Playing a CD through my computer and this soundcard, vs just playing the CD from a Discman, showed a night and day difference - the sound from this product can't compare. Running this product through recording software, even with short shielded wires, showed me a background hiss of -55 dB. Most consumer electonics will have S/N ratios a few orders of magnitude better than that. You wouldn't want to record your LP collection using this product, which is part of the reason I bought it.

In addition, the product is buggy. It worked fine at the beginning, and then as I added to my computer and changed the system configuration, it would act very erraticly. If I plugged the device into different USB ports, it would have completely different behaviors, none of which were correct. The installation software is buggy, I've been caught it loops where trying to exit merely re-starts the installer!

Creative's Support was very quick and attentive, but not helpful. I know computers well, and I've worked with plenty of hardware, but I've never experienced such a buggy product. As the product is so mediocre even when it is working, I can't recommend this product to anyone.

Where is Coaxial In? (Rating: 3.00)
Review : I recommended this product to my friend as an external decoder for DVD surround sound. As an upgrade from Extigy, this thing surprisingly doesn't have a coaxial in. So those who want to use it as a dolby surround sound decoder are pretty much stuck with DVD players that have toshlink out.
As for the sound quality ,it's actually not that bad for a creative product. Definitely a step up from average AC97 onboard soundcards. But I doubt how many people would want to spend over 100 for the difference.

Bad analog recording, Background noise for digital music (Rating: 1.00)
Review : I purchased this product mainly for recording my LP collection into digitial format using my laptop. I thought that this could be a good product for that purpose, until I used it. This product could not record properly from analog input. It's even much much worse than recording using laptop's analog input. Not only the recording level was so low, but also the recorded mp3 or wma had so much artificial noise that it was unusable. I used USB2 connection all the time. It seems to me that USB2 doesn't help any better.
Playing digital music was relatively OK, except that it produced slight background white noise. Still directly connecting from my laptop to the speaker produced much better result.
I wonder what the purpose of this device might be ?
Not recommended.

Your ears will sing praise to you (Rating: 0.00)
Review : First of all, you will hear the difference. I absolutely guarantee it. You're laptop (or default pc) audio cannot even begin to measure up to the awesome power of the Audigy. You will hear it the moment you plug this marvel into your USB port. Even your mundane and boring-to-the-death windows system sounds now carry a cadence that was simply not there before.

The sound card supports 7.1 speakers (for hardcore gamers) as well as the more pedestrian 5.1 setup (like mine). the handling of surround sound is superb. The availability of EAX (the patented SoundBlaster HARDWARE sound package) provides for seemless transitions, and the direct hardware equalizer and on the fly effects are a tremendous bonus if you are planning to use this second sound card's output for DJ-ing (like i am).

The fact that this has an independent power supply might seem inconvenient at first, and frankly... it is... There is a tradeoff, however... You will not believe how loud your speakers can actualy go now without distorting! Deafening. Almost like a pre-amp in that respect.

The negative reviews for this card startle me. Jeff Rutsch is incorrect when he says the USB cable is short. Its 4 feet. Too long for me, actually... furthermore, if you want a 20 foot cable, go out and buy it! No issues whatsoever with magnetic shielding... Its a SoundBlaster for heaven's sake! I have also not had any problems with the installation (even though it took a good hour!) or recognition. It does help if you "Safely Remove" it and/or plug it in before booting up... Otherwise the remote does not always work properly. Also, talking about CD sound, Jeff (even if he is a computer guru, as he claims) did not do his homework. By default your CD-ROM drive converts the digital audio into analog for playback. If you do not adjust this setting, that is the way it will stay after you install the new hardware. Come on Jeff! That was both in the help file and the tutorial program! You should have read those!

Woody Jin's comments also amuse me. There apparently is a white noise that you can't really hear, but its there. What??? :