Have to agree with posts 8 and 9, need an update to include the MUCH newer Audigy2 ZS - if you're gonna throw down a recomendation for $100 newcomer you should put it up against a similar card from the acknowledged standard.

How about Linux driver availability? Creative gives you hell.

So, what, 2-4 years til we see 7.1 games???

I was wondering if this is a good solution for me. I am looking for a digitial capable card to hook up to my new Z-680's. Creatives Audigy is crap since it does not pass along the digital signal out of the mini RCA "digital" out. I was hoping to use toslink or coax to use the speakers onboard decoders. Any suggestions from anyone in here?

6.1 is definately better than 5.1, providing you have a good source..

Watch LOTR 1 and 2 in EX 5.1, then watch in DTS ES 6.1.. sweet, very sweet..

Hercules was working on a new card with the VIA chip, I guess after the company was ravaged by layoffs, they lacked the personnel to finish it Too bad.

I haven't seen a card worthy of replacing my Fortissimo 3 just yet.

#2, 7.1 titles are coming.. I hope.. haven't seen any 6.1 games yet though.. :)

EP

Chaintech AV-710 uses almost the same design as this card as well as the exact same DACs. Differences though are that it doesn't have digital input and it costs less than half the price of this card.

#10:
Bear in mind that the threshold of human hearing, however, is about 4 decibels.
That might apply to absolute differences (ie. playing with the volume knob), though it's too high even there. For frequency response, it isn't in the ballpark's parking lot. For a wide-band variation, fractions of a decibel can be audible in double-blind testing. Narrower response irregularities can be harder to pick out, mainly because they are less likely to be excited by the signal. I would say that the differences between these cards will be marginally audible in the top octave and unmistakable in the bass unless the playback system has no sub-100Hz response.

Intermodulation Distortion: This term refers to the variance from the original sound wave for each sound when two or more sounds are played simultaneously (which is almost always).
More specifically, IMD is the creation of new frequencies that are not in the input signal. This is just like getting acoustic beating with two instruments that aren't quite in tune. Not good, since the new frequencies are not directly related to the music.

Total Harmonic Distortion: This refers to the worst-case scenario of distortion introduced by the sound card, regardless of the interfering harmonics of the various sounds being played.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Harmonics are simply multiples of a signal, so a 100 Hz tone has its 2nd harmonic at 200 Hz, its 3rd at 300 Hz and so on. THD is measured by feeding a test tone into the device and recording the output signal's strength at the harmonic frequencies and only these frequencies . Note that almost all THD measurements include whatever noise content exists at the harmonic frequencies, since the noise is inevitably there too.

Also note that harmonics are invariably produced by musical instruments, so harmonic distortion is somewhat masked by the musical signal. Not so for test tones! And for this reason, higher THD generally looks worse in measurements than it sounds and is preferable to high IMD.

Again, all of the cards graphs show extremely low THD, except at 1 kHz. I have no idea why this is (but I'd love to find out).
That's the test signal.

All of these cards show very good separation.
More than humans need - effectively perfect.

HS

I think test results for the Audigy 2 ZS should have been included. I would like to have seen a comparison of the Entertainer with a card that is a step up in price. Kind of a "bang for you buck" comparison.

can someone explain the graphs & what they actually represent in examples of real world differences.

What are the advantages of 24-bit audio again?

"Although few users may opt to use the Entertainer's Wolfson DAC for music playback because it requires swapping speaker plugs and limits output to two channels,"...

I think you're overestimating the number of people, even people here, that use many sound channels. I know that for myself, it's just not practical to use more than two channels...this might be right up my alley. :)

Nice review Diss...and as howard mentioned...an alternative...at last :)

Just noticed this at the RightMark site:

http://audio.rightmark.org/test/live51.html

Look at the difference between front and rear channels. Wow! No wonder the kX drivers swap those two.

ummm, I just wanted to ask for a new sound card review as iot was long overdue, and come on there is new Audigy ZS that is apparently a good card from creative..

can you make an update ;)

Something's gotta replace this pathetic SB Live, but I think I'll still save up for that Delta Omni Studio...

Nifty, I really like how you tricked some people into a blind hearing test. That was a nice touch.

I'm just thrilled to see a SB competitor at a reasonable price. Creatve Labs went to hell with the Live cards and hasn't done anything good since IMHO