Creative Labs European Press Event in Dublin: 3DSoundSurge Report

Important Info:

Company: Creative Labs

Location: Dublin, Ireland

Date: September 19 and 20, 2002

Products presented:

Soundcards:

Sound Blaster Audigy 2

Speakers::

Creative Inspire 4400
Creative Inspire 5.1 Digital 5500
Creative Inspire 6.1 6700
Creative Inspire Slim 2700
Creative Inspire Digital 2800
Cambridge SoundWorks MegaWorks THX 550
Cambridge SoundWorks MegaWorks THX 250

On Thursday September 19 to Friday September 20 I attended the Creative Labs press event in Dublin, where Creative Labs European HQ is located. In addition to presentation and demonstrations of the new Audigy 2 cards Creative also demonstrated their speaker, MP3 player and Web-Cam line-up. I will only cover the new Audigy 2 and Speaker presentations in this article. Later this or next week we will offer more detailed impression on the features the new Audigy 2 offers.

Audigy 2

With Creative's past track record of only incremental improvements (e.g. Live to Live X-Gamer/MP3+ to Live5.1…) I don't think many of us had high hopes that the Audigy 2 would offer any major improvements over the current Audigy. After all, with the first hardware update to the Live only new feature was that even the basic board offered digital output and the slightly more interesting introduction of the LiveDrive. It was not launched with much fanfare either and even appeared in shops before Creative released the press release. The Live 5.1 got more attention by adding a center/subwoofer output. However it was a feature several other cards already offered at the time even though it should be said that Creative took better advantage of the center and subwoofer output by right out of the box offering good bass management and using the center output not only for movies but also games. The only rumor I had seen about the Audigy 2 before the press event invitation was that it should support 24/96 recording, which while a nice feature is still a feature only some of the musicians would benefit from.

Once the invitation to the press event arrived and it was clear the soundcard presentation was one of, if not the major highlight. Let's face it while Europe is more music creation focused than America, Creative would probably not bother to invite 35 journalists to Dublin just to teach us how Guinness is made and that Irish Whisky is the best Whiskey in the world and briefly mention "the Audigy 2 support 24/96 kHz bit recording, isn't that great?" My suspicion turned out to be correct, or at least partly. The 24/96 recording rumor (or guess) was accurate and it was not the major feature. However the true 24 bit/96 kHz and improved audio quality are without doubt where Creative Labs put the most focus on the new Audigy 2. Now while many audiophiles without doubt think the Audigy, not to mention the Live audio quality, could be improved significantly I think the average computer user would be tougher to convince that he/she would really benefit from this improved quality while listening to music, movies or playing games. That’s all the more so considering MP3s, music and sound effects in games are recorded at 16/48 kHz or lower quality.

Creative thinks they found the answer in the growing number of DVD Audio discs which can include content with up to 24 bit/192 kHz but more common 24 bit / 96 kHz multichannel audio tracks. To help them convince us that the Audigy 2 really offers excellent audio quality they have managed to get the first THX certification for a soundcard. Going along with this focus on improved music playback they redesigned and renamed the often-criticized PlayCenter 3 to MediaSource and perhaps most importantly, they have endowed it with the ability to decode DVD audio, making it the first and currently only PC software with this ability. In addition to a much nicer and easier interface they have introduced new features as well as improved several of the old ones. For the DVD movie fans the improved sound quality is of course one major reason to upgrade but in addition the Audigy 2 now supports 6.1 including of course Dolby Surround EX decoding. On the gaming front the improvements includes 6.1 speaker output, improved 3D audio and 64 3D hardware voices which Creative says will result in improved performance.

Sound quality was one of key highlights when Creative launched the original Audigy but also one that drew a lot of criticism due to Creative decision to market it as a 24 bit / 96 kHz soundcard even though it didn't fully support 24 / 96 kHz playback (always resampled to 16/48) and was unable to record at 24 bit / 96 kHz. Creative never did hide this fact, but there were probably many users who didn't discover this until after they bought the card. This time the Audigy 2 supports both playback and recording at 24 bit / 96 kHz and can also playback DVD-Audio up to 24 bit/192 kHz. The reason the 24/192 kHz is exclusive to DVD-Audio playback, at least at the time of the presentation, is that Windows XP currently doesn’t support 192 kHz but Creative thinks this will change with upcoming service packs.

I don’t have Windows XP installed yet to test it but Mark reports that the very recently released Service Pack 1 has added a previously unavailable 192 kHz playback option to Ego Systems Waveterminal 192X when testing with testing with RightMark Audio Analyzer (RMAA) 4.0.

Getting back to the Audigy, note that the 32-bit effect engine still operates at 48 kHz and will resample all data to 48 kHz. This means all recordings have to be done dry, that is without applying reverb effects since otherwise it will be resampled to 16 bit / 48 kHz before it's resampled back to 24 bit / 96 kHz again. This also means that 24 bit / 96 kHz playback will be resampled if you choose to apply effects to it.

It's also worth noting that ASIO recording will still only be 16 bit / 48 kHz. Creative said the Audigy 2 Platinum EX will support 24 bit / 96 kHz for ASIO when it's launched early next year.

Back to sound quality, this time around Creative stressed sound quality even more than when the Audigy was launched. Not only did they claim it's superior to any of the other soundcards (context being multimedia soundcards)…they claim it's goes way beyond typical Home Hi-Fi. To back up the claim of excellent sound quality beyond saying it got THX certification they provided Audio Precision Results at 24/96 where the Audigy 2 achieves SNR of 106 dB, THD+N 0.004%, Frequency response of 10 Hz to 46 kHz and CrossTalk of 100 dB. Creative realizes that not many, if any reviewer will have access to the Audio Precision test tool so they also offered the ratings you will get using the RightMark test tool that's available free of charge. I will offer Creative's as well as our own results when we offer our early impressions later this or next week.

While not a direct improvement in sound quality of the card, Creative has introduced a new speaker calibrator they think will improve the quality of the music you listen to. That is it will tweak your playback system for optimal music listening and 3D positional audio experience. It's done in through the following 7 steps: Speaker identification, Volume Balance Adjustment, Speaker Wiring, Time Alignment, Volume Balance Adjustment High Frequency, Volume Balance Adjustment Low Frequency, Virtual Speakers. In the end they will offer you a before and after test so you can see if you did actually improve anything.