Performance - RMAA cont'd

Performance

RMAA 5.3

Ah, another review, another RMAA revision, which now stands at 5.3.  It does keep things fresh, however. I used Terratec's DMX 6-fire to record the Audigy2 ZS, which RMAA 5.3 measured a 102.9dB dynamic range.

Let's start off with a summary of all three modes 16/44.1, 16/48, and 24-bit/96kHz.

The Audigy2 ZS is very close to the DMX 6-fire.  In some cases the DMX 6-fire is masking the true performance of the Audigy2 ZS.  The following graphs are for 24-bit/96kHz mode.

The Audigy2 ZS does very well here, with its frequency response extending far up into the 40kHz region.

A couple of spikes on the DMX 6-fire show through to the Audigy2 ZS.

Dynamic Range, or signal to noise ratio (SNR), is quite good for the Audigy2 ZS, but it's definitely not 108dB good.

THD for the Audigy2 ZS is very clean, with few harmonic spikes to muddy its output.

Poor, or at least not great IMD has been a tradition with the emu10K0x DSP that would rather like to run at 16 bit/48kHz than any other mode.

Overall, very good.  The IMD should be better for 24 bit, but isn't.  The noise floor is lower on the DMX 6-fire, but overall THD is less on the Audigy2 ZS.  The crosstalk of the DMX 6-fire is influencing the Audigy2 from about 3kHz on up.  It sure is nipping at the Terratec's tails, innit!