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Installation
Installation
is as simple as it is with just about any PCI card.
With the card installed you simply fire up your machine
and when Windows detects you cancel the driver installation
routine and let the supplied application/installation
CD autorun. I took a look at the application/installationCD
in Explorer and without actually identifying precisely
what files are on there I can tell you it weighed
in at a rather scary 598MB!
Fortunately
everything went perfectly despite the apparent complexity
of the installation and I was soon ready to run the
final part of the installation and setup routine which
basically involves using a wizard to calibrate your
speakers for maximum effect.
Yet
again Creative have let their megalomaniac tendencies
come to the fore with a level of driver integration
that you'd need a good exorcist to control. Booting
your PC brings you face to face with the much loved
</sarcasm> Creative splash screen and accompanying
music and once you're past this you'll find a new
quick launch bar has been added to the top of your
screen. That should make it three you have now if
you have the ATi job on there too! For some reason
none of the shortcut buttons on the quick launch bar
worked which seemed rather odd. Needless to say the
bar was soon disabled, as was the splash screen.
Drivers
In
keeping with WindowsXP Creative's drivers have been
given a fresh new look with a blue/gray theme and
importantly they work as you'd expect them to with
no nasty surprises. Perhaps not surprisingly considering
the complexity of the hardware the drivers are quite
multi-layered and may seem daunting to the new user
but you soon get a feel for what's where and what
it does. Despite needing to be quite complex I still
feel that the drivers are too spread out and splintered
and could have been more closely grouped in a single
control center. Perhaps they should look at how NVIDIA
or ATi handle their video card drivers for clues.
I
noticed that most of the players and apps seemed to
take a long time to load too which struck me as odd.
Here's
a quick look at the main driver panels. Most should
be fairly explanatory
Speaker Settings~Selection
In
addition to the settings you'd expect to find from
the Speaker Settings panel I was pleased to see that
you could calibrate the Audigy2 for multiple speaker
setups and save these settings for use as required.
Speaker Settings~Bass Management
Surround Mixer~Basic
Surround Mixer~Advanced
EAX Console~Effects
EAX Console~CMSS 3D
EAX Console~Clean-up
EAX Console~Time Scaling
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