Creative GigaWorks S750 Review

Soundcards and Speakers 106 Page 4 of 5 Published by

teaser

Page 4

 Test System Configuration.

Pentium IV 2.6
1 GB RAM
SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS
Gigaworks S750

First off,  Audigy 2 ZS has 8 discrete channels so it is better than DTS ES or Dolby Digital EX. Both DTS ES and DD EX are 6.1 configurations, which mean if you have 7.1 speakers, one channel feeds both the rear speakers. Not so with Audigy 7.1 sound cards. It has 8 channel output and all games that use Direct 3D Sound will take advantage of them.

I played and finished Halo with Audigy 7.1 ES and Gigaworks S750 configuration and there was sound from all the 8 speakers. When the player is low on health, you can feel & hear the strong heart beat. I kept the subwoofer on a half inflated cycle tube to reduce the vibrations.   The value of the additional two speakers is personal preference and it definitely has the cool factor plus extra wires running around factor. If you like First Person Shooter games, the extra speakers should help you judge better where the enemy is. I wish they had a speaker for ceiling and floor. Currently there is no easy way to tell if you are shot from above.

Lets talk about performance for a bit. Gigaworks 7.1 has a powerful subwoofer. I personally think the subwoofer is a little too strong for my taste so I reduced its volume a little. Gigaworks does let you boost or reduce the volume on Center, Side, Rear or Sub speakers.

When most of the people go for speaker demos they pay too much attention on the strength of the bass and maybe Creative is riding that wave.

The highs are not that great on these speakers. Klipsch ProMedia 5.1 over all sounds better than the Gigaworks. When playing the THX, DD or DTS demo sound, Klipsch sounds better over all. The bass on Gigaworks is stronger than Klipsch 5.1 but the highs are better on Klipsch 5.1. Klipsch had more clarity in the sound.

People in love with bass go for Gigaworks. People in love with clarity go for Klipsch 5.1 that is in the computer speaker range. None of these speakers can come close to the quality of my living room MK 851 speakers and I am not going to compare that because it will be very unfair.  Maybe a future article on setting up a Home Theater System can cover all that. For now just know that Audigys digital out is actually a 4 pole mini jack with output for FL/FR, RR/RL and C/Sub at 48Khz/96Khz. Gigaworks 750 has no digital in so this feature is useless for it.

Music Listening
Let me try a Gun N Roses CD. When listening to music I like a lot of bass. Gigaworks has a lot of bass. You can easily hear and feel the bass guitar. Even for music with Gigaworks I prefer subwoofer turned one notch down. Like I mentioned before the highs and meds are not that great so the subwoofer needs to be toned down a little. If you are an audiophile no matter what you do, you will not be happy with these speakers. There is a certain clarity that is missing in the sound. You can easily feel the difference if the same track was played on a good audio system.  DVD
I am going to try three common DVDs that are used by A/V stores. U571 (Chap 15, depth charge), Fellowship of the Ring ( ~2 minutes into the movie)  And Pearl Harbor ( Chap 22, First strike ). I will be using SB Audigy 2 ZS Dolby Digital Decoder with Dynamic Range Compression turned off. In U571, when the depth charge goes of there is a sharp high pitch noise that is missing. You got to listen for it to notice it. On M&K & B&W speakers this sound is obvious and you will notice it. Also on the M&K it really sounds like you are in a submarine. On the Gigaworks, it kind of with a little imagination feels like you are in a submarine. In Lord of the Rings, the sound of shooting arrows was not sharp at all. When the dark lord starts walking toward the army, it sounds great. When he starts hitting the army it does not sound great.   Pearl Harbor sure sounded awesome. There is not much talking in this scene. When people are speaking it seemed a little short on clarity but the shooting sound and the surround effect was good. Games
First off I have to kill off a rumor. Many of you think that 7.1 surround sound is not supported in games, that is not true as the most important new feature of the Audigy 2 (ZS) is that you can play in 7.1 with any DS3D (Direct Sound 3D) game! Games like Dungeon Siege with a music background gain hugely from the center surround channel. DirectX 9 is going to make 5.1 games the norm, and it is more than likely that 6.1 & 7.1 3D sound managed by EAX will soon be part of games.

Dungeon Siege Legends of Aranna - Playing Dungeon Siege with Gigaworks 7.1 sounded just fantastic. The speech in the game is not very clear in the opening scene so I increased the volume on voice. During the game this is not a problem because there isnt much sound FX when people are talking. The problem could be that the speaker does not have the same response across different frequencies. The good thing is games generally have background music with lot of bass and since the bass is good, you get the good sound enveloping feeling.

EAX was of course enabled so that Audigy 2 can decide on how it wants to drive the 8 speakers. The great thing about having all the speakers is that you can find things by using sound.

For example in the beginning of the game I could easily find the forge by following the sound. When you move around the sound will move around you too. When talking to people the sound comes from all the three front speakers which I found a little odd because I would expect the sound to come from where the person is standing or from the center speaker alone. Maybe the game was designed this way to give more volume to the voice. All the four surround speakers had speech at a lower volume.

In the forge, I move the mouse arrow to the side so that the scene rotates slowly to listen to the direction of the forging. With EAX turned on you can actually listen to the sound moving around you irrespective of how you are facing the speakers. I tried facing the back and side but the sound kept going around. With EAX off, I felt the sound was only moving around on the front speakers even though there was some sound coming from the rear speakers. Also when EAX is off the forging sound only comes when you enter the forge but with EAX on, you can hear it outside the forge too. Not sure if it is a game bug or driver bug but I am guessing it is a bug in the game.

When you break barrels, the sound correctly comes from the location of the barrel. I just love this game. The sound and graphic are great.

Moto GP 2 - I am not sure if Moto GP 2 uses EAX or not because there was no option to turn on or off EAX so I think it does not use EAX. The Moto GP2 box does not have EAX symbol either.

When playing the game the sound of biking going past me was not as good as XBOX with Dolby Digital 5.1 enabled so I think this game is not using environmental sound so most of its effects remains on the front speakers. It has a nice sound track though. So this is not a great game to test our speakers on so let us more on to the next game. Moral of the story, if the game does not support EAX it may not be able to support all the speakers. There will be sound from all the speakers but the sound effect is not as great without EAX. Halo did not have EAX symbol on the box so I will skip that I try out Max Payne 2. Call of Duty would have been a great game to test but I dont have it yet.

Max Payne 2 - The opening thunder sound is not that good. The sound of thunder was never good on these speakers for some weird reason. In fact my previous speakers, Klipsch Promedia 5.1, sound much better for thunders. I felt the same when I ran the THX sound track that ships with Audigy 2.

Back to the game and it has just started. I am standing facing a doorway and there is sound of rain behind me from the rear speakers.  Let me turn around and take a look. Sure enough there is the rain with sound coming now from the front speakers.

In this game when you move around the voice also moves around so you do get that true 3D sound effect. When Max talks to himself the sound is just from the front center speaker which is where I would like it to be. You can hear the telephone ring here and there as you keep moving around. When Max has his flash backs, you can hear and feel the strong bass of the Gigaworks S750 subwoofer. Let me follow the telephone ring and see if I can find the telephone.


Sure enough the sound was coming from where the phone is located so I had no trouble finding it. This game is really well made. I love the graphics and the sound. The vocals are clear because they have given it the correct volume. I had no trouble shooting the first person in my way dead. I would have loved to play this game in my media room with big screen and big speakers but this game has not support for game pad. My gyration wireless keyboard and mouse are useless for FPS.

Share this content
Twitter Facebook Reddit WhatsApp Email Print