Creative Labs Audigy Player

Author : Wayne Date : 20th November 2001

...Product	Audigy Player
...Manufacturer	Creative Labs
...Supplier	Creative
...Price	£68.90 +VAT

 

 

 

 

The Hardware :

Other than the fact that the card and the Audigy chip are larger than the Live was, the only striking feature on the card is the SB1394 ( IEEE 1394a spec) Firewire connector both on the back plate and also on the card's edge.

Component and build quality appear to be first rate and there's a reassuring weight to the card that gives that psychological sense of quality.

Because the SB1394 connector is located on the back plate, it has become necessary to relocate the MIDI/gameport on to a separatebracket. This simply plugs into a feature connector on the card itself, but of course the drawback is that you do use up a potentially valuable slot. You can see from the image on the left just how much bigger the Audigy is than the Live.

Courtesy of the new ADCs and DACs, the S/PDIF output can now be set to 44.1, 48 or 96 kHz while the Live, as is the case with most cards, was limited to a fixed 48kHz. Creative also claim to have improved the resampling algorithms resulting in an overall better sound, though whether these improvements will be audible to anyone other than the dedicated audio buff with a $400+ speaker arrangement or good quality headphones is debatable. Creative have stayed with the dark brown PCB they used for the Live, and there's no doubt that this gives an added touch of class to the overall look of the card.

 

 

The onboard connectors are, with exception of the the SB1394, the usual assortment of TAD, CD and AUX in plus of course CD digital in.

 

I'm not entirely certain if the external back plate connectors are gold plated, but as you can see they're certainly gold coloured which also adds the the feeling of quality. As with the Live 5.1, the digital out also serves as a centre/subwoofer channel when used in analogue mode (set from the mixer). If you're wondering why Creative have labeled the FireWire connector as an "SB1394" port, it's because of the rather vague way in which FireWire has been adopted. Standards seem to vary from one product to the next, so in order to standardise things Creative have launched the SB1394 Certification Program which aims to test hardware compatibility with the Audigy line. Such is the expected proliferation of the Audigy, some major players are already showing an interest in SB1394 certification.

 

 

 

 

 

Let's look at the software and drivers :

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