How Is The Creative Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum

[ANTEC900]

I Am Wondering How The Creative Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum Is For A Older Sound Card And How Good It Performs Compared To Today's Newer Sound Cards

[Mr. Roboto]

Depends, what will you be using the card for?

[ANTEC900]

I Am Using My XFX 780i On Board Audio Right Now And Want It For Gaming. I Was Wondering Because I Found It For $23 Used

[e6600]

I Am Using My XFX 780i On Board Audio Right Now And Want It For Gaming. I Was Wondering Because I Found It For $23 Used
i would definitely go for it, and try to use the third party 'kX' drivers... they destroy creative's offerings, its basically the difference between integrated and dedicated between the two drivers

[kevleviathan]

Audigy Platinum is one of the worst of Creative's offerings in the past 5 years.... it doesn't fully support 24bit audio as it claims. I also remember something about it playing everything at 44.1Khz no matter what the source material was and just converting everything.
Having said that it might be better than some onboard stuff.

[Sir Barton]

Audigy Platinum is one of the worst of Creative's offerings in the past 5 years.... it doesn't fully support 24bit audio as it claims. I also remember something about it playing everything at 44.1Khz no matter what the source material was and just converting everything.
Incorrect, it resamples everything to 48KHz. Thats all fine and dandy if youre just watching DVDs...but music and games have a native sample rate of 44.1KHz. Every Creative card until the release of X-Fi resampled everything to 48KHz. Not only does Creative resample, so does Windows. Windows resamples to 48KHz as well, so your audio stream is getting resampled twice before it makes it to your ears, which loses alot of quality. Run a music player with ASIO to bypass kmixer and set your X-Fi to content creation mode at 44.1KHz...youll notice how much better your music sounds.

[kevleviathan]

Ah thanks, I couldn't remember the exact issue.
Yeah. GG Creative.....
The one good thing about Vista is audio. It got a lot better and AFAIK doesn't do weird resampling.

[Mr. Roboto]

Incorrect, it resamples everything to 48KHz. Thats all fine and dandy if youre just watching DVDs...but music and games have a native sample rate of 44.1KHz. Every Creative card until the release of X-Fi resampled everything to 48KHz. Not only does Creative resample, so does Windows. Windows resamples to 48KHz as well, so your audio stream is getting resampled twice before it makes it to your ears, which loses alot of quality. Run a music player with ASIO to bypass kmixer and set your X-Fi to content creation mode at 44.1KHz...youll notice how much better your music sounds.

Is this true if you're just using the digital out on the card?

[Sir Barton]

Is this true if you're just using the digital out on the card?
Yep, the crystal oscillator controls the sample rate. If you look at the crystal on your soundcard it will either be a 24KHz or 22KHz crystal. Most newer soundcards have 2 so they can support both 44.1 and 48. Older Creative cards just have one (24KHz). Windows and Creative resample everything to 48KHz so you can have sounds playing from multiple sources at the same time. For instance, if you wanted to play some music and watch YouTube simultaneously. If you lock the sample rate, you will only get sound from one source.

[Mr. Roboto]

Huh, I did not know this. I've been using my old Audigy 1 in my HTPC as a pass through card for years now for playing my music and movies. I wonder if I would notice a big change if I upgraded.