Customer Reviews
Great Card - Poor Support 
2008-02-22
Production of this card has been discontinued with no upgrade available.
The Creative Audigy 2ZS and Platinum 2ZS cards provide a host of features including full support for a variety of speaker configurations trough 7.2, a joystick/MIDI interface, Optical SPD/IF, and an IEEE 1394 Firewire Port.
The Creative Software for the Audigy 2ZS is powerful, extensive, and easy to use. An ideal card for gamers, Home Entertainment, and Home Studio.
Unfortunately, none of the newly-released Creative Products are backward-
compatible with the 2 and 2ZS. Gone is the Firewire interface, the game/MIDI port, the SPD/IF. So you cannot upgrade and existing system based on this card with any Creative products.
But the worst 'feature' is Creative's clueless Support Team. If you have a problem with this card (e.g. adding a new device causing a contention problem on the bus or whatever), the procedures for completely removing the card, it's drivers, and software hooks in the Registry are draconian to the point of multiple boots into "Safe Mode", a Creative Tool which is supposed to remove all Creative reverences, followed by such nonsensical directives like completely blowing away the C:\TEMP and C:\WINDOWS\TEMP directories and then emptying the Recycle bin!
I had a card which seemingly failed (would no longer record and which failed the Creative Diagnostics) - it played perfectly but wouldn't record. I was three weeks out of warranty and nobody at Creative would help me diagnose the problem. I purchased a new replacement card and installed it only to find it had the same problems - so I took the original card to another machine and it installed perfectly without errors.
I wasted two weeks with Creative Support and their crazy diagnostic/fix procedures. When nothing else would work, I downloaded some obscure drivers from their site (which wasn't referenced by Support or in the FAQs) and finally it worked just fine.
The biggest complaint here is the methodology used when installing this card for the first time. It simply cannot be completely uninstalled using their own software and the Windows Control Panel. Vestiges remain everywhere apparently even after using their special cleaning tool. There is no excuse for this. I now believe that somehow, running in the background perhaps, Creative automatically 'upgraded' my drivers which broke the system.
I am not surprised that Creative no longer produces this fine product - they created a Support nightmare for themselves (e.g. an Audigy 2 is identical to a 2ZS except all the pins for the additional features are missing with the pads soldered off). They probably had several incompatible versions of the exact same card all requiring different drivers, etc. to work with their software.
I was forced to fix these problems myself because I had become so locked into the features on the original card I had no choice. Fortunately, the replacement card was available trough a third party with an extended warranty.
I will avoid Creative Products completely in the future no matter how good their specs and reviews - they apparently violate the most basic rules (at least for Windows/XP) in that their product cannot be completely uninstalled via the Control Panel and leaves countless junk in the Registry - then when something goes wrong they waste days trying to support you (the Support Team is very responsive but overwhelmed).
Too bad.
Piece of JUNK 
2007-02-24
the optical output only does 2.1 sound. If you want 5.1 to 7.1 sound then you have to use analog plugs on the back. Don't waste your money.
Great sound card 
2006-11-27
This is one of the best sound cards you can get for this price.
Using it will give you around a 10FPS boost when gaming as it has a very low cpu load (if you have a onboard sound card, the sound processing load is sent to the cpu but with this card, all processing is handled within the card)
It is great for working with audio editors and studio apps like FL studio as it has great asio support and can handle hundreds of sound streams at 1 time with out skipping and with out putting a heavy load on the cpu.
This card does wonders for music. using the eax console, you can make all music really sound 20-30 times better, the advance eq has a feature that will increase the detail of all audio making all music sound much better.
PS some people on many different forums have been able to use creative x-fi drivers for this card and enable x-fi sound features. (i don't recommend doing this unless your very skilled with regedit as theres a high risk of something going wrong and you will need to spend hours in the regedit tool in windows)
Beware 2006-07-29
"Bait and switch... The amazon link showed a full retail box with included software. When the actual seller responded they indicated a "bulk" item. So what I got was not a retail box but a "baggie" with the card and a driver CD. I would consider another vendor..."
significantly improving the sound quality 2006-02-16
I bought refurbished Audigy 2 (older version of Audigy 2 zs) from creative's ebay store. It significantly improves the sound quality of my Logitech z 2300. I really love Audigy 2!!
I found my refurbished Audigy 2 is very easy to install. I was really worrying about setting up BIOS as some one mentioned here before I bought that card. When I installed it, I just disabled the onboard audio through volume control. I found this is enough!
Great sound but drivers and applications are a nightmare/buggy 2006-02-10
The Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS with THX certification is the perfect choice for high-impact surround sound up to 7.1. Its 24-bit ADVANCED HD engine delivers stunning 7.1 surround audio in games and movies and supports Dolby Digital EX and DTS-ES. There's also the exclusive THX Console for precise speaker calibration. Music lovers will appreciate its compatibility with DVD-Audio at 24-bit/192kHz in stereo and 24-bit/96kHz in 5.1, with 108dB SNR on all channels, Windows Media 9 compliance and CMSS 3D, which up-mixes stereo audio to 7.1. The Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS comes with Creative MediaSource 2 for digital audio playback, library creation and management. Musicians will also benefit from its true 24-bit/96kHz recording and low-latency ASIO 2.0 support.
If pre-installed in a Dell system the default setting is analog; some work is needed to enable digital; must purchase cable 
2005-11-23
I am in the process of setting up my kick-ass Dell XPS Gen 5 system, which I configured with the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS. I also ordered the Logitech Z-5500 500 watt 5.1 digital surround speakers (very kick-ass).
As others have mentioned in their reviews, the sound card does not come with the digital coax or digital optical cable; you must purchase this separately. Not a huge deal until you find out that a standard Toslink to Toslink digital optical cable won't work. The digital output on the sound card is a standard din connector/mini-plug. A standard digital coaxial cable won't work with the sound card either. You need a "converter" that can convert the digital coax cable connector or Toslink digital optical cable connector to the sound card's din connector.
In my case, the Logitech speakers have a control pod that has a Toslink connector for the optical cable, but I'm having a difficult time finding what I need on the Internet. Both the Creative and Logitech Websites aren't very clear on this. Since Dell installed the sound card for me, I don't have the manual so I don't know if the manual is a little more clear on this. The cables are out there; you have to search for them.
If you're going to use a coaxial cable, I've learned that you can use an RCA to 1/8" miniplug that the coax cable can connect to and then you can plug this into the sound card.
This sound card would have received a 5-star rating, but it's disturbing to me that Creative doesn't have the standard Toslink or coax connection directly on the sound card.
Another thing about this sound card: the default is typically analog, NOT digital. If this sound card came preinstalled in a system (mine is a Dell), the default is analog. I'm guessing it's this way right out of the box. Many of the reviews state how simple it was to set up using the Creative software. You have to change a setting on the sound card itself to enable the digital audio.
Just because you use digital speakers with your Audigy 2 ZS doesn't mean that you are automatically listening to digital output.
Also, if you're using Logitech's Z-5500 speakers, then you have to let Logitech's built-in decoding take care of everything. You have to actually configure the sound card to work with these speakers.
I'm still working with Dell on finding the proper cable and then we're going to work out the sound card settings as well as the software configuration so that I'm getting true digital sound. I'll update my review once that is complete.
Basically, this is a great sound card. Just make sure you read up on this; search google or yahoo and read some forums. This isn't something you can use straight out of the box if you want true digital and 5.1 surround sound.
Warning - missing adapter cable inhibits connection to 5.1 
2005-11-07
Creative have sold these Audigy 2 kits with digital 5.1 speaker compatibilty plastered all over the package BUT YOU REQUIRE A "MINIPLUG / DIN (sold seperately)" ADAPTER CABLE THAT NOBODY HAS ! Including the Amazon and creative online / Telephone shops !!
This cable is detailed in the product literature but unavailable at any shop or even at creative shops online or by phone. It should really be included in the package to avoid customer like me ending up frustrated and angry after paying premium money for what looks like a great system but then unable to connect it to a CREATIVE Desktop 5.1 DTT2500 Digital theatre (Cambridge Soundworks).
If you check out the internet you will see a HUGE number of forums and bloggs crying over this very issue.
I will post a perfomance review when (hopefully) I finally manage to hook up my kit and listen to the sounds.....
UNACCEPTABLE from a reputed supplier like Creative.
audigy 2 zs 2005-09-20
this is a real good sound card, improves sound quality from your onboard card. improves bass. put yourself in various surroundings, with eax environments. awesome card.
So far so good 2005-09-14
I'd just like to say that I was immediately impressed with the sound quality after I clicked on My Computer right after installing it. The stereo separation seems better than my old SB PCI 128. I purchased this soundcard for music production and for it's MIDI capabilities. You don't see MIDI specs in most soundcard ads or reviews anymore and this was very worrying to me. With the use of Soundfonts I'm unlimited in terms of instrument sounds. The critics didn't lie about the bugs and quirks though and the bloat. I now have to wait on my mixer to load in order to change the volume. That used to be almost instantaneous with my previous soundcards. Sometimes it gives off an extremely loud popping, squealing noise though its only for a fraction of a second at a time. When it happens you feel really weird after. If it went on for any longer I feel that it could cause hearing damage and/or damage to your audio system. I'm not sure whether that's the infamous "Squeal of death". Here and there, there are bugs in the soundfont bank manager. Even so, none of these issues have prevented me from making and listening to excellent sounding MIDI music via soundfonts. Soon after installing the card my system rebooted almost randomly while playing a MIDI file. My system doesn't usually do that. Also sometimes some other wierd things happen that didn't happen before. I am very happy with my purchase. I love the feature to add realtime reverb to the mic input and the realtime audio clean-up. That helped me out while watching TV on a noisy channel. I felt a little disappopinted when I discovered that you could listen to any MIDI file using any SoundFont with the Synth-Font program. I guess it felt like the card lost some of it's exclusivity. Another spoiler was that while waiting for my Audigy 2 ZS, Creative announced the X-Fi series. They talked about how much better it was than the Audigy series. That was a tough one. I had consolation in the fact that at my level its going to take my quite a while to harness all the power of the Audigy 2 ZS so the X-Fi would have probably been a waste on me. Plus the Audigy 2 ZS is cheaper.
