Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Notebook Sound Card, CardBus Type II
1 Great Sound Card
Easy installation. This card made a big difference in my laptop. This is worth getting if your big on sound, as I am. Get the Z-5500 speakers and your set to go!
2 Good solution for laptop owners
I recently retired my old desktop and replaced it with a laptop & docking station. One of the problems you have with a laptop is less ability to upgrade it. Mine already has an nVidia 5200FX graphics card, albeit with just 32mb RAM, but it is adequate for all but the most demanding new games. OTOH, the built-in sound needed serious upgrading. I was toying with getting the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 external card with USB connection, but I've already filled 6 on-board USB ports and a 4-port USB hub with other paripherals, so this card was an ideal solution. The card suports 5.1 - 7.1 speaker configurations. If you only have two speakers now (with or without sub), plan on upgrading these as well if you want to get the most out of the sound card. Plugged into the PC card slot and connected to Logitech 5300e 5.1 THX surround sound speakers via the included cable adapter, it fills my 10' x 10' office with sound. DVD's obviously don't sound as good as my home theather set up, but do sound an order of magnitude better than my previous two speakers with sub and the built-in audio was capable of. I haven't had time to try out a game that supports EAX yet, but I assume it will be just as incredible.
The card has a built-in headphone jack, so even if I take the laptop to another part of the house or on the road, I can still use it. That's something that wouldn't be practical with the external USB Audigy 2. The card comes with a little pouch to store it in when you remove it, so you can toss it in your laptop bag during transport.
I assume the included software suite is the same one you would get with any Audigy 2 card, but it is the one thing that drags down the product. Rather than one feature packed program, Creative gives you a collection of individual programs. Many of these programs (like volume level, CD burning, etc.) are of limited use and don't appear to offer any functionality not built-in to WinXP or Media Player 10. A couple of the utilities like the THX surround set up are actually useful though. Curiously, some of these utilities include buttons that launch others in the suite, but not all of them and not all apps have the buttons. OTOH, there is a dashboard utility/toolbar that has buttons to launch all the utilities and it starts now whenever I start up the machine or reboot. It "hides" at the top of the screen until you mouse over the top edge, then drops down into view. This is an unnecessary and unwanted "feature" as far as I'm concerned. Since the programs are all accessible from the menu, or via desktop shortcuts you could easily create for the most often used utilities if you want to go that route, I don't see the benefit of having an app launcher utility continuously running and taking up memory/system resources. I haven't yet explored disabling this utility, but intend to.
The hardware itself performs flawlessly, but the app suite and unnecessary, but forced app launcher toolbar prevent me from giving it 5 stars. Nevertheless, if you've got a laptop and you want to upgrade the sound, this is really the best way to go. The USB route is a little bit cheaper, but the PC card is worth the couple extra bucks for its portability and just the fact that it doesn't require a USB port to plug into.
3 Great for Roadwarriors
I fly 12,000 miles per month. My company gives me a sucky Dell Latitude D600 running Windows 2000. This card rocks. Used together with my Bose Quiet Comfort 2 headphones I get awesome soud for music, games and movies.
4 Some clicking noise - otherwise ok
I was looking forward to this card for a long time - the only thing left on my list is a PCMCIA video card. The installation was easy but took very long - about 20 min - I installed only 2 components and drivers.
When the card started, everytime I changed the soundtrack it made a "clicking" noise on the left earphone. While trying various ways to shut it off - I found that it went away when I set the CMSS setting to "CMSS2". On "CMSS" it was worse - the 'clicking' sound came on both ears everytime I changed track. When set to "Off" the sound came on left ear.
Another issue for some might be - the laptop's volume buttons stopped working.
One more problem - and this is might not be due to the card - I got a blue screen for the first time in 9 months of heavy use. If it happens again in the next week or so the card is going back. I have an IBM T40 with 1 GB/40GB and use Windows XP Pro.
However, I am looking forward to keep this card - it does sound better than my system's soundcard.
5 Disappointed
I was really excited about this card until I finally tried it out. I have a Dell Inspiron 5150 notebook and when I run the card in high-perfomance mode, I always get a pop\click in the right channel everytime I play a sound file. Does anyone have the same problem? I'm on my second card now and it still has the same problem, even when I use it on a different laptop like an IBM Thinkpad T30.
In the end, try the card out. It works fine for me in standard mode, especially because it does sound better than my on-board sound chip. However, its really annoying that I can't use it to its full potential in high performance mode.
6 ROCK ON YOU CRAZY NOTEBOOK!
I just installed this last night, and the installation was super easy, and the sound quality is incredible for a notebook with Rhapsody and DVD (Bourne Supremacy was the maiden voyage). No more tin can sounding built in speakers. You can also record with it for people who are looking to do that, a big plus. I have it hooked up with Logitech z-5500 speakers, and the sound rivals my home stereo set up, which is no slouch either. Will be checking out the DVD-Audio and game sounds next! Run, don't walk to buy this if you have a notebook. I can't believe it took them this long to do this, but since it works for up to 7.1 sound, it should last a while.
