The Audigy 2 ZS doesn’t differ from the
Audigy 2 with regard to higher resolution audio support. So
that raises the question, can it playback/record at
24-Bit/96kHz without resampling? The answer is, sort of.
ASIO recording is limited to 16-Bit/48kHz, while the effects
engine resamples to 48 kHz if in use (So forget about
enabling EAX effects or using CMSS for example).
Does it still resample 44.1 kHz sources
(example: CDs) to 48 kHz? Yes.
Does the effects engine still resample sources to 48 kHz?
Again, yes.
As before, there’s little mention of
these resampling issues anywhere, beyond the Speaker
Calibrator’s vague mention of ensuring highest quality
output by using Basic Calibration.
Hopefully this will be the last Creative
soundcard to have such limitations now that there’s an
increasing number of competitors available that have moved
past these, e.g. M-Audio’s Revolution 7.1 and Audiotrak
Prodigy 7.1 can playback 44.1 kHz audio without resampling.
EAX
Advanced HD
As before the EAX Console
provides access to the musical EAX Advanced HD features.
CMMS 3D has been updated since
the Audigy 2 and now supports CMSS, CMSS 2 and Stereo
Surround. CMSS is Creative’s audio up-mixing feature,
allowing you to up-mix a stereo source to 4/5.1/6.1 or 7.1
channels. As covered earlier, Stereo Surround is a much
requested feature which merely replicates the Stereo
channels over the other channels (Something which earlier
Creative Soundcards did anyway, as do most other
manufacturers) – At least now you can decide whether or not
you wish to use it.
The Clean-up feature performs
exactly the same as it did with the Audigy 2, i.e. it can
remove artefacts during playback of media files. Clean-up is
perhaps the most useful feature available and the artefact
reduction during playback is fairly noticeable, albeit it
somewhat dependent on the quality (or lack thereof) of the
source you are playing.
Time Scaling allows you to adjust
the playback speed (slower or faster) of supported digital
audio formats. Though this shouldn’t prove particularly
useful for most people, the main claim of this feature is
that it can do this without changing the pitch.
Since the release of the Audigy 2 ZS
however, new drivers have added EAX 4 Advanced HD support,
which brings a few changes to EAX Advanced HD as regards
gaming. You can
read full EAX 4 details at Creative. At the
moment the only game I’m aware of that supports EAX 4 is
Jedi Academy, although I don’t have this title so
I can’t particularly comment on how much of an improvement
it offers over… say, Jedi Knight 2 (EAX 3).
For the time being though, only Creative
soundcards provide EAX Advanced HD support which does indeed
give them something of an edge in games when you consider
the growing number of titles supporting EAX Advanced HD.
