What do you guys thing about SoundBlaster Audigy card?

Hello all, I have currently SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 and Klipsch ProMedia 5.1 speaker system. The problem is that the sound on Center speaker will only come out in certain programs like WinDVD 3.1 and Ghost Recon. WinAmp isn't playing any sound through center speaker, so I am not getting full time 5.1 speakers sound. I heard that with Audigy, I will get sounds from my 5.1 speakers with all the programs. My question is what do you guys think about Audigy? How comapatible is it in Windows XP? Right now I have no problem what so ever with this Live! 5.1 card with Windows XP.

Bloatware

Works great for me, and seems a wee bit faster in games (about 3-5fps if you are really into it). The sound quality is really good, but I don't watch movies on my PC as I have dedicated equipment in the living room for that . If you have a SBLive! and just want to upgrade, then it works fine. Otherwise, I wouldn't bother.

Palos, do you have one? Are you speaking from experience? I noticed that you don't seem to care for Creative Labs, MS, Intel, or NVidia as of late. You were irritated about NVidia releasing cards that were "incompatible" with Via chipsets, yet Via has been releasing hardware for a VERY long time that always has issues.

I've got an Audigy Player which I'm very happy with.
Before that I had an SB Live! Value which I must admit I was equally plesed with.
Needed a new sound card for a PC I was building for somebody, so ordered the Audigy, put that in my system and passed on the Live! value.

The installation went fine, drivers on the included CD etc.
Nice bit of hardware really.

I have the Platinum, and I noticed the sound quality difference in "Aquanox" between my 2 systems (my main one has the Platinum, and my test machine has the SBLive! MP3+). The sound positioning seems better with the Audigy, and overall a bit clearer. Mostly, I dig the Live Drive interconnects and the remote.

Yeah, I like to have Live Drive too but Platinum package cost too much. Do you guys have 5.1 speaker system connected to your Audigy card? I want to know if you are getting any sound out of your Center speaker when listening to .mp3s with WinAmp and stuff.

I don't, so I couldn't tell ya bud.

Currently looking into 5.1 speaker systems.
Have a very basic speaker setup at the moment.
DVD's are played on the dedicated equipment with the big TV and music again I tend to use the stereo.
Sorry, another "can't tell ya2

Well...I guess we will find out by next Tuesday. I ordered Audigy from newegg and it should be here on next Tuesday. I will post back the result.

I'm very satisfied with my Audigy X-Gamer. Works wonderfully under XP and 2k.

Me to I'am very satisfied with my Audigy X-Gamer and even got new spk to go with it Creative Inspire 5.1 5300.

SHS, since you have 5.1 speaker system with Audigy, are you getting any sound out of your Center speaker when you play MP3s with WinAmp?

Clutch if you could read my posts properly, you would see that Im irritated about crap driver builds that Nvidia releases officially. I mean, COME ON, didn't they have a VIA based board for testing ALL THIS TIME?????? Didn't it die on them like it dies on so many people?

Via blames Nvidia, Nvidia blames Via...and the losers are idiots like you,me and loads others, who waste their time trying to put together a stable system...do they care? Doesn't look like it, they got our money already.

I just demand the support that I am entitled to, and I want to see improvements in stability rather than performance in the Detonator series. I think they have been tweaked for performance long enough...

And what's wrong with me barking at Creative, M$ and the rest? I have a right to, don't I? The Emu10K is an excellent proc...from the SB512 up to Live!Platinum series. Too bad the drivers sucked, or it took them almost 2 years to release good W2K drivers.

I see around posts from people saying: " well, xyz is a good card but it would be even better if I could get sound out of all speakers, or centre speaker". Sorry but that is a crap piece of hardware/software to me, and I'm not going to bless Creative with hundreds of bucks...again.

Any comments?

Winamp sucks. Use a decent media player. Windows Media Player is the way to go.

and what is wrong with winamp?

Actually, I don't have a problem with you complaining about them, and if you would have read my post carefully you would see that I asked what your experience was with them. And, when I had my lovely <*cough* *cough*> Via-based motherboard, new 4-in-1 drivers seemed to introduce as many issues as they addressed. And if you didn't get new ones, it was probably because they didn't fix anything to begin with. I know that Via doesn't get much information from Intel, but then again why should they expect it when dealing with Intel's CPUs? Not to mention that many of these issues carry over between the Intel AND AMD architectures, so who should you blame then? I would have to lay the blame solely on Via, and I hope that they either get their act together or someone else can, since the Athlon is quite a nice processor but it's worthless without a stable platform (to me anyway).

As for Creative, I haven't had any problems with them at all for any of my soundcards, and I wanted to hear what your issues were (not what you had heard from others). Your immediate response to the Audigy question was "bloatware", but it had no explanation as to why you thought this was the case. So, I am asking.

whoisurdaddy sorry I'am not MP3 fan as for center speaker not working I belive you need to use Creative PlayCenter 3 and CMSS, As for Winamp I think you need use directsound for it to work if recall rigth.
Far as getting real music 5.1 surround sound the music must be made that way for it work like AC3 are made.

i just got a sbliveAUDIGY oem
it was for sure bloatware and the install was painstaking in win98se
but it got it going without too many problems.....

lw3 and pc3 are just cool! to say the least.
they work fine, and i can rip all my old audiocd's (unlimited) to the hd as .wav or mp3 and do it quickly.

there was alot of software in the OEM version!
it was identical (other than the gold plated connectors) as the mp3 or gamer but just no games!

i got firewire now too.
the thing is a good replacement to my old live!4.1

i havn't gone and run it in win2k or XP yet,
but with 98se it runs fine and i like this product, just hate creatives marketing schemes and downloads
but the card is a solid performer, on my pc anyways.....

SHS: Ok. I was just wondering.

mister_man: actually I like WinAmp because mp3 music sounds better in WinAmp than in Windows Media Player. Plus, I think WinAmp uses less CPU power.

About the VIA thing, I agree with Clutch totally. AMD CPUs are really nice but VIA isn't providing stable chipsets for AMD CPUs. That's why I like to pay a little more to get more stable Intel CPU and Intel chipset motherboard. Personally, my experiences with Creative and Nvidia have been really good. I have no problems with their products at all. That's why when I purchased my Audigy card two days ago, I chose Creative Audigy over Hercules Game Theater XP because Audigy cost less (I bought the OEM version for about $60) and Creative has been in sound card business a lot longer than Hercules.

Yeah, I like WinAMP better myself, although Media Player isn't too bad--just not as good as WinAMP.

BTW, why does WinAMP suck anyhow? I can't stand the "This sucks" responses without a reason of why. That just makes you look like a troll.

Winamp's MP3 decoding is inferior to WMP. I find Media player has better sound quality even with SRS turned off. Also I find that winamp has difficulty decoding some songs in the way they don't sound the way they do on CD but the same mp3 is decoded and played correctly on WMP. But I find Winamp is good on weaker computers cos it uses very little CPU time. Winamp also has plugins which can be useful.

Sucks was a bit off plot. I still say that Windows Media Player is best by a mile.

Well...now that I turned off that SRS, MediaPlayer's sound quality is about as good as WinAmp.

As for Audigy and Klipsch 5.1 speaker system, there is still no sound coming out of center speaker. Only in some games like Ghost Recon and in WinDVD 3 when I watch DVD movies.

AOL owns Winamp, is another good "it sucks" excuse.

Winamp 'rocks'
Load up winamp and mediaplayer 7/8 go to task manager and see how much memory they both need. That is why winamp 'rocks'. It does everything that mediaplayer does at the fraction of the memory cost, and you can get loads of skins for it and customise it to your tastes. Great little program.

As for via chisets words cannot express how pleased i am to finally be rid of them. Before, yes my pc was stable but it took endless tweaking and changing of bios settings/installing drivers to get it that way. Now what have i done ive installed the hardware, installed windows and it works...just like that AMD chips are great and i would probably be running 1 now if there was a good chipset for it to go with, but i wouldnt call via good ;(

In summary winamp and intel 'rock' and media player 'sucks'

Who really cares if Media player uses more resources to play. Most modern systems can easily play using WMP hardly breaking a sweat. Your computer would have to pretty much suck, if it couldn't handle WMP. I fully agree with Intel chipsets being the best though.

Well I care for one. What would happen if every program just did what media player did. eh?

Its just the principal Why use an overly bloated media player when you can have a nice small one that does everything you need and more?

Well, I find that Media Player offers much better sound quality. But really it's a matter of opinion.

You might be right on the sound quality issue, ive never really compared em