Gamer's
Audio - Part 2
Add on and Integrated sound solutionsCards Creative Live! 24 bit, Audigy 2 Value and Audigy 2 ZS
Add on and Integrated
In the first part of this article, we examine different solutions from manufacturers of integrated / onboard sound, particularly how they behave when used for gaming. Its no surprise that Creative's Live! 24 bit provides such a strong offering over the AC 97 Codec from Realtek or NVIDIA's Sonata audio controller. After all, Creative is the only serious players in the gaming sound card business. Today, we putting the onboard Live! to the test and compare it to Creative's own add-on solution - the Audigy 2 Value and Audigy 2 ZS.
Overview
Since this article focuses on gaming, we won't go much into features and add-ons of the cards. As far as gaming go, the Live! 24 bit, Audigy 2 Value and Audigy 2 ZS is pretty similar. Below is a comparison table (from the website) of Creative's add-on cards (excluding X-Fi)|
|
Live! 24 bit | Audigy 2 Value | Audigy 2 ZS | Audigy 2 ZS Platinum | Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro | Audigy 4 Pro |
| EAX | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| EAX Advanced HD | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| EAX 4 Advanced HD | N/a | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| EAX hardware acceleration | N/a | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Audio Environments Processed Simultaneously | 1 | >1 | >1 | >1 | >1 | >1 |
| Maximum Number of 3D voices | 64 | 64 | 64 | 64 | 64 | 64 |
| Max Channels in 3D Positional Audio | 7.1 | 7.1 | 7.1 | 7.1 | 7.1 | 7.1 |
One interesting thing to note about the Live! 24 bit that's not in the table above - you can use the latest drivers without having to install the bundled drivers first! So, if you are unfortunate enough to lost the original CDs, you don't have to get another one. Things can't be greater than this, but you're wrong. The current Live! 24 bit and Audigy LS drivers are unified Windows drivers - that means you can use them on both Windows XP and Windows XP x64! Audigy 2 Value and Audigy 2 ZS users don't have that luxury. This 'problem' has been the cause of much heartbreak for Audigy 2 users. Hopefully Creative will apply the same policy as they did for the Live! 24 bit to Audigy 2 drivers (and X-Fi as well)!
Features
Traditionally, Creative's products are only available as add-on cards. Even their previous effort of onboard solutions differs a lot from their add-on cards. However, Creative's Live! 24 bit onboard sounds retains much of the features and performance of their famous add-on sound cards such as the Audigy and Audigy 2. You can see differences in hardware features such as the lack of SPDIF input and output on Live! 24 bit add-on cards, though it is present (somewhat) in Audigy 2 Value and Audigy 2 ZS. The ZS even comes with a game port and Firewire port, most probably for better integration with Creative's portable MP3 players. However, the onboard Live! 24 bit does come with both SPDIF input and output (if the manufacturer chose to include them) and most motherboards come with both USB and Firewire as standard equipment these days.The Live! 24 bit doesn't come with DVD Audio support out of the box like the Audigy 2 Value and Audigy 2 ZS. However, there's hope - you can use Intervideo's WinDVD for both DVD and DVD Audio playback. You can maintain the great quality of DVD Audio content since all these cards support 24 bit, 96 kHz output. However, the Audigy 2 cards also have support for 24 bit, 192 kHz (stereo) output which the Live! 24 bit lacks.
There is one major difference which users, particularly gamers, want to consider: the Live! 24 bit lacks EAX 4 Advanced HD support, which is available on both Audigy 2 Value and Audigy 2 ZS. However, games using EAX 4 are very few, most are either using EAX 2 or EAX 3 (EAX Advanced HD). Only several of the latest games use EAX 4 Advanced HD and from what we can tell (or more appropriately, hear), there's virtually no difference both in performance and experience compared to EAX 3.
With these differences in mind, its no wonder that the motherboards with onboard Creative Live! 24 bit is so appealing (at least to gamers). You get most of the features of more expensive solutions at a fraction of the cost. The MSI K8N SLI Platinum we used for testing cost around USD 120, while the Audigy 2 Value cost around USD 50 and the Audigy 2 ZS around USD 90. You can get the Live! 24 bit as add on for around USD 30, but remember you don't get the SPDIF input / output.
Of course, gamers are less concerned with features and more with performance and gaming experience. Rest assured, the Live! 24 bit both onboard and add-on card has the same or at least nearly identical sound output quality with their Live! And Audigy 2 add-on sound cards. So, we can concentrate on performance and see just how the cards match up.
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