|
At this point the obvious question
remains, where does the new Audigy 2 ZS stand currently?
If you are an Audigy 2 owner (original), you shouldn’t be
worrying about upgrading, that card should still be
considered current, not to mention that not much has changed
in the ZS, unless 7.1 output and DTS-ES decoding are
extremely important to you. That said, if you own an Audigy
1, it certainly would be a worthwhile upgrade if you are
looking to improve audio quality in your PC, not only the
hardware is more capable but the software is better. As
before, resampling remains an issue, as it does with most
other soundcards though, while it’s still possible to play
24-Bit/96/192kHz audio without resampling.
Audio quality coming out of the ZS is
excellent and marks really high in my book. It basically
beats any other soundcard I’ve tested before, perhaps with
M-Audio’s Revolution 7.1 being the only exception for music
playback quality, while for gaming you won’t find a better
alternative than the Audigy 2 ZS.
Other than that, DVD audio decoding
features are exceptional and perhaps the lack of a DVD video
decoder in the software bundle could be noted for an
otherwise exceptional package.
Pros
Cons
-
Effects engine & 44.1kHz sources
resampled to 48kHz (Still)
-
Some Driver bugs, OpenAL oddness
-
24-Bit/96kHz playback/recording
support ambiguity (Still)
|
