All latest Drivers & such were installed for
the hardware. It’s worth noting that DirectX 9 was also installed so
I’m a bit loathe to carry out performance tests as a result.
The Extigy supports Windows 98SE, 2000,
Millennium Edition & XP using WDM Drivers. Various aspects of the
Soundcard itself can be configured in different applets & such. The Creative
Audio Mixer in the Start Menu gives access to the Extigy’s mixer.
Here you can adjust various volume levels as
well as basic Bass & Treble adjustments or the Speaker output mode.
The Settings button gives access to some further Playback &
Recording properties;
All in all it’s much like the Audigy
Mixer. Though unlike the Audigy no parametric equaliser is available via
the EAX Control Panel (As it doesn't exist).
One of the more interesting additions is the Audio Control applet
in the Control panel.
As you may be aware, USB is CPU reliant
& as such the slower your CPU the more likely you are to experience
audio crackling & such with the Extigy when used with a PC. Lowering
the sampling quality via the drop-down menu (Options available are 22.05,
44.10 & 48 kHz) can help alleviate this somewhat,
though obviously audio quality will suffer as a result so you
shouldn’t need/want to change this from the default of 48
kHz unless you’re having rather noticeable playback problems. In
the SPDIF tab you can adjust the S/PDIF output frequency, options
of 48 & 96 kHz being available.
Stability wise the Drivers were rather
excellent & I didn’t encounter any real problems with the
Soundcard as such. At times there was some noticeable audio crackling,
though this seemed to be more inline with the USB interface than some
Driver issues, more on this later however. Updating wise the Extigy's
firmware can be updated simply enough during a Driver installation, e.g.
the new Drivers require the Firmware to be updated so it can support
AC-3 pass through. This process is transparent though & requires you
to do nothing more than execute the Driver update.
Gaming wise it remains to be seen whether or
not the Extigy will support OpenAL in hardware, which provides lower CPU
usage in supported titles, e.g. Jedi Outcast & Soldier Of Fortune II
both provide 3D Audio via OpenAL (There are some more details on this here
in my Jedi Outcast review). Suffice to say current Drivers do not
(Nor do the latest Creative Audigy Drivers at time of writing however).
