Creative Labs Audigy2 ZS Review

Soundcards and Speakers 106 Page 3 of 10 Published by

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Product Photography

Photography 

All images you see are copyrighted, please do not use or deeplink them. The images have been taken with a SonyDCS F707 at a high resolution and have been scaled down towards 1024x768. You may click on the images to see the image in that resolution. The full images are high-quality, that means file-size can be 200-300 kB.

 

Lots of gold appeal on this hottie.  I think my nipples just went erect.

 

Full front view.  Lots of components relative to other manufacturers.  But then again, the Audigy2 ZS has more features than the competition.

 

The backside is a little flat but clean.  Very high quality.

 

It's still the emu10k DSP in charge, albeit a new '-ICT' revision.

 

A little zoom out.

 

Left to right: digital out, line-in, mic-in, line-outs 1, 2, & 3, and the SB1394 (Firewire).

 

Excellent component and build quality oozes class from the backplane.  Notice the gold connectors, which aren't Microsoft color standard.  I think we can all agree, gold is better.

 

Edge connectors: S/PDIF, SB1394 (Firewire), Aux-In, CD-In, and TAD.

 

The SoundBlaster Audigy2 ZS still maintains a sexy black and gold PCB color scheme.  Rrrrar, baby, besame mucho...

 

The major layout changes of the PCB components are minor.  Notable changes include a Crystal CS4382 8-channel DAC that to handle the output, which is also responsible for the claimed 108dB SNR.  These DACs are $6.50 a pop, probably a price/performance record for an 8-channel DAC.  ADC is handled by the a Philips UDA1361T, roughly 100dB dynamic range.

 

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