Creative Labs PCMCIA Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Notebook ( 70SB053000012 )

Average customer rating: 4.0

excellent alternative
Superior improvement over laptop soundcard
Great Sound Card
Excellent sound upgrade for your laptop
High cost, poor quality

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Creative Labs PCMCIA Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Notebook ( 70SB053000012 )

Manufacturer: Creative Labs
Product Group: CE
Binding: Electronics
ASIN: B0007XRZ08

Related Categories:

Sound Cards

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Product Description

Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS, the leading PC audio brand, is now available for your notebook. Dramatically improve your digital music experience. Enjoy movies in Dolby Digital 5.1 . Hear sound effects so real, you'll feel like you're actually in your games. Create studio quality recordings. And now you can enjoy this amazing audio experience at home or wherever you choose to go.

Customer Reviews:

excellent alternative.......2007-05-15

I have a laptop with original sound card mother board malfuntioning. The PCMCIA and sound blaster Audigy 2 ZS is a suitable and more powerfull alternative than replacing the whole mother board to solve a audio problem.
I am satisfied with this less expensive problem solver.
Thanks and regards
Gustavo

Superior improvement over laptop soundcard.......2007-05-15

I am no expert on soundcards for laptops, and there are many good high quality ones out there. What attracted me to the Audigy 2 was that it was THX certified and offered surround sound. This is not to say that anything not THX certified is bad, but, being a non-expert, I thought this was a safe choice to make.

I'm glad to say that I am extremely pleased with the soundcard - even with the most basic of speakers you can immediately hear the improvement. The great thing is that you can take two sets of computer speakers (or active speakers if you are a hi-fi person) and have one set acting as front speakers and the other as rear speakers and you have a surround sound system (if you don't mind the wires and the need for two power points!). The sound card has an optical input, an optical output, and three minijack connections (one for a subwoofer, one for front speakers, and one for rear ones).

I would recommend (as with most products) downloading the latest software from the Creative website. The latest version can play flac files, which is perfect for me (flac is a lossless compression format like MP3, but unlike MP3 there is no loss of quality). The software also comes with tools such as a graphic equaliser, THX setup (so you can control the volume of each speaker independently based on the angles and distances they are placed), and the standard player and organiser. There are many, but two of the best features that I have found are the ability to cross-fade between tracks, which gets rid of annoying gaps between music tracks that can sometimes occur, and the ability to slow music down but keeping the pitch at the same level. Why the second? I'm learning to play guitar, and it is a superb tool for slowing down those fast solos or awkward rhythm sections for you to play along to.

The only problem I've experienced is that I notice the software can be a bit processor intensive, and my firewall has taking a dislike to it when I try opening web browsers when the player is running. Well, the firewall just needed an additional rule to accept the software, and you can stop unecessary processes, such as the one to continuously monitor folders for new music - you can add music manually.

All in all a great addition to have, especially if you enjoy using your laptop for music or films.

Great Sound Card.......2007-05-09

It turned my laptop into the sound that I get on my PC with Audigy 4-- a great product---what they say it will do --- it really delivers

Excellent sound upgrade for your laptop.......2007-03-11

I have been using an older laptop as a player for my collection of CDs backed-up to an external hard disk (using lossless Monkeys Audio compression). I used to connect the laptop to the HT receiver via the headphone port. The sound level was low (needed to up the receiver volume way beyond other sources) and the quality was OK.

The card was easy to install, and I first tested it with analog connection to output stereo signal to the receiver. There was, anyway, an increase in signal level and in quality. But I was questioning, at this point, whether the card was worth the investment.

I then got a toslink optical cable (reversible to mini-plugs on both sides) and connected via digital out to the receiver. I was afraid that digital out would only work for playing discs from the laptop's player. But no! All sources come out digital. And now it rocks. Music came alive, detailed, at a volume very close to my DVD player (a bit lower than the CD player though). I'm not sure I'd be able to perceive a difference from the same CD coming from the Marantz CD player.

In summary, well worth the investment when using the digital out connection

High cost, poor quality.......2007-01-15

I bought the Sound Blaster PCMCIA card rather than cheaper models because I figured I would get a better sound quality and less problems than a simple USB plug in model and I needed it for my laptop, which has limited USB ports. I wasn't even looking for quality equivalent to my sound card. I simply needed sound from my Gateway laptop because the sound card was no longer working and I would have to replace the entire motherboard to fix it.

Unfortunately, I have been extremely disappointed with this product. First, I had to run it in "standard" rather than "advanced" mode to get it to work. Perhaps with more fiddling I could have gotten it to work in "advanced" mode, but for $100 I expect a plug-and-play. Secondly, even in "standard" mode, I sometimes get all kinds of pops, static and distortion (I tried multiple headphones and speakers, so its the card, not the speakers). There appears to be no rhyme or reason for when it decides to work and when it does not.

The biggest problem I've found is that if I bump the card, which is easy to do since it sticks out about an inch from the laptop, it sometimes causes the computer to crash (the computer is a 2004 Gateway 450RG laptop, running Windows XP Professional). Not just hang up, but a blue screen appears that tells you a fatal error has occurred and the computer promptly restarts so that you lose whatever you were working on in addition to the annoyance of having to restart. It would be one thing to have the Creative Labs software hang-up or crash, but there is no acceptable reason for a $100 hardware card to cause the computer to crash and restart.

I give it one star only because it does produce decent sound most of the time (in "standard" mode) - but what causes it to work poorly the rest of the time remains a mystery.

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