Sound Blaster Extigy - The Dream Card
Written: Dec 14 '02
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Incredible sound, external, multiple in/outputs, pretty much everything
Cons: Reverting back to original sound card can be shaky, no optical 5.1
The Bottom Line: Perfect for any computer user. Use it as a card or a receiver. Great sound, great design, great everything.
|
|
|
| jazz976's Full Review: Creative Technology Sound Blaster Extigy Audio Rec... |
I bought my extigy a few months ago to use with my new laptop. Most laptops don't really have great sound cards, and since I do a lot of sound editing and recording, I decided that a new sound card would be required. However, Dell only sells one kind of laptop sound card. I came across the only external sound card on the market, and immediately bought it.
Installation was a breeze. I just plugged it in, ran the installation program on the cd, and I was set to go. It plugs into your computer via USB (1.1). I plugged in all my stuff: phonograph, keyboard, cd player, tape player, and speakers. Note: even with all these plugged in there's still 6 plugs free. Another note: if you get the right surround sound speakers (creative's inspire line or cambridge soundworks megaworks 510d - see my review), you can get 5.1 Surround sound through a single cable. I also installed the myriad of programs that came with the extigy: WaveStudio, MixMeister, Playcenter, Audio Mixer, Sound recorder, and various diagnostic programs. These programs are great. WaveStudio is an excellent program for sound editing, MixMeister lets you fiddle with mp3s, playcenter lets you create a library navigable with the remote, and the rest are little useful utilities having to do with the card.
The sound quality is simply excellent. After buying this and the speakers to it, I copied all of my CDs to my computer, and I now use my computer as a sound source - the sound quality is that good. I use it to watch DVDs on my laptop, and on the matrix DVD I can almost feel the wind of the bullets flying past me. The extigy includes Creative's CMSS technology, that upmixes normal stereo recordings to make the sound better. The difference is incredible. I play a record into the card, and CMSS makes it sound like a CD. It helps a lot. I am simply blown away by how great this card sounds, whether plugged into great speakers or little crap computer speakers.
I should probably list the plugs: Headphone out, Mic in, Line in, Optical in/out, MIDI in/out, 1/8" Left/right center/sub and surround left/right sound outputs (for surround speakers), and s/pdif in/out. There is a hardware-level volume control and mic level control. With the MIDI in/out you can plug in a MIDI controller and notate sheet music without having to buy a separate MIDI adapter.
The remote allows you to navigate your music library from a good distance away. It displays large text on your screen and has easy controls to navigate all of your music. However, it only works with Creative's PlayCenter software, so you'll have to import all of your tunes into that software. The only problem is that PlayCenter isn't very good for playing music by clicking on it with the mouse, so I find myself using the remote even when I'm right next to the computer. I would prefer it if the remote worked with Windows Media Player, RealONE, or MusicMatch Jukebox. It's still nice, though, to be able to adjust the volume of a DVD while sitting a ways away.
The only problems I have with the extigy are these: you cannot output 5.1 sound through an optical connection, and the card is sometimes not recognized in Windows. When you unplug or turn off the extigy, your computer is supposted to revert back to the your original sound card. However, sometimes it does not, and it simply assumes that there is no sound card installed. This gets rather annoying, but I'm sure there's a fix for it that I will be able to download - the firmware on the extigy is upgradeable.
The extigy is a truly innovative product. No one else has ever made anything like it. The advantages of an external card are numerous: easier cable organization (it can be far away from your computer, so your midi cables won't get tangled up with your mouse and keyboard), better sound quality (it doesn't pick up internal computer noise), more inputs and outputs (separate unit, more space). It's a must have for laptop users, and is a great upgrade for desktop users. And, the price is right.
Thanks for reading.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
jazz976
|
|
Location: Lexington, MA, USA
Reviews written: 19
Trusted by: 1 member
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.