While
the Audigy is Creative’s latest PCI Soundcard, Extigy is their first
external Soundcard. Though seemingly having much in common feature wise
with the Audigy, the Extigy is NOT an external Audigy and this
review will cover why not as well as what it is & how they differ.
The Extigy also features some great stand-alone capabilities, not just
the fact that thanks to a USB interface it can just as be easily used
with a laptops or as a Dolby Digital decoder for your DVD Player, Xbox
or whatever.
Manuals
& Installation
As per normal with Creative products now the Manual comes in 2 parts,
with the actual print one being a Quick Start/Install guide for the
hardware & the other being the Extigy PDF Manual on the Installation
CD which covers pretty much everything about the product, e.g.
connecting to different Speakers/Hardware, Driver installation, etc.
& is well detailed.
Installation wise the Extigy proved rather simple to setup. Rather than
requiring you to open up your PC & find a free PCI slot all you need
is to have a free USB port to connect to on your PC & you’re
effectively setup (In stand-alone mode this isn’t even required).
Should you want to there’s 2 plastic stands that will allow you to
tilt the Extigy on it’s side if need be. Then just power on the Extigy
& run the Installation CD. Interestingly enough the Extigy is
perhaps the first product I’ve reviewed with a specific installation
warning before the Hardware itself is installed.
Once beyond this point you go through the usual setup options. Though
much like the Audigy the Extigy will automatically force the Drivers to
be installed regardless of which option you choose. Should you try
re-run setup after having installed the Extigy you’ll receive the
following message:
In this way the Extigy is somewhat better the Audigy Installation CD,
which doesn’t give you such a warning/option, which usually resulted
in you receiving several Windows File Protection error messages were you
to have updated its Drivers & merely decided you wanted to, say
install PlayCenter thanks to the Drivers being auto-installed.
Software
Bundle
The
SoundBlaster Extigy is bundled with the following Applications:
Creative Audio Control
Creative Diagnostics
Creative Audio Mixer
Creative WaveStudio
Creative PlayCenter
Creative Recorder
Creative RemoteCenter
Creative MiniDisc Center
3rd
Party Software
iM Tuner - iM
Networks
MixMeister
Technology's MixMeister 3.03
You
can read more on the software bundle at SoundBlaster.com.
PlayCenter will be covered in more detail later on, along with some of
the control applets. Like most Creative hardware bundles the only thing
that might be considered missing is a software DVD decoder, more so
because pretty much every other hardware vendor includes one with their
Graphics card/Soundcard.
Overall
though the software bundle with the Extigy shouldn’t really be too
much of a consideration when decoding whether or not to purchase it
& to be honest other than perhaps PlayCenter 3 you’ll likely find
the other applications of any use (Bar the Control/Mixer software).
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