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Got it.

Started by Crispy Jan 7, 2004 at 7:28 PM 2 replies 300+ views

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170

Jan 7, 2004 at 7:28 PM

Finally! My SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro arrived today. Instant installation - I'm bathing in supreme audio quality right now - I know it's psychological, but even mp3's sound better. Will post a more complete memo tomorrow - all I can say in a sentence is that this piece of equipment is a.w.e.s.o.m.e. I'll have a couple of buddies over, we'll hook the rack up with 2 guitars, I'll hook up my keyboard and once I get enough money to buy a proper aplifier with proper digital or optical IO (yup, the card has both), I'll just combine it with a proper set of 5.1/7.1 speakers and become the King of All Audio. It looks great, it works great and it even smells great. Well, not really - it doesn't smell at all, but the remote (plus full versions of Cubase 4 and Fruity Loops 4) rocks every other piece of equiment in my home. Not to mention the 24bit 96 kHz mixing I'm taking full advantage of. Ahh... Even line in recordings from the synth sound really noiseless. I'm not sure, but I think the sound card has a built-in denoiser and declicker. I haven't got the karaoke mode working yet, but according to specs it should provide up to 100% voice removal (highly unlikely that it'll work, though, IMO, but I'm looking forward to it regardless of that).

[edited by - crispy on January 7, 2004 8:30:09 PM]

Dart1234

Jan 7, 2004 at 8:12 PM

It''s great isn''t it? My new computer came with one and I have to say that is the best sound card I''ve ever had, plus it comes with a remote. It''s officially a kick-ass sound card when it comes with a remote.

Crispy

Author

170

Crispy

Jan 8, 2004 at 6:14 AM

It sure is. Here''s what ports it has:

2 mic/linein''s
2 optical (I and O)
2 spdif (I/O)
3 firewire ports
1 headphones out
3 standard ports to collectively support 7.1
2 MIDI ports (I/O)
1 wide midi port
1 digital I/O port

The remote control OSD features are so extensive that I officially declared my friend''s twice-as-expensive TV card obsolete (yah!). Too bad only that the volume control button isn''t automated.

BTW does anyone know how to attach the remote to WinAmp? I tried two plugins I found - the first kept crashing and the other one only agreed to do business through COM1... I don''t want to use Girder or anything else that is shareware, but being able to skip to the next song/fast forward/rewind from the comfort of a faraway armchair would be extra cool.

Some technical stuff: the hardware EAX control is hyper-cool. I couldn''t get my fingers off the keyboard once I realised how low its latency really is (less than 10 ms, generally around 2!). The sound it makes is awesome, too - bass control rocks (you can tune hardware bass amount and cutoff levels and that I like). I haven''t had time to check if it allows several EAX environments to be mounted, each for a different input port, yet.

When recording audio, the mess of wiring around my computer was probably the only thing that created noise, which, when nothing was played, stayed around -50 dB (yes, this is pretty good, but can be a lot better since the card supports noise levels as low as -120 to -150 dB. I like.

The rack looks really nice - it''s black and doesn''t really suit my room, but it looks all the more professional, which it is. As soon as I get a firewire cable, I''ll hook a camera up with the rack and post screenshots.

benryves

526

benryves

Jan 8, 2004 at 9:42 AM

Whee, I''ve got a quadraphonic sound card, and recording through the microphone port whistles.
Man I suck

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