Customer Reviews
Worked, Happy and Now with the Music 
2008-04-07
Everything in life should be this simple.
If you want a basic card for your basic sound look no further. I'm not going to bother you with detailed tripe because I really can't hear the difference and if you are playing 128 mp3s you won't ether.
We plugged it in, loaded the software and she ran from the get go. Darn happy and come to think of it we have never had a Creative Lap product that we had to shoot.
One thing, see if you can buy one used. Save some money folks.
Good luck and don't forget as Red Green says, "if the women don't find you handsome they should at least find you handy".
Mike
Hardware is exceptional; drivers are abysmal. 
2006-12-30
I use a couple of Audigy 2ZS in my recording business. No other soundcard on the market, then or now, offers the flexibility and just great sound capturing capabilities of this card. Interestingly, all the later Creative products no longer support 192k/24 bit sampling, so this card is truly unique. The only other manufactured card supporting this brilliant sampling clarity costs US$250 more!
If you only get a hold of one of these cards to see how good audio CAN be on your computer, do it. It's jaw-droppingly good.
But I have to reinforce the driver problems described by others. I have dealt directly with the driver team at CL, and to say they are unhelpful is an understatement. Early drivers (e.g. those shipped on the CD) had some pretty bad flaws, but at least they allowed the card to work to its full potential (which is really astonishingly good!).
All the latest drivers (since late 2005) use the Creative "universal" driver model, which means they are designed to work correctly ONLY with the newer, low market level CL cards. All the new drivers have significant bugs and "showstopper" flaws, and completely prevent the card from being used properly (i.e. nowhere near it's actual technical specifications). Then there's a whole other discussion about CL supporting more than one card in any computer system. Old drivers worked beautifully with multiple cards, but new drivers just lock out inputs and confuse mixer settings and just don't work, full stop.
So if you want one of the clearest, most flexible, highest sample rate cards ever on the PC market up to this year, get one of these if you can (I've bought 3 spare cards in case any of my current ones die, as CL no longer support the product at all). Just don't expect the latest "mass market", "cloth-eared consumer" Creative labs drivers to work properly, and don't expect CL to help you with any technical problems. Ever.
To be honest, my next card will be anything BUT a Creative Labs product. But for me, the Audigy 2ZS is the BMW of the older audio card market. Have a drive, if you can. You just probably wouldn't want to own one.
Frustrating 2006-05-05
Alright...when I can actually get this darn thing to work right it is an EXCELLENT sound card..But over the past few years I've had this thing I have had to reinstall the drives numerous times....I mean...much more than I should have to...This program will only function right for me for about a few months before I have to reinstall it again. I have updated my drivers and I'm sure nothing is wrong with my hard drive, still get the same problem...suddenly something stops working right, this time it was the fact that I can only choose 4.1 speakers..not even headphones or anything else...I dont even have 4.1 speakers....I have 6.1...Last time I couldn't change the EAX settings from default, so everything sounded horrible, the time before that I couldn't even open the EAX console period, mostly it's just problems with their EAX software. Which if you dont use everything sounds much worse by the way. If you can look past that problem though....great sound card...creative just needs to learn how to program decent software, cause the drivers for this sound card are absolutely horrid.
Software was written by gibbon monkeys. 
2005-11-29
I have had this card for 2 years now and it has worked fine for me as long as I didn't play with Creative's drivers or software.
All of a sudden, sound quit coming out of my rear speakers ONLY in certain Creative applications, and the speaker calibrator quit putting out any sound. So I uninstalled the drivers and tried to reinstall them.
Be aware that -
1. Creative will NEVER offer a driver pack on its webpage. You MUST, I repeat MUST start with your original CD to load some drivers, and then you can get Creative's patches from their webpage. Now that my CD is 2 years old, there appears to be a conflict with *its* drivers and creative's patches. Apparently not enough bananas were bought for the gibbons, and they wandered out to the jungle in search of nourishment before finishing a full driver package.
2. There is a good chance that once you go to reinstall your drivers, you will get a "Hardware not found" message (see Creative's tech support forum) and not be able to install the drivers. Want another banana, Creative programmer? OOO OOO OO AHH AHHH AHHH!
My card is now a steaming pile of $100 poo since their driver system is not working for me.
Wish I had my old Turtle Beach Santa Cruz back.
No input 2004-09-02
I had this card installed in my Dell when I ordered it and I will say it does sound great BUT there is one proplem with it that I need and that is the input will not work. I called Creative Labs, Dell and got no where. Now maybe not many people need to use the input jack but it is a must for me. My old computer had a simple card but it did work. So if you want just great sound, this card is good but if you need to record albums, etc. then forget it, this card won't do it, or at least mine won't.
Great-Sounding Stuff 2004-02-05
With the introduction of the Sound Blaster Audigy 2, Creative has once more raised the bar for PC audio, bringing to you the most definitive audio experience yet!Sound Blaster Audigy 2 delivers high-quality multi-channel recording and playback at up to 24-bit/96kHz and is the first PC product to offer playback of Advanced Resolution DVD-Audio at an astonishing 24-bit/192kHz with a stunning Signal-to-Noise ratio of 106dB, delivering spectacular audio quality that has now redefined PC audio standards. With EAX Advanced HD, 6.1 speaker support and Dolby Digital EX support, movies and games will be experienced with a breathtaking level of immersion and intensity, while SB1394 allows super-fast transfer of audio to external players.
card's just wonderful, drivers suck in XP 2004-01-13
If you can get 6.1 in a game your do'n good, it sounds great. That is IF you can get even 4.1. Mostly this card reverts back to it's primitive 2.1 speaker state(even though I have a 6.1 speaker SET from creative ITSELF!). When playing games, two out of three will revert the sound card drivers back to 2.1. In windows 98 SE this is not a problem in XPPro it is a major one. Games that revert back include Star Trek Bridge Commander, Dungeon Siege(a microsoft "designed for XP" game), Hidden evil(most Star Trek games in fact), Fellowship of the Ring, System Shock2 (with EAX enabled), Ultima 9(EAX enabled) and most of the others I am too tired to find and referrence right now. In fact the only games that play in more than 2.1 sound(EAX) are Neverwinter Nights and most Bioware Infinity titles. That's funny becasue everyone knocks Infinity Engine, but it must have something going for it to work a nit-picky sound card such as this in 6.1 EAX. Everything else gamewise(EA, Dreamscape, Sirtech, ect) doesn't work at all. I have heard others complain about this and say Winamp can rectify the problem, it does not... Don't bother with the 2ZX 7.1, it's nothing special either and is just as bad. Try a Herc or Phillips.
Doood! It's Creative!
so what?
When it works like it should its quite a good deal 
2003-12-26
My experience with this product is divided into two "eras".
The first one was up until a few months ago when it gave me real headaches and problems. The second one is ever since it managed to solve itself (I don't know how, but I'm not asking either).
I'll start with the problem. My problem was the infamous "Squeal of Death" bug that Audigy cards tend to suffer from. This is some type of hardware flaw that occurs depending on your mainboard, operating system, etc. Up till now Creative hasn't managed to toally figure out why it happens, but what it does is simply cause the computer to completely freeze and emit a constant high-frequency tone while its halted (hence the "squeal"). This happens randomly during normal computer use while sound is playing. You cannot predict when it will happen, but it usually happens within the first 30 minutes of use, and its one of the most irritating things, one that can ruin your entire experience. As for Creative's support, it was very lacking. They told me to go over the same procedures again and again without any useful tips.
I've had this problem for nearly a year. Having the latest drivers for all of my hardware didn't help. I also tried formating my Hard Drive and reinstalling everything several times with no help. I did manage to understand what causes the bug to happen more frequently (such as watching DVD movies in surround mode, etc) and tryed to avoid it, but that was surely no fun.
Then one day it passed. Don't ask me how or why, but for a few months it works flawlessly. I know that recent motherboards, though, hardly cause this bug, so if you have a new computer you should not experience this problem.
And now for the card itself (when it works).
What I care about mostly is audio quality (in stereo), and this one delivers very good audio considering its a sound card. The resolution is high (not talking about the technical one), the high frequencies are precise (though a bit harsh), the soundstage is good, and detail is sufficient in audiophile terms.
One minus is that the card resamples everything lower than 48KHz to 48KHz using so-so algorithms that make 44.1KHz sources sound lacking at 48KHz (all your CD, MP3 sources). I found a way around this using a high-quality plugin for Winamp that resamples everything to 48KHz (or higher, I use 96KHz) using the best dithering algorithms and this avoids this little trouble.
I found working with high resolution and high frequency recordings (96KHz/24bit) pleasing and flawless. DVD-Audio also turned well, and surround sound very good if that is what you're into. I am not much into it but whatever surround recordings I tried sounded as good on the secondary channels as on the front ones (i.e. the DACs are the same for all channels).
The EAX hardware effects don't really improve the sound, but they work quite well and the fact they are done on-card (without CPU usage) is a big plus. There is a nice noice-removal option which works very well, especially useful with old films or bad radio reception (using line-in), though there is a slight delay.
Lastly, I'm not a big fan of computer games, but I was quite astounded with the sound it produced in serveral EAX-supported games, so if that's what you're into I suppose it delivers the finest out there.
To sum it up, when it works like it should it delivers excellent sound quality for such a mass-market product (and considering the price), all the needed surround sound support, and advanced EAX effects that work well for games and music as well.
If you're into recording you'll be also pleased to hear that it can record using high resolution 96KHz/24bit and that it does so with a very audiable improvement than the usual 48/16, great for doing analog remasterings or recordings on an amatuer level.
Reformat 2003-12-21
Junk, absolute junk. Don't even try to complain to Creative. Talk about a bunch of losers. If you have a soundblaster already installed, you might as well reformat to get the new one to work. I am a computer engineer for crying out loud. The soundblaster uninstall does not work, and you can spend forever trying to track down all the files that need to be deleted so that your new card will install correctly, but you will never find them all.
Sounds great! 2003-11-28
I was in the market for a sound card after my poor onboard sound chip just wasn't cutting it - stuttering, poor quality, and so on.
I picked up one of these yesterday. I read a lot about installation nightmares, but with the lack of any serious competitors quality and performance-wise, I felt I didn't really have a choice.
I was sure to uninstall all previous drivers. Install went without a hitch. Am now using EAX 3 in my games and they sound absolutely terrific. I feel like they're smoother too, which would be from the decreased CPU load the onboard sound was placing on it.
