Should you upgrade?

This is no doubt a question crossing the minds of Sound Blaster Live! card owners. The Sound Blaster is certainly a tempting offer with lots of models to choose from fitting your financial and computing needs. There are two ways to look at it. If you strive for best audio performance, system performance and want the newest thus greatest technology inside your PC then there really is no choice but to get out there and order yourself an Audigy. For those who contemplate along those lines the Sound Blaster Audigy will deliver a rewarding showcase of fidelity to a wide spectrum of applications. On the other hand should you happen to be someone who simply wants sound without the panache demanding users would expect then restrain your needs away from the Audigy and invest your money elsewhere. No sound card would be complete without speakers, and in our case having reviewed the Inspire 5.1 5300 setup there is little reason why it shouldn't fulfil the requirements most people demand from it. Of course there are even better speakers out there, but do they cost up to $99? For the price it is hard to find any better sounding speakers, just configure them well and let your ears satisfy you from that moment onwards.. 

Ballistic report

• Technology - (10/10)

It is hard to find any other sound card with the amount of wisdom locked inside. The Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum is quite simply the most powerful audio card out there at this point in time. Creative has taken all that was good from the Live! and retransformed it into even better quality, while at the same time adding a wealth of new features, including the next version of EAX, EAX ADVANCED HD. Even if the Audigy could not live up to its 400% speed improvement in all tests, we did find evidence within our benchmarks that the card is capable of meeting this promise in some conditions. It is still much faster than it's predecessor in all tests lifting the level of efficiency right through the audio spectrum. Sound becomes crystal sound and effects become super effects. The Audigy leads its competition into a new more powerful world of audio, and at least for now does so solely on its own potential. The new design heavily reinforced subwoofer marks a change from the more common enclosures whereas the entire Inspire 5.1 5300 setup becomes fully EAX certified.

• Features - (9/10)

The Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum delivers in many areas, few of which is does below the rating of "very good". There is a lot included like SB1394, Audio Clean-Up, EAX ADVANCED HD, Multi-Channel speaker connections (analog/digital), Gold plated jacks, Dolby Digital decoding and the Audigy Drive/Remote control but to name just a few. It would be impossible to go over every single tinniest feature as it is only once you have it installed in your system that you realize the many opportunities it brings along. We did raise one complaint and the essence of this was that one would hope for hardware assisted Dolby Digital encoding within a sound card of this class, fortunately as it maybe we cannot exclude the likelihood of Creative adding this feature at a later date via more complex drivers. The Inspire 5.1 5300 series speakers introduce a new heavily reinforced wooden cube subwoofer rather than a rectangle commonly found in Cambridge Soundworks setups and also a new ergonomic wired volume/balance control. All speakers now feature interchangeable fascia grills should you ever become bored with the standard black. What the speakers do not feature are long enough wires, 2m/5m for front/rear is simply insufficient and is bound to pose problems should you wish to hang them on the walls to meet true surround sound requirements.

• Value for money - (9/10)

With a recommend retail price tag of approximately $199/$99 respectively both products appear as a good value for the money. Some might argue the Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum is too expensive, but we stand in Creative's defense and reinstate the fact that separate from the sound card, Audigy Drive and remote control the retail package also consists of a collection of software that if had to be purchased separately would probably sell for more than the actual bundle itself. Should that not convince you there is always the Player/Gamer version that retails for £99/$99, which is directed at semi-professional audio enthusiasts. The speakers offer good volume levels and clarity for their class without breaking the bank. If they are not powerful enough for your needs there is always the Inspire 5.1 5700, but before you judge, we assure you they're quite a capable set to own.

• Compatibility - (9/10)

We had absolutely no problems with compatibility. The Sound Blaster Audigy also seems to fix older incompatibilities that its unfortunate predecessor possessed on VIA chipset motherboards, especially those designed for SMP. While we are not prepared to state 100% compatibility on every single platform there is a fair amount of confidence to do just that. There is no evidence as of yet that proves the Audigy to be a troublesome hardware device conflicting with other devices and for this reason we rate it a high 9/10.

Verdict

92%............"Sound hardware you'll want to own"

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