Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 4 Pro

Soundcards and Speakers 106 Page 7 of 9 Published by

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Subjective Listening tests
There is only one way to review a soundcard properly and that's listening to the actual product of course. It's quite subjective though as sound is really personal and also you are limited by the quality of your speaker setup.

What I believe to be a wonderful sound, in your ears can be horrid. My personal flavor in sound is a deep clear bass, average mid and high range of treble. Now then, I bought Logitech Z680 THZ 5.1 speakers last year because they fit the profile I seek in sound.

Copyright 2005 - Guru3D.com

DVD enthusiasts hail the king
DVD guru's will find in any of the Audigy series an excellent solution. Dolby Digital decoding on up to the highest level and whether that is a 5.1 channel AC3 format or Dolby Digital EX 6.1 or even DTS-ES 6.1 does not matter. I've listened to 5.1 tracks from Lord of the Rings (Return of the King SE - DTS) to titles where sound effects are less important like 21 grams. I can make a long and boring speech, but the Audigy 4 Pro simply outputs superior quality surround sound. I've used CyberLink Power DVD 6.0 as playback software. HIGHLY recommended software BTW.

The Audigy's have an appealing feature, the Creative MultiSpeaker Surround, or CMSS for short. There are two versions of it, CMSS1 and CMSS2.  The button on the outside of the break-out box will activate which version you set in the control panel.  This feature will simulate surround sound on two speakers (CMSS2) or it will simulate surround sound on 5.1 or 6.1 system from a stereo source (CMSS1).  For a two speaker system, the effect is not subtle.  For me personally I preferred not to have CMSS2 on while watching movies. It just didn't feel right.

CPU Utilization was on a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 based system armed with a Radeon x800XT, 1 GB memory was only 4% including decoding the video for both a DTS and a Dolby Digital track. What more needs to be said?

Surround effects were undoubtedly excellent, as was the dialogue. It's hard to beat this kind of playback.

Music and MP3Got a somewhat slow PC? Do you hate it when a MP3 file starts the sound crackling and is giving you hiccups if you try to multi-task ? Well, there's just no chance of that with the Audigy 4 for sure. The DSP can do MP3 decoding accelerated in hardware, which leaves the computer's CPU free to perform other tasks.

CPU Utilization was and don't get scared now... 1%

The tracks I listen to where diverse. An acoustic version of Foo Fighters learning to fly and Darling Nicky was simply stated juicy. I'm not an audiophile but once the lead singer starts screaming 'Nickeeeeh' from the top of his lung you know for real that the Audigy 4 pretty much can handle anything.

To go a little retro I decided to load up an old Italo music song: Koto - Japanese War. A Koto, to my humble understanding, is a long Japanese zither having 13 strings that has absolutely nothing to do with this 80ies disco tune. This title has hefty mid range bass sounds. If either your speakers or your soundcard distort you will notice it with this title for real. Suffice to say I listen 6 minutes with total satisfaction and then got my groove on. Ah, those where the times. At one point I did enable EAX (Disco setting) though, I'm a sucker for that powerful dynamic sounding (not pounding) bass. That's the subjective thing I told you about. Don't blame it on the Audigy, just be happy you can actually select your personal sound preference with an Audigy soundcard.

Probably at this point of commenting 10 audiophiles would like to point a gun at me and shoot for using EAX in music. Sorry Brann!

Well, since you can't do a soundcard review without at the very least listening to one classic masterpiece I decided to go for Prokofiev's Montagues and Capulets (Introduction) as played by the London Symphony Orchestra from Romeo and Juliey. Yes, the song is a long as its full title. Sound was deep and clear. Perfect strings, its my favorite dramatic piece of classic music. The Audigy 4 Pro is a very good sounding card indeed.

And yes, now the neighbors now officially hate me.

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