Well it has been quite some time since I did a sound card review. It has been even longer since I have owned a Creative product. To fill some of our younger readers in on past issues with them, let's look at the facts. At one time in the sound card universe there used to be several players in the industry, most notably Creative Labs and Aureal. The general consensus was that Aureal was David and Creative was Goliath. During the sound card war heyday the fan and technical favorite was Aureal. While Creative may have been much bigger, the Vortex Series of cards just plain kicked ass for gaming. However a series of bad moves by Aureal's upper management cost the company everything and gamers a fan-friendly company.

For several years afterward Creative dominated the market and this was not a good thing. The sound cards they produce, while decent, were overpriced and EXTREMELY buggy. Hell I dumped them when I went from Windows 98SE to 2000 Professional and all of my gaming sound issues went with it. Since then several new players have entered the game including VIA and NVidia. As the quality and popularity of this new generation grew it forced Creative to rethink their stragety. This in the end was a good thing for gamers.


Over the past year and a half they have come a long way with their drivers and for that matter the cards themselves. Today we are going to take a look at a great speaker/soundcard combination that is not only great but a value buy. The Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Value and Altec Lansing 251 Speakers come with a good pedigree and I have high hopes for both of them.

First of all let's look at pricing and availability. The card can be found pretty much anywhere including CompUSA and Best Buy. The general price for it is $69. I can already hear you thinking, "$69? I can get a decent card for around $30." Well we are going to find out if it is worth the extra loot. The next thing you will want to remember is that if you are looking for a new card make sure you have 5.1 speakers as well. Now I know you can get great 2.1 setups for dirt cheap but why? I mean if you are going to game or listen to music or watch a DVD there is no reason to not finally go to a 5.1 setup. The AL-251 are discontinued because of a new model coming out but there are still several to be found on the net and you can save up to $29 off what I paid for mine.

Let's take a closer look at the card itself.


When you look at the card you will see the only difference between the value version and the ZS is the lack of a Firewire port. Unless you are extremely anal about sound or are into professional recording, you don't need it. The other thing you may notice is that companies are finally going away from the old style ugly SPDIF plug and going to a small and simpler 'headphone' type jack. I don't have anything to test out the digital side of things so if you want more info on that I apologize for not being able to do it.

The specs on the card are very impressive and I like that I may be able to upgrade to a 7.1 setup someday. But for those of us on budgets the 5.1 will fit nicely. Now I am not going to bore with exact details on what bit it is or what frequency. If you visit this site you know that we just cut to the chase. Here is a picture of the setup I have at home.


One thing nice about the AL-251s is that they have great stands that can be placed just about anywhere. Notice the center channel speaker fits easily on top of your monitor. The first thing you want to do after you set any kind of 5.1 system up is find the right balance of controls. The AL-251 comes with seperate controls for surround, center, bass and main. These will come in handy when you are tweaking the Audigy 2.

Now that card is in and the speakers are setup properly let's put this puppy through it's paces. First up I tested the music quality. I currently have scrapped all of my mp3's in favor of Windows Media Player 10's WMV standard. Now before some of you scream 'MS Fanboy!', let me tell you this. If you have a quality CD-RW or in my case a new DVD-RW and rip CD's using WMV's 192 5.1 spec, it can't be beat. For example with the Audigy's crispness I am able to hear the small things such as the quitar strings reverberating on a great accoustic almbum such as Alice in Chains Unplugged. Add in the nice bass of the AL251s and you can get the house shaking when listening to Usher Confessions. This fact along amazed me, as no matter what kind of music I played the Audigy gave and the speakers took it. Definitely enough to put a smile in my face.

Now let's look into the DVD aspect of it. The sound here didn't disappoint either. Last night I watched The Bourne Supremacy with the ex-GF and I thought I was going to wake up the roomate in a couple of scenes. The Dolby Digital came through crisp and clear and the thump coming from the car chase scenes was enough to shake the windows. And that was while listening to it a low levels!

Finally the most important part of the review. Sound in games. Now to test this out I used my current favorite Half Life 2. The built in sound system in HL2 blows away Doom 3 in my opinion. D3's sound had it's moments but let me tell you there is nothing more frightening that being in Ravenholme and having one of the 'Jackal' zombies coming up behind you in Surround Sound. God I love gaming!!

Ok enough being hyper and time to get to the gist of things. You may find cheaper sound cards and better speakers but this combination is practically unbeatable. For under $150 you can have near-perfect 5.1 Digital sound. Add to that the durability of Altec Lansing and the improved drivers for the Audigy 2 creates a definitely Fanboy Approved setup.


As always thanks for stopping by the site and listening to me ramble.

Tycho
12-15-2004