Yep - Creative still sucks

B

brzilian

New member
So, here's the deal. I got a Best Buy gift certificate last week and decided to do some shopping Tuesday...

While looking around in the computer department, I noticed that that Creative's Audigy2 NX soundcard was on sale ($99). The NX is the new USB 2.0 external card from Creative which on paper looks really impressive (24/96 audio, DVD-A support, optical in and out).

I had been wanting to pick up an external solution for my new laptop since the onboard SoundMAX sound really doesn't cut it.

To make a long story short, this thing is absolutely terrible. It is by no means portable as it requires an external power brick and cannot be powered by the USB interface. Unlike the other Audigy2's, it has not ASIO driver support and the latency with WDM drivers in Home Studio 2004 is terrible.

What makes it even worse is that you can only get true 5.1 DVD-Audio by using the internal 5.1 decoder! That means I have to go out and buy computer speakers rather than use my existing Yamaha receiver to do the decoding.

Finally, I get regular dropouts ever minute or so trying to watch a DVD and sending the 5.1 signal to my receiver via TOSLINK. I tried the updated drivers and the problem still persisted. Of course, the kx project drivers don't work with this thing either...

Basically, this experience has reinforced the fact that Creative still has their heads up their asses. This thing is going back today and I plan to get something like Echo's Indigo PC-Card interface.

Too bad Creative's Industrial/Product designers get to make such terrible hardware look nice and well designed. What a waste!
 
I remember the NX being called "a tragedy" on hammersounds soundfont newsgroup, and that was mostly about the midi side of things. It seems it has a 16 MB soundfont limit and isn't even capable of playing back those 16 MB correctly, that is - it messes up the miditiming somehow...
No first hand experience though, just rumours...
 
I was about to buy one of those! I'm kinda leaning toward the Echo Indigo IO now.... let me know if you get one. Something else I was thinking about is the M-Audio MobilePre or USB Audiophile.... and experience with those?
 
[Thinking to myself] I've got to get a job at M-Audio or something... [/Thinking to myself]

I've found that in the pro-sumer market, anything that says "M-Audio" on it, as long as the specs are what you need, will meet or exceed user expectations.

From their mics to the monitors to interfaces and soundcards, the bang-for-the-buck ratio with them is VERY high.

So give 'em a shot.

John Scrip - www.massivemastering.com
 
Massive Master said:
[Thinking to myself] I've got to get a job at M-Audio or something... [/Thinking to myself]

I've found that in the pro-sumer market, anything that says "M-Audio" on it, as long as the specs are what you need, will meet or exceed user expectations.

From their mics to the monitors to interfaces and soundcards, the bang-for-the-buck ratio with them is VERY high.

So give 'em a shot.

John Scrip - www.massivemastering.com
Click to expand...

I would - I already own the Audiophile 2496. Problem is, all they have in terms of "portable" USB devices is the Transit. It looks ok, but is only USB 1.1 and I'm not sure it would be any better than their Audiophile USB which people don't seem to like. The Firewire Audiophile looks impressive, but is not completely portable and also needs an external power brick.

I wish M-Audio also had a PC-Card interface. I'd buy it in a heartbeat!
 
Review from tomshardware.com
http://www6.tomshardware.com/video/20031114/index.html

At 44.1kHz-
Frequency response: Frequency is not bad, but is not as good as top-of-the-line internal sound cards; there is noticeable attenuation at 20 Hz, and there is a ripple effect at high frequencies.

At 48kHz-
Frequency response: Practically the same response as obtained at 44.1 kHz, which is rather disappointing.

Audio Measurements-
As for the rest, it should be noted that this card is not really designed for composing music, so you won't find ASIO drivers that can be used with composing software. You will have to make do with WDM drivers. In any case, even though the card carries a synthesizer, is has no MIDI connection. The Sound fonts of which musicians are so fond, are managed, but only in the software. While the Audigy 2 NX is not designed with musicians in mind, it can still be used for some types of music-making.

...Note that the Audigy 2 NX, like the other Creative cards, operates at 48 kHz for EAX effects. Operation at 44.1 kHz thus uses a resampling method that has a negative effect - while less noticeable than in previous versions--on performance.
 
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