faster hard drive, and disable all services/startup items that you don't need.
- If you're like me and you like running a LEAN system for maximum performance, don't be fooled by Creative's "drivers only" option. If you don't install at least the Creative Volume Control, Creative Speaker Settings, and Creative EAX Console, your ability to use this card will be severely limited. (It's the same way with the desktop Audigy.) I ended up doing a full install of all the bundled software and then used Mike Lin's free Startup Control Panel to disable the following startup items: CTDVDDET, CTPerformanceUtility, Creative Detector, and Creative MediaSource. Plus I had to manually uninstall the idiotic MediaSource Go! launch bar that attached itself to the top of my desktop- I couldn't make that one go away by editing my startup items. (The software also installs a service called "Creative Service for CDROM Access" but I'm not sure what it does yet.)
- Note that without the Creative Speaker Settings program installed you will probably not be able to use your computer's built-in volume and mute buttons (again, they're normally tied to the integrated audio). Make sure to check the "Synchronize with Control Panel" option to get that functionality back.
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Creative PCMCIA Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Notebook Sound Card
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